FIAT Ulysse - Warranty Expired 10 Days Ago

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Mon 29 Jul 2013 21:51
FIAT Ulysse - Warranty Expired 10 Days Ago - coys66

Hi,

I paid £3700 for a Fiat Ulysse on April 19th from a dealer. The auto gearbox has been slipping for awhile now and my garage booked it in for an oil change which they did today. However things haven't improved and I'vee been told by my garage that the auto gearbox is knackered and will cost £1700 to replace. My 3 month warranty expired 10 days ago.

I spoke to the dealer and he's basically said bad luck. He said I should have taken an extended warranty for peace of mind.

So basically am I out of luck by just 10 days?

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Mon 29 Jul 2013 22:14
FIAT Ulysse - Warranty Expired 10 Days Ago - 72 dudes

No, regardless of your warranty, you are covered by the Sale of Goods Act (SOGA) which says that any purchase should be of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose.

The dealer has an obligation to repair the fault at his expense, unless he can prove that the fault was NOT there at the time of purchase.

If he refuses, then your only recourse would be the Small Claims Court to commence proceedings against him. This will cost c £300, but if you win, you would get the costs back.

A word of caution though: You say "the auto gearbox has been slipping for a while now..."

You really should have acted sooner and reported the fault to the selling dealer. This may well count against you.

Nevertheless, you should write to the selling dealer, explaining what your garage has diagnosed. If they are prepared to write a report for you, this will help. State that under SOGA, he has an obligation to repair the gearbox, unless he can prove that the fault was not there at the time of sale. I'm not a legal expert, but SOGA normally allows that a fault which manifests within 6 months was there at time of sale.

If the dealer ignores you or refuses, get legal advice (CAB or Trading Standards) and start the legal proceedings in the Small Claims Court.

Good luck and come back and tell us what happens.

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Tue 30 Jul 2013 08:22
FIAT Ulysse - Warranty Expired 10 Days Ago - Dwight Van Driver

Also upheld by the Supreme Court of UK

Clegg v Olle Anderson (Trading as Nordic Marine) 2003

Where a fault was present at the date of sale the ruling compels the vendor to take the goods back and refund the purchaser's money even after attempts to recfify the fault.

dvd

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Tue 30 Jul 2013 14:55
FIAT Ulysse - Warranty Expired 10 Days Ago - TeeCee

All well and good, except for:

>> my garage booked it in for an oil change which they did today.

IIRC, once you've allowed someone else to have a go at fixing it, rather than going back to the supplying dealer, it all gets a bit tricky.

Anyhow, if it's slipping then changing the fluid would do no more than disguise it for a bit and was never going to be a fix. It's possible that fluids and filter might do the trick[1], as if the fluid's that thoroughly gone the filter will be shot too.. However, it's more likely that the clutch banners are past their best and only a rebuild is going to sort that.

[1] Although I'd be unsurprised to find that this is one of those daft designs where the filter cannot be accessed externally. If it's also "sealed for life" (i.e. no fluid changes on the service schedule), the filter will be utterly shot and the banners knackered.

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Tue 30 Jul 2013 20:55
FIAT Ulysse - Warranty Expired 10 Days Ago - vmturbo

I don't think ten days should scupper the guarantee provided that you had let the garage know that something wasn't right.

An accountant that I know slightly had a big Mercedes diesel bought new and with a two year guarantee. The engine started to run badly before the two years was up but the dealers fiddling about failed to detect the problem. After the guarantee had expired it was discovered that the engine had developed bent con-rods. The "Oh have you driven through a flood" routine was tried but it cut no ice and eventually Mercedes supplied a replacement engine which normally costs about £8000!

One of those engines used to be a lemon and was nicknamed "The rod bender and head buster". I suspect that the cure was to fit much stronger con-rods to cope with the overboring and turbo-charginq that these models had. Whatever was done to fix the problem is of course a Trade Secret but not much imagination is needed to deduce what had to be done.

Please Google to see whether your gearbox problem is common with the Ulysse and take it from there.

Trading Standards, Sale of Goods Act and Lemon Laws may apply. Good luck!

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Wed 31 Jul 2013 19:21
FIAT Ulysse - Warranty Expired 10 Days Ago - pd

Something does not add up here. Why, in the name of all that is whatsit, did you not take a car with a slipping auto gearbox back BEFORE the warranty ran out? Why did you continue driving it like this when you apparently had a warranty in place?!

I never understand why people with a faulty car go to someone other than where they bought it from as a first course of action. If you buy a TV from Currys and it goes wrong do you send it to Amazon or take it back to Currys?

By letting someone else play around with it the selling dealer will have more of a hand and you less. Furthermore the court will be puzzled why, if it developed the fault soon after sale, you waited for over 3 months to do anything about it and question whether you are being upfront.

You may well have a case, it isn't a dirt cheap car and whilst most faults after 3 months are generally difficult to claim for unless the car has done loads of miles a failed gearbox is quite a significant failure. You have made it difficult though and if the dealer will not do anything you will need to go to court armed with a full engineers report as to what is wrong with the car and a good explanation as to why you didn't give the selling dealer the opportunity to fix it first and when you first noticed a problem.

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Thu 1 Aug 2013 21:32
FIAT Ulysse - Warranty Expired 10 Days Ago - coys66

I tried to contact the dealer but he's moved from the premises I bought the car from. It's an empty lot now. The dealer is also 1 hour from where i live, I work 6 days a week. 6 weeks after getting the car the fan belt snapped. I paid out £50 to have it towed and another £350 to have a refurbished alternator fitted due to damage caused by the fan belt snapping. I let that go as it's not that big a deal.Who knows i may have had a case for that.

But the car has been running like a dog for a few weeks now and getting worse. I'm not a mechanic and hate cars with a passion. I'd no idea it was a gearbox problem to begin with. It has steadily got worse and then I contacted a Fiat specialist recommended on a forum.

And they are in the same town. He tells me it's the gearbox oil that needs changing and is the likely cause. When they took the oil out there was less than 1 litre and it was a thick black gunge. There should be 8 litres of oil apparently. He reckons it hasn't been changed for years despite the 'full service history' documentation.

Then he tells me that the previous owner took it to him because the cam belt had snapped and the engine was knackered. He told them it wasn't worth doing. So he was surprised to see that someone had spent a lot of money getting it back on the road (my dealer).

I had read warnings about cam belts in these models and the first thing I asked the dealer was - has the cam belt been changed recently. He says yes of course. What he didn't tell me it had been changed because it had snapped already!!

So for £3700 I've bought a car with an engine rebuild (probably bodged), spent £400 on a fan belt failure and now have a bill for £1700 for a new gear box. All in the space of just over 3 months.

Oh don't worry, we'll go down the legal route if we have to.

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Thu 1 Aug 2013 23:54
FIAT Ulysse - Warranty Expired 10 Days Ago - lordwoody

HJ's summary of the Fiat Ulysse....

" Some have led a hard life. Can suffer mechanical problems."

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Fri 2 Aug 2013 11:03
FIAT Ulysse - Warranty Expired 10 Days Ago - pd

Sounds a bit of an ordeal.

Unfortunately I don't think the fact that the dealer is an hour away will have any bearing - you should have gone to them first. As for not being able to find them, if you can find them to take them to court, you could have found them to make a warranty claim. This will be the arguments which will come back from the dealer if it goes to court.

That said, you probably have got a case on the gearbox although where the heck 7 litres of fluid went without being noticed goodness knows. You should have a driveway covered with the stuff! There must be a major leak somwhere.

I'd take some proper legal advice from someone who knows their stuff and take it from there.

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