[Closed] Car Problems, are Audi Being Reasonable?

Yes, I'd say they're bing fair.

If it's out of warranty I'd bite their hand off.

Alfa wouldn't pay for a cambelt on my 1 month out of warranty car with 36000 miles on the clock - the dealer had quoted £2500 for the job.

key points:
1. out of warranty;
2. they have offered to pay more than half.

seems fairly reasonable to me; by all means ask them if that is the best they can do, and possibly research to find out if it is a known common fault (as this may change the situation - you could argue it was not fit for purpose), but I wouldn't go screaming and shouting at them.

Dave

sounds to me that they have agreed to fix it at cost to them tbh which is a pretty good offer for a car out of warranty

If it's out of warranty I'd bite their hand off.

If it's out of warranty and you make too much of a fuss, you might find that they give you a new offer of 'sod all' instead.

Bite their hand off quickly and be nice and polite as they may give you more good service in future.

yeah you should be thinking about accepting that offer... then sell it.

should have bought a discovery. 😉

Cheers for the replies, just a deeply depressing expense I could do without. Have checked online and have found a few mentions of this problem. However its hard to know if it's common as any search for a problem is bound to show a few issues. Mentioned this when I spoke to them but asked them to go on with the work. Am always nice as pie when dealing with anyone customer facing, sometimes this is the best approach but other times makes you a bit of a walkover, its knowing when to up the anti that's the trick.

Owned a Discovery before this passtheriza, the problems I had with that could fill a whole other thread.

I think if you're running a low mileage near new Q7 then you should be prepared to expect the odd large service/repair bill...

£500 for [i]anything[/i] on an audi seems pretty good to me.
It cant be far short of that to fill the tank 🙂

Yep, take it.

It's unfortunate that the fault has appeared, but main dealers don't often go beyond 50% as a goodwill gesture.

I think it is pretty fair.

I had a similar situation (car was about 6 months out of warranty and we have owned it from new) with Mazda (and it is a known and documented fault with the particular model and year of car) and I had to fight tooth and nail to get close to what Audi have offered you.

Seems a very reasonable response from Audi IMHO.

£500 is a lot of anyone's money but, frankly (and I speak from bitter personal experience here) if you run a £30k+ car you can reasonably expect the bills to be fairly large when things do go wrong.

if you run a £30k+ car you can reasonably expect the bills to be fairly large when things do go wrong.

^^^^

this. probably cheaper than a service anyway...

I'd get them to guarantee that your £500 contribution will fix the problem before instructing them to start. I read the original post as they 'hope' this will fix the issue. Problems like that have a habit of getting lots more expensive down the line

Yeah we have a host of issues with our disco but its just so capable in whatever situation we put it in... £450 road tax means it'll be going though quite soon. How am I gonna get the rib in and out of the sea now? My civic won't cope 😉

Best I got out of Vauxhall was 25% for a problem that had been the focus of a BBC Watchdog campaign!! Doesn't matter if there's thousands of 'known' cases, they will deny all knowledge!! Only way to increase their contribution is to go the legal route, which adds stress and introduces a real chance of costing you way more.

I'd be content with their offer.

I'd just get shot of it NOW.

It sounds like a whole heap of trouble just rearing it's ugly head to me.......

I've just googled what an Audi Q7 is. Now I know that it's one of those cars that I'd seen about and thought how fugly it was 😉

As above, sounds like a good offer. I'd suggest that it's actually good customer service compared to what I reckon a lot of other brands would give but then you did pay silly money for that monstrosity so I guess they can afford it 😀

So the car was 30k + and has gone wrong within 4 years in a fairly major way but that's OK as they've offered to contribute?

Seems a bit....meh.

Still though I'd take the cash then punt the car.

[i]a fairly major way[/i]

a major way would be an engine going pop. This is a couple of hours work...

