Skodas reply on request for coil pack replacement

Emailed Skoda Ireland on their web site last Friday to ask for the coil packs on my RS to be replaced. Although they are working I want to preempt a failures and have them replaced under warranty like in the UK. Of course the warranty dept. are having none of it. See mail below. I guess I either have to pay or just wait for them to go bang. Car is 22months old. 12k miles up. Late Sept. 02.

Skodas response to my request for coil pack replacement

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Subject: FW: Coil Pack Failures

We received your e-mail on the 14th May 2004.

If you believe your car is not running properly then we suggest you take

your car to your local Skoda dealer who will be able to diagnose if a part

is faulty and needs to be replaced. We cannot allow the replacement of parts

without the dealer establishing a manufacturing defect in a faulty part.

Your dealer will be able to comment on this.

My reply back

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Thanks for your reply. However I am in disagreement.

I already discussed it with my dealer who agreed he would replace them if there was an issue. The problem is this : Skoda UK have recognised that the Bosch coil packs are prone to failure, did a recall and replaced them with updated models. So Skoda UK have recognised there IS a problem and are preempting people having coil packs going, even replacing all coil packs free of charge. This is well documented on the forums in www.briskoda.net

Skoda Ireland are doing NOTHING. When I spoke to someone from Skoda customer service last year, I was told you were monitoring the situation but there has not been enough failures on RS's to warrant a recall. This is due to the SMALL amount of RS's sold and nothing to do with reliability. VW's and Audis made in 02 have had failures left, right and centre. So this is no excuse. I would have thought Skoda Ireland would try to preempt the situation like in the UK and not show such complacency. The advice I was given by Skoda in the event of a failure was to drive to my nearest dealer. This of course is also unacceptable as driving on 3 cylinders I believe is dangerous and can cause catalytic converted damage as the ecu will intermittently activate the cylinder to see if it is working. Again people have reported this happening. In this situation I would insist (even out of warranty as I reported the problem in warranty) that Skoda pay for recovery of my car to my dealer and replacement of the coil packs as well as a new cat.

Would it not be smarter for Skoda Ireland to authorise a coil pack replacement now. I have already checked the cost. With labour the dealer charges only 125 euros ?

If not, I can tell you with absolute certainty that I will never every buy another Skoda again. And to be honest the RS is the best car I ever drove, and I am looking forward to the replacement RS next year.

I await your response