Hello All,

 

My 20 plate Fabia recently had a number of issues cropping up: no interior dome lights working, front assist disabled, component protecting active on the radio- all at once- then latterly the airbag showing as disabled.  I've put it in at the dealership and they are saying that the car needs a new BCM (£900 (£500 odd for the part)) and that the manufacturer will not contribute. The car is only 7 months out of warranty and hasn't got more than 30k mileage.

 

Does anyone have any ideas, and is this something that I can threaten to sue Skoda for? 

 

Thanks,

 

Andrew

You want to sue them for not honouring an expired warranty?

52 minutes ago, J.R. said:

You want to sue them for not honouring an expired warranty?

No, I'm asking if anyone has been successful using a different legal remedy: Consumer Rights Act, Sale of Goods Act. That sort of thing.

Personally, I wouldn't bother making this unfortunate issue any more painful than it already is.

 

You would need to be able to prove that no one did anything to that car to contribute to this failure, Skoda don't need to prove it provided you with a faulty car, well that is the way I'd look at this.

15 hours ago, AndyHatesCheese said:

No, I'm asking if anyone has been successful using a different legal remedy: Consumer Rights Act, Sale of Goods Act. That sort of thing.

 

But on what basis?

 

Why do you consider that they should pay to repair your car?

 

14 hours ago, rum4mo said:

Personally, I wouldn't bother making this unfortunate issue any more painful than it already is.

 

You would need to be able to prove that no one did anything to that car to contribute to this failure, Skoda don't need to prove it provided you with a faulty car, well that is the way I'd look at this.

 

I guess you meant disprove and I agree with you.

 

They did not provide a faulty car, it has since (they claim) suffered a breakdown of the BCM, things fail in life, I don't understand why so often these days it has to be someone elses fault or responsability, I guess that comes from having always bought second hand privately and accepting what life throws at me.

Andrew, sorry to say I agree and think that you trying to get any type of warranty recourse would be more pain for you and fruitless.

 

If the BCM is the cause of the faults then you could also consider having it repaired or replaced with a used one to save money on the cost of the part.  I don't know where the BCM is located but it possibly involves a bit of labour to get at it and put things back again but labour rates can vary from Dealerships to other garages and methods of getting to the BCM and putting things put back may (I don't know) vary too taking less labour time so less pounds per hour for less hours.

 

Personally I'm surprised we don't see more faults with the car's computers, car build and general parts from the times of covid, car chip shortages and later general car parts shortages.  Personally I'd not want products from those times so might prefer to consider an earlier (or later, as even newer cars get broken for parts) used BCM, subject to it being suitable of course.

 

Good luck with whatever routes you take, I've had many (some expensive) car parts poorly made or fail when they shouldn't have so I know how you feel and how useless it can be to try to improve matters beyond replacing the part.

  

Edited 26 October, 20232 yr by nta16

On 25/10/2023 at 18:49, AndyHatesCheese said:

Hello All,

 

My 20 plate Fabia recently had a number of issues cropping up: no interior dome lights working, front assist disabled, component protecting active on the radio- all at once- then latterly the airbag showing as disabled.  I've put it in at the dealership and they are saying that the car needs a new BCM (£900 (£500 odd for the part)) and that the manufacturer will not contribute. The car is only 7 months out of warranty and hasn't got more than 30k mileage.

 

Does anyone have any ideas, and is this something that I can threaten to sue Skoda for? 

 

Thanks,

 

Andrew

I have the same issue. First BCM died after 1year when i had 10k km with the same symptoms. Now i have to change it agan after 6years because car wont start or even switch the ignition on. It was almost impossible to tow the car away, because of locked steering. According to information from BCM guy, there is some issue with flash memory, which is dying because of too many rewriting requests. Iam really ****ed off of this, because they know this issue and dont care or even dont help you with the costs of BCM. Iam going to sell the car once it is repaired and this was my last škoda i bought.

My older daughter bought a 2009 SEAT Ibiza 1.4 16V 84PS SC, and it gave her no trouble, she went abroad on an exchange job thing and I kept that car and used it now and again, it rewarded me by starting to drain the battery, using only the internet as a resource, I discovered that one reason for that on that age of any VW Group marque car of that size and engine, was wrong programming of the BCM by the supplier!

As too much time had run before this became an issue, the relevant TPS on this had rolled out of the visibility and/or knowledge of dealership workshops, result was when handed into a local SEAT dealership, a faulty "clockspring" was found and replaced, though VCDS had no found any fault codes logged, that did nothing to fix the battery draining, then that SEAT dealership was closed by the chain that owned it so that the land could be sold of housing! They gave me a reference which would allow SEAT to support me via another SEAT dealership's workshop! I had initially mentioned this "known issue" and that a TPS existed covering the recovery action, but that info had fallen on deaf ears. Maybe a year later, just before that daughter returned holiday for a month at Christmas over her "Summer" break, I approached another SEAT dealership, Arnold Clark in fact, the service reception guy knew exactly what I was talking about - luckily for me, as they had had to sort out a same age and engine VW Polo that they had in, so that made getting the correct info from SEAT mothership a lot easier, and that sorted out that problem.

Now, I'd think that every "same" BCM programmed over a known period in time would have the same problem - and what did VW Group do about it - well after first discovering it and issuing a TPS, buggar all, just left all the affected cars to let down their owners and end up coming back one at a time into their dealerships, the "flash patch" update is free, but carrying out an exhaustive diagnosis was not free neither was the time spent finding and requesting the "flash patch" and then applying it. No doubt this way of doing things gets covered by "wear and tear" and so customer coughs up for manufacturer's supplier's mistake. This is VW Group's get out of jail free card which gets used quite a lot.