Seat Provides Poor Customer Support
Friday, 19. August 2011
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Let’s say that you’re a farmer and the road from the main road to your farm was laid with uneven railroad sleepers. That might be useful for ensuring your farm vehicles don’t get bogged down but it doesn’t do your family car any good when driven over this unusual uneven surface. So if your car develops an irritating squeak when it’s driven over the sleepers you can hardly blame the manufacturer for the irritation. The car was built for the road, unlike a 4WD which is meant to drive over rough terrain and for which you could rightly complain.
But if your family car started to squeak every time you drove over traffic calming humps in the road, also known as sleeping policemen, you should expect the supplying dealer to fix the fault.
And if the manufacturer finds this fault to be common on many of a particular model and announces a ‘fix’ then you should expect the problem to be resolved once the ‘fix’ has been installed, wouldn’t you? Well not according to Seat when exactly this was experienced by drivers of the Ibiza Bocanegra.
It happens when driving the model with the DSG twin clutch gearbox and after Sam Leslie of Wigan had the fix carried out and the problem still existed he was told by the dealer that it was a characteristic of the gearbox.
Whilst Seat have gone to great lengths to explain the characteristics of the gearbox and how it works it doesn’t solve the problem which is the result of the idle gear clusters knocking together. Do you know what?
If I was the owner of one of these cars I wouldn’t give a sh*t about how the problem occurred or whatever reasons are given as an explanation, my retort would be fix the bloody problem or take the car back as it clearly isn’t fit for purpose.
Road humps existed before the car was designed and manufactures and as a part of our road system you should be able to drive over them without the gearbox sounding as though it’s about to fall apart.
Unfortunately, as is sometimes the case, Auto Express who reported this problem fell short on the advice by suggesting that buyers thoroughly test the car if fitted with the DSG box before buying, something that actually you can’t do when you buy a new car.
My advice is kick the car back and get your money back. Would you buy a TV that occasionally made an irritating buzzing noise whenever you turned to channel 4? What’s the difference? By Graham Hill
