Our car's turbo failed after only a year. Should we be liable for the bill?
Dear Alex,
When the turbo failed on our second-hand Nissan X-Trail, an approved dealer repaired it at a cost of £3,319.36. One year and only 8,000 miles later, the turbo has failed again. The dealer originally quoted £4,320 to repair it, and then reduced this to £2,956.63. Citizens Advice suggested we are entitled to a free repair, but the dealer refuted this, claiming that since the first turbo failed after we had used the car for six months, it's not its responsibility. It has also taken back its courtesy car, leaving us carless with young children, and demanded that we remove the car from its premises, forcing us to hire a tow-truck. Is this fair?
–JB
Dear JB,
I think this is an example of deplorably poor customer service from the dealer. Like most manufacturers, Nissan offers a parts warranty of a year; to my mind, the turbo failure should have been covered under this guarantee – meaning it should have been sorted without any further quibbling.
How long you owned the car before it was first replaced should have no bearing on that, so I don't quite understand the dealer's reasoning, unless it was implying that there was another, pre-existing issue that was causing the turbo to fail – though there doesn't seem to be any evidence of that.
While you were negotiating with the service department, it asked you to return its courtesy car, with no offer of a longer-term replacement, and then demanded that you fork out for a tow-truck to have your own car removed. Not only a deeply unsympathetic move, in my opinion, but a borderline malicious one, as it piled pressure on to you to make a decision.
You did the right thing by holding out and seeking professional advice; for other readers stuck in a standoff such as this, Citizens Advice and the Motor Ombudsman are great resources that can offer free advice with a sound basis in consumer law, assisting to resolve such situations.
Unfortunately, the dealer still wasn't swayed. So when you contacted me, I took up your case with Nissan, asking whether it stood by its dealer's customer service.
While Nissan didn't comment on that per se, it did promise to investigate. After some time, Nissan told me that the company's own customer service team had stepped in to help resolve the case.
You then told me you had received a phone call with an offer to get the car towed to the dealer and repaired free of charge, which was the outcome you desired.
'We always place a priority on the satisfaction of our customers and aim to help where we can,' said Nissan's spokesman. 'When we became aware of this issue on an eight-year-old vehicle, although it was well outside of its original warranty period, we were happy to support the customer and resolve the problem to their satisfaction.'
You have since confirmed that the work has been completed and that the dealer has carried out additional, unrelated repairs at no cost to you, as a gesture of goodwill. As a result, you're satisfied with the resolution.
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