Can any vehicle expert answer these questions?
Can anyone with any real knowledge of cars answer the following questions?
My car has gone to the main dealer today for an interim service and MOT. I have had a report from the dealer concerning the following:-
1. "Can't check the oil level because a very small piece at the very bottom of the dipstick has broken off". How can a bit break off a dipstick which is in the car's sump?
2. "Tread measurement for the rear tyres shows one tyre needs replacing". The measurements that I took 2 weeks ago, 130 miles done since, are over double what the dealer is saying. The odd thing is they only gave three readings, inner, middle and outer. The tyre has 4 tread grooves and so I have four readings, all well within the legal limit.
3. "The spare tyre is 79% worn". It has NEVER been on the car. How can it be worn?
Is this a further case of why main dealers should not to be trusted? Five years ago this same dealer told me I had a radiator leak and quoted £600+ for the repair. I had never seen any evidence of a leak and the dealer couldn't explain where it was. Two main services and two interim services later there is never any mention of it by the technicians(?) In the intervening time I have added, at most, 1 litre of water/antifreeze and still no evidence of a leak on my garage floor.
Your comments / explanations very welcome.
Comments
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I don’t think anyone can answer your questions, John, because one would need to see the car to do so.
My advice is to visit the dealership and put your points to the owner/general manager and demand to see evidence. At best this sounds to be general incompetence.
I suggest you use a different garage next time.
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I stand to be corrected but I have never known an oil dipstick that was made of anything other than metal? Almost impossible to break a piece off? Have you checked the dipstick yourself? With the tyres you need to challenge them with the information and get them to explain. A spare wheel, depending on age, can deteriorate, especially if in an underslung carrier but to say and unused tyre has lost tread seems odd.
I have owned 4 Kia cars, from new, for the last 17 years and used the same main dealer with little cause for complaint. They have recently changed hands so I will be watching carefully to see if things stay the same. Fortunately the long warranty period does help stop nasty surprises!
David
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Some manufacturers use a plastic piece on the end of the dipstick , Kia is one of them on some model years
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Just got the car back from the dealers complete with paperwork. They are showing the tread depths to be:-
N/S 3 3 1 O/S 1.6 3 3 with a quote for a new tyre.
I've just checked the depths myself using my Vernier depth gauge. My readings are:-
N/S 4.0 3.5 4.0 4.0 O/S 4.5 4.0 3.75 4.5
All measurements are from outside of tyre to inside.
Had I been my neighbour who uses the same dealership, she would have taken their word as gospel and bought a new tyre from them totally unnecessarily.
I think I've taken my car their for the last time.
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And the spare?
Did you not make a fuss, John? I’d have done as I described before and wouldn’t have paid the bill in full until satisfied.
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The spare in my XTrail although being full size is steel rather than alloy and has temporary use tyre on it. I assume just to save costs. The temporary use tyre only has about 3 mm of tread. Perhaps the OP’s is the same and whoever did the measurements assumed it was a standard tyre.
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Hope the broken off bit of dipstick (if it ever existed) is metal and now happily captured by the magnetic sump plug. Dreadfull things could happen if it was swept into the moving parts.
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When I bought my current Touareg from the main dealer which is about an hour from home, I took out a three year service plan which seemed to make sense at the time. At year two, after the service, they announced that all the brake pads needed replacing and wanted over £750 to do it. I didn't trust them and took the car to a local garage, five minutes from home - a Bosch Service Centre and one which, although not the cheapest around here, has a very good reputation. They quoted exactly half the figure to do the same job - using genuine VW parts - and they could have done it cheaper had I opted for non-OEM pads. They also spotted a sticking brake caliper which the dealer had missed, simply because they hadn't had the wheels off.
Oh - the main dealer is very good at sending you a slick video of someone working on the car - but when it comes to doing the actual job, I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them. I had an even worse experience with my previous Disco which after the main dealer had got his hands on it, spent more time with them rectifying problems they had caused, than it did with me!
Needless to say, my car has been looked after by that Bosch Service centre ever since and I trust them absolutely.
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I've just looked at the new MOT certificate which shows a "Pass" but under "Advisories" it shows that one rear tyre is at the legal limit and the other is close to the legal limit. This is patently not the case as the minimum tread depth that I have measured is 3.5mm (maximum 4.5mm) . I 'm going to take the car to where I normally get my tyres from and ask them to measure the tyres for me to confirm my measurements and hopefully get this in writing. I will then have to get in touch with the DVSA and get the MOT records corrected. I think a letter to the CEO of the dealership will be the next job to do.