Not encouraging news but a friend of ours was adamant his Audi was down on power from new and took it to the garage several times (his nearest garage was 75miles away) over a period of 3 years to get it looked at. Finally they found a problem with the turbo, obviously he got rid of it shortly after. When we had an Audi it had recurring problems with the traction control, ABS, and cooling systems that started about a week from new. Was in and out the dealer almost monthly and and wasn't fixed ever. See if you can hold them to sorting the problem for you with this offer as you might be in or the long haul.

Iain

1200 of repairs on a 3 year old car seems major to me but not in the context of the cars value so fair enough. I'd still want it fixed for nowt though.

its got a 5 year warranty, under the sale of goods act 🙂

Thought I'd throw this out for discussion. I have an Audi Q7

Let me stop you right there...

but surely 8k a year is reasonable use. Okay it's not what some people do but it's not barely used so SOGA would be hard to enact?

Audi labour will be expensive so it's not hard to rack up a £1200 bill on a modern car that is hard to get to things on.

well my 5 yr old son somehow managed to pull the fuel cap cover of the wife's Cmax yesterday, breaking the hinge - £78 for a new one.....no sweeties for him for a while ! 👿

wonder how much an Audi one would have cost !

You bought a Q7 - I'd say leaks are the least of your problems

I had an injector go on my octavia vrs which I paid to have repaired. then did a bit of internet research and found it to be a very common occurance. One email to VOSA and about 2 hours later I had a phone call from Skoda offering to replace the other 3 injectors and refund the repair of the 1st one. happy days. the car was 7 months out of warranty.

its got a 5 year warranty, under the sale of goods act

no, it doesn't. it needs to be 'fit for purpose'. You could claim a 1 year old car might fit into that category, but something that has been used for ~700 hours might develop problems, and I'm not aware of any precident in court to disprove that. If you want a car to be trouble-free for 5 years, buy one with a 5 year warranty, or get an extended warranty. If you run a car without warranty, you're taking a gamble and legally entitled to squat

While their offer is 'fair', I'd still be asking for a discussion with the Dealer Principle along the lines of 'I've only done 25k'.

But maybe its an age related problem, rather than mileage...

Although this post seems to aiim towards a water pump problem:

http://forums.audiworld.com/showthread.php?t=2788418

To quote:

[i]There was no external leakage - nothing visible. The pressure test indicated the leak was sourced to the water pump.[/i]

For SOGA to apply it either has to have had the fault from new and / or its a design fault or it has to have lasted much less time that would be expected. You would have to show this is so Failed gasket at more than 3 years old? Unlikely to succeed as a SOGA claim I would have thought

One advantage of contributing to the parts cost is that the new parts will be covered by a 1 or 2 year parts warranty. If Audi replace the parts free of charge (or under the original warranty), then the warranty period stops at the end of the original warranty - so you get no further cover.

Ah well thanks for the replies, looks like Audi are being reasonably decent. Still I'll wait and see if a better offer is forthcoming but won't give them a hard time if it doesn't. Makes me hanker after the days when engines were simple enough to do the work yourself, don't imagine the Audi Q7 Haynes Manual is a best seller.
Still having to stop by the roadside whilst my car cooled down anytime after doing more than 50 miles and not being able to turn the heating off even in the middle of summer is thankfully a thing of the past, VW Beetle.

UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well am rather a happy bunny, just been contacted by the service rep at the Audi Dealer dealing with my car. He sat down with his boss and they have agreed to take on the cost of the additional 30% labour and the additional cost of the parts less a £30 cost to keep my two year warranty on the repair. So total cost to me £30!! Now that is good service. Now if I could slide the £470 saved into the "Black Ops." account without the wife knowing...some new bike bits...hmmm.

A few years ago I took my BMW 523i in for a service (out of warranty) and they asked if they could have it for a couple of days the following week.

In that 2 days they took out the engine and replaced the block and crank. Turns out there was a generic fault with that engine (excessive wear in cylinder liners) and they were replacing them.

Cost me nothing at all. If I hadn't asked what they were doing they wouldn't have mentioned it.