Gents,
I feel I am about to enter into a dispute with Skoda regarding the instrument failure on my Octavia. It failed 7 years after use and was replaced in Feb 14, well it has failed again and I believe this is poor quality control on Skoda's part. I would like to ask if anyone else on this forum has experienced similar issues please? In my opinion a part costing over £1,000 should not fail after three years - and I don't care what Skoda says about warranty etc. I have quoted Sales Of Goods Act as it is pre 2015 and will involve Trading Standards if required. For all of this to be successful I would like to be armed with as much information and statistics as possible.

 

Cheers for your help.

The instrument cluster on my 2010 vRS failed in its first year. New cluster was fitted under warranty - though I had to wait for a second one to be delivered as first one arrived broken iirc. 

what exactly is the failure? theres umpteen posts on here regarding led failures for which skoda want you to buy a new cluster.

I agree it should last longer than 3 years and given your second failure - it is not great production quality, no question it would seem.

 

Your first failure at 7 years (what was the problem?), well, in any case that was outside scope of 6 years SOGA at the time and not a terribly early failure in the scheme of things, even though I would expect to last longer. So you could only commence something in respect of the replacement item (what is the failure now?).

 

My advice would be to take some deep breaths and try to turn the focus to support for how to replace, fix, repair, swap out, what you have at not too significant cost. It is very draining commencing legal proceedings and on a 10 year old car, with previously replaced parts it is not that cut and dry. You can waste a lot of time and energy taking things to court, even though I agree with the sentiment that the items ought to last longer than that.

 

You have better things to do with your time, honestly. Unless you really, really, really don't. And you enjoy such challenges, and they don't wind you up. Which gauging from your post, I don't believe to be the case!

 

Edit: PS. Have you tried the first easy option of asking the dealer who you paid replacement and repair costs to, if they think 3 years is reasonable and of satisfactory quality and seeing if they can do something.....

 

 

Edited 26 May, 20179 yr by TheClient

Thanks for the replies.

The first failure was a complete dash fail and funny old thing the dealer "had" to replace it. If i could have got it out then, in theory, I could have had it repaired for a fraction of the cost......

The second failure was, according to the dealer, all connected to the immobiliser and so the dash had to be replaced again. They did fit it for cost and waived the labour but still a cheeky £940. Funny old thing the dealer blames Skoda UK for the lack of support and Skoda UK say it is a dealer decision.

For a part to fail so quickly just smacks of poor quality control and as I work in Africa I have plenty of time to fire emails around.