Toldeo heating problem & "oh what a drama"

the bert

Active Member
Nov 28, 2015
21
1
Just felt it worth a share....

At the start of November my hot air climate control just stopped with the hot air.
Seat Toledo SE 1.4 TSi DSG - 25 months old and 13300 miles.
Owner fault report to dealer:

AC on clod “LO” blowing fine at 3.4 degrees and the penguin is happy. Any other temp setting delivers the ambient outside temp on AC or non AC. Only issue of late has been flat battery as parking lights overnight wiped it out – is this normal for overnight on parking lights? Needed a jump lead start.

So car into my local dealer (no name as not sure on rules as this will not look good for them)
Agreed fault on the Saturday and asked for it to come in for repair on the following Tuesday, requested auto courtesy car.

No car but VAG warranty sorted a hire car for me, Golf DSG, 4500 miles and an utter shed. (this later died the following day to be replaced with a Passat DGS all good). Over the next three weeks the dealer gave the following progress reports…

Parts on order, parts on back order, parts not available and unknown available date, have to take entire dash off, not sure which parts are needed so might order all of them, cant order them all as warranty says no, have to take part dash off, have not started as nowhere to put the dash safely (so empty boot and seats down not enough then?), parts now on back order again, some parts here but need new climate control front panel control. Twice told the work has started and we checked at night and the car was parked at the rear no sign of any work. Are we being mugged of here?? The best one was – Your car can not be repaired, maybe and exchange, ergo px for a new car from them.

Seat cust care made several calls and not a single one returned and even after two weeks no engineers report.

All the time VAG are chasing return of the hire car.

Day 18 - I lost patience and demanded a face to face with Aftersales Manager who after an onslaught of questions finally admitted, nothing had arrived, some parts are on order and might be here next week and will see if we have staff as we are short three technicians and are behind. He also sated there was zero info on how to carry out this repair. ENOUGH!!!

Seat customer care escalated to senior manager who agreed to have the car moved from my local dealer to Lancaster Seat Milton Keynes where we have our sales contact. Friday 20th Nov car moved to MK. Monday 23rd work started from scratch with same fault info as supplied to pervious dealer. Three hours later phone rings, YOUR CAR IS READY! Really… prey tell??
Various faults re TEMP FLAP MOTOR – radio out, control unit out, glove box out, BINGO… seems a rod had become detached from the temp flap motor.

Remedy – reprogrammed temp flap motor, reattached rod and new clip, everything works. Test, test and tested, all ok.

What had happened – the flat battery had caused the memory for the temp flap motor to clear so when I requested temp “HI” it had rotated beyond its limit and “ping”.
This is a very unusual fault indeed. So unusual they are sending a bulletin out re the fault, testing and the correction procedure.

Needless to say my eternal thanks to Lancaster Seat MK and that I will be avoiding my local dealer like the proverbial plague. Don’t ask for much but can’t be doing with outright BS and nonsense from a dealer.

ps: Passat was an interesting car, amazed at the range on motorway but a bit of a whale to throw around town and to get out of once parked.
 

camelspyyder

2 SEAT-er
Jun 26, 2014
1,305
175
Nice of you not to name and shame your dealer.

Other SEAT driver's in the South and East might like to know who to avoid though.
 

the bert

Active Member
Nov 28, 2015
21
1
Thanks for that. Still feel awkward as dealer did do a decent turn around on my 10K service but needless to say I will never be returning to somewhere for which I have zero confidence. I'm sure Spire Watford do a very good as standard service regime but not for this call sign ever again. Its a real shame as the whole saga could have been avoided, I'm just big on peopel being straight and honest.
 
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