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Good move👍🏻. I’ve only once come across this in my life when I owned a Ford Ranger pickup. Not only things being done & me being charged for them without my knowledge but one item charged for that was not actually done, I checked it & got it sorted immediately. I changed both the vehicle & dealership-not a radical answer but the truck needed changing.
Just change, the trust is gone, no 2nd chances.0 -
This is borderline fraudulent, personally I would be going ballistic with the garage very publicly in their showroom. Reporting on here will change nothing and other less savvy customers will be ripped off. I am very capitalist and pro business This type of behaviour makes me fume.
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I think a lot of dealers are in on this game. A week or two, & maybe 1000 miles at most, after buying my car from a main dealer I had ANOTHER main dealer replace a key fob under warranty. When I collected my car I was presented with an eleventeen point health check which included their advise to change front pads & discs at a cost of around £550. IMHO a classic case of upselling because the selling dealer had deemed them OK.
The discs are still on the car nearly 4 years later having just had a change of pads since.
They try to justify it under the guise of safety.
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Please post your findings , as an ex technician who worked for a main dealer for over 40 years in the workshop ,doing MOT’s and in my last years in reception I always find these stories interesting
you may not have any luck with DVSA as you have removed the vehicle from their premises
i now find if I want to know any thing about my car I ask someone down the pub as there is always an expert there
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A have had a number of bad experiences with local garages as 3 times, I was charged large amounts to fix the immobilser on my motorhome when all it actually needed was a £1.00 tube of superglue to stop the metal ring around where the ignition is inserted, from moving, which a mobile electrical engineer, eventually diagnosed and fixed! When the end dropped off the exhaust (around 4 inches of it), I was dreading how much a new exhaust would be. I dropped it off at a local garage I had not used before and when I went to pick it up, the bill was the grand total of £20.00 as the mechanic just welded the end back on. That was around 5 years ago, so I have used them to MOT my motorhome and my car since then. Finding a garage that doesn't rip you off, is like finding gold ore in your back garden.
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Have to say we much prefer to use reputable local garages. We use a couple for our four vehicles, one for the cars, another with a larger workshop for our MH. I would add that all our vehicles are pre owned, so all are now out of any warranty, other than my Mini, which we purchased a general warranty for, so that I can get it sorted out with a courtesy car if needs be. We have used these garages for years and had great service, honest feedback. The only time we went back to a dealership was with one of our Jeeps, Patriot I think. We ended up having to contact Fiat in Italy to resolve the issue things got so bad with the dealership. The response from Fiat was excellent, but we never went back to the dealership.
So many dealerships seem to change which companies they sell for nowadays. No idea how this works, but one month Ford then …poof….now sells Kia’s🤷♀️
I would ask around friend’s, family John if I was you. See if anyone can recommend an independent workshop. Our family use quite a few, rather than dealerships. Good luck.
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"1. "Can't check the oil level because a very small piece at the very bottom of the dipstick has broken off". How can a bit break off a dipstick which is in the car's sump?"
Translation - our apprentice snapped the plastic bit off withdrawing the dipstick and we can't get replacement dipstick.
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I think that now to find a garage that one absolutely trusts is worth it's weight in gold.
I do no mind paying for real work that needs to be done but have had a few experiences when being quoted for work that another garage says is not needed at all.
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When I wasn’t convinced that my caravan dealer was servicing our van properly I spent a worthwhile £45 having a local mobile engineer going over it. I then put the van into the dealers for the annual services and the differences were unbelievable, the damp readings were straight out of a scammers instruction manual. One serious problem, front window drop wasn’t mentioned by the dealer. With my Volvo I don’t use main dealers I find a Volvo specialist, great service and a lot cheaper
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HD
I must admit I don't check the oil level in my car as I do so few miles between services. However out of curiosity I did check what sort of dipstick I had and it seems to be all metal.
David
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The 'old' dipstick was certainly predominantly if not totally metal. The replacement dipstick as supplied by the dealer is round metal wire from the 'handle' down to a flat piece of metal about 50mm long which shows the level marks. The two pieces of metal are joined by a small piece of plastic. Whether the old one was like this, I can't remember.
An interesting thought that has occurred to me is that if the dealership didn't know how the dipstick had got broken, how would they know, and state, that the broken off part would cause no problem? I'm waiting to hear back from Ford Motor Co and also get to speak to the service manager at the dealership, who seems rather elusive. I have also spoken to the CaMC legal dept.
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Thanks, EmilysDad. Your comments are what I was hoping to hear from someone. They are what I was thinking / hoping might be the case but at the back of my mind was, could the bit be thrown about in the sump and end up being jammed between the crank and the big ends of the con rods.
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