I have a Superb L&K a little over a year old that I use as a Taxi with 55,000 miles.I am in Ireland but bought the car in the UK about 6months ago with 4800 miles on it.Three weeks ago I was driving at 45mph when the car developed a nasty shudder through the car and would not accelerate normal.It seemed to clear slightly and came to a stop a little further on.It would not restart.There were no warning lights whatsoever.I contacted Skoda Ireland who advised me to contact Skoda UK as the car was UK car originally.I contacted them and they were very helpful.They arranged breakdown service to take the car to the nearest Skoda dealer and sorted me with car rental.The breakdown guy put on his report suspected fuel problem.his reason for that was there were not any warning lights on the dash.The car broke down on a Wednesday afternoon,I got a call on Thursday from my local dealer to say it is not a quick fix and they would not be able to examine it until following Wednesday or Thursday.I called them Tuesday afternoon and they told me that a list of faults showed up on the computer and they had not seen before so they sent It to Skoda Ireland.Theyinstructed the dealer to replace the ECU.They ordered the ECU fit it to the car and could not code it.Skoda Ireland then tried to code it remotely but also failed.They ordered another ECU slightly different from the one for my car with new software.That ECU arrived today 5 days  late,they fitted and coded the ECU and the car still will not start.

It has been 3 weeks now that I have been out of work because of this problem.I have a contract to do work and 3 days a week I do almost 600miles each day and the other 3days I drive between 350 and 400 miles each day.I had to give all of the work to another Taxi company which in itself is dangerous for my business.I am severely affected with this breakdown.Now the situation seems even to be worse .I called into the Skoda garage today and spoke to the workshop manager face to face where he informed me that they do not know what is wrong with the car nor does Skoda Ireland.They have sent a report to the factory to see if they can tell them what is wrong with the car.The factory will get back in due course,maybe an hour,tomorrow or the next day I was told.I said to the workshop manager that I hope it won’t run into more weeks but I was told it could run into more weeks before it’s fixed and they can only do what is advised by Skoda (I presume Skoda factory).

The Skoda Service Promise states that they will endeavor to diagnose vehicle defect within 24 hours.They have now had the car about 504 hours and it is still not diagnosed.I am in bits over this.

I would appreciate if anybody could give me advice if heard of these symptoms in a Superb before.Thanks.

 

John.

Awful situation.  It's bad enough when a problem with a car is 'inconvenient' but it must be a nightmare when it affects your life in a big way.  

 

I'm not sure how it works with commercial/private hire vehicles but could the dealer or even Skoda themselves sort you out with a replacement vehicle?  Have you written to Skoda UK?  This would be the first thing I would do and also provide a break-down of your loss of earnings to date.  You really need to emphasise that this isn't just an inconvenience for you.  You could always try to get some advice from Citizens Information; if anything they could advise you on how best to structure a letter of complaint to have the maximum impact and hopefully get things moving. 

 

Best of luck.  I hope you get something sorted, soon. 

Sounds like an incompetent and lazy dealer. 

 

Ask for a printout of these faults, so we can see.

 

I suspect its a wiring loom issue, broken wire or even damage by rodents. The dealer should be doing a full inspection of the looms, instead of sitting on his backside waiting for a magic fix from the Czech republic.

 

Contact Skoda Ireland and UK and complain. Look at the consumer law in Ireland and consider legal action. 

Wow. You've been left without a car for three weeks. And you're a taxi driver!?

 

You are entitled to a replacement car to keep you mobile, especially if you depend on the car to earn a living.

 

You must be a remarkably patient person, I wouldn't have left the dealer on day 1 without the keys to a suitable replacement car. I assume it is possible to rent a taxi, complete with taxi test and meter etc?

 

My 8 year old / 150,000 mile MkII Superb had a new EGR valve fitted a few months ago, under warranty, at a UK-based Skoda main dealer. They didn't have an available courtesy car so Skoda UK stepped-in and arranged a hire car via their partnership with Thrifty, all sorted within a couple of hours.

 

Have you checked out the warranty terms and conditions, does your use of the car as a taxi adversely affect the elements of the warranty, in particular the area that covers a replacement vehicle?

 

I assume your car is classed as an 'approved used' vehicle?

 

If so take a look here...

 

 

http://www.skoda.co.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/downloads/brochures/SKODA_Warranty_Terms_Used_Car.pdf

 

 

Check out page 13...

 

 

Edited 7 November, 20187 yr by silver1011

I suspect the warranty could potentially be invalid as warranty exclusions include :

"The vehicle is operated long term in a country for which it has not be specified"

 

This is legal semantics, but if that version was never on sale in Ireland, they could invoke that clause

 

http://www.skoda.co.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/downloads/brochures/SKODA_Warranty_Terms_August_2018_New_Car-1.pdf

 

However, I would think as long as car is under 2 years should really apply the EU rules and not treat Ireland as excludable country

 

 

On a more practical note, should really be lending you a car if they are unable to fix it, or incur big repair delays because dealer has chosen not to stock the parts

 

From your description of the breakdown sounds like some form of electrical failure, anything from broken wire to loose connector plug, might have caused all sorts of errors, but the fact that 2 new ECUs have been tried and not worked, suggested nothing wrong with the original ECU and the source of the problem (somewhere in the wiring) has not been found and the damaged wiring is confusing the ECU

 

Good luck

 

 

Edited 7 November, 20187 yr by SurreyJohn

Might be the crankshaft sensor 

Thanks everybody for your ideas and advice.I can’t find how to reply to each message individually.

I have a rental car from Enterprise until my car is repaired which is covered by Skoda but cannot use it for my Taxi work.Unfortunatly it is not possible for me To rent a Taxi in my area (Taxis available for rent in some city’s but must operate in those areas).My car being a Taxi doesn’t affect the warranty other than the mileage will be too high to get the third year.

I think also the dealer is not pro active and now completely relying on factory technicians.I wish there was a magic fix.

My Skoda is the same spec as the Irish L&K so the warranty should not be a problem.I asked the workshop manager about the warranty and he said that they are treating it as a warranty job but couldn’t say it covered 100% until they the find problem.

I called Skoda UK this morning and spoke to them for a half hour and explained the situation from A to Z.My main reason for doing this was to see if they could put a push on getting the problem diagnosed and repaired and to let them know how badly I am affected with this breakdown.They were sympathetic and agreed that 3 weeks was not satisfactory to have the car without diagnosis.They checked the status of the car and said that the technicians at the factory would be in touch with the dealer to advise what checks to do on the car and that they cannot speed up that process.The customer service agent I spoke to is escalating this case to a manager who will investigate the whole situation and also that he may consider some sort of compensation for my losses.Compensation wasn’t the word used but I can’t think of the term he used.

I also think it could be a wiring problem even though there was a terrible shudder as if the 4 wheels were badly out of balance before it stopped.I am baffled that there was not any dash warning lights.Also a good idea to send letter to Skoda UK.

Sincere thanks to everybody.

I will update when I have more news.

Very stressful situation for you but ultimately you will have to rely on the dealer for a fix, if you have recently bought the car you could try to reject it as not of merchanable quality but after having put up such mileage that don’t be feasible

 

i wonder if the dealer isn’t too interested as it’s an import? Irish dealers are getting hammered by imports now (I’m in Kerry myself) and the dealers are really

****ed by the amount of imports on the market here. Maybe as a suggestion you should call any other dealers in your province and ask if they have any advise / or indeed think they might be able to diagnose it?

My Skoda dealer spent 3 weeks checking for electrical faults (found none)and then decided to check the fuel system.none of the injectors were working so they sent fuel samples to a Lab.The results came back,the samples contained water and unsuitable for use.I had to replace the complete fuel system at a cost of €7000.Skoda had my car for 6weeks.Obviously no warranty from Skoda when the breakdown was fuel related.Also insurance will not cover fuel related problems as they have cut cover due to massive costs to them a few years ago over washed diesel.

All I must do now is go after fuel company to recover costs.One thing on my side is I had an account at the filling station and I have a full record of my fuel purchasing.It was the only filling station that I used.

 

Thanks for letting us know. It's a *****ger all right but at least you have your car back and working OK.

Good luck with the claim on the fuel company. Might be worth checking social media/online press reports to see if others using your fuel station had any issues. Also I dont know if you have a Trading Standards department in Eire but it might be helpful to contact them to see if they have any records etc.

Wow, this is a shocking story.  So sorry to hear it's severely affected your livelihood mate.  A garage selling watered down fuel?  That's absolutely disgusting!!  

On 28/11/2018 at 00:28, medion said:

so they sent fuel samples to a Lab.The results came back,the samples contained water and unsuitable for use.

 

If there was water in the fuel you would not be the only driver affected. Any who filled up regularly at that filling station should have suffered the same issues. When a similar thing happened locally it was spread all over the local press and since most of those affected were alerted to the fact it was not a isolated incident it cost the garage a fortune in compensation plus they eventually had to replace all the tanks.

 

If no other drivers have had this issue I suspect that Skoda are simply telling a lie to divert the attention from themselves. Who knows if the lab who did the testing simply stated what Skoda told them to. Impossible to prove unless you have a sample to get analysed independently.