Need advice of unresponsive Skoda Dealership after purchase

[K1W1]

I am referring to the specific Skoda dealership I bought the car from

In that case be more specific. Use the word dealership not the word Skoda as you are only causing confusion. The law is extremely pedantic and if you start confusing different parties it will only be to your disadvantage.

BTW there is only one Skoda dealership in Melbourne who stores their new cars on a rooftop. You have already identified the business to most people already even though you haven't named them.

[Guest001]

On looking at your dates and warranty limitation it appears to work out like this .
You say car showed registered as a Demo on 29/11/11

You bought it a month or so ago so that is approx 14 months since it was registered.

You got 1.8 years of original warranty which would mean they changed it to you 14 months after it was originally registered as sold
and fits in with the timeline. They do have a 3 year warranty I presume.

Did you get a copy of the original contract which magically disappeared and if so how does it differ in wording from the second one.

[dagget]

In that case be more specific. Use the word dealership not the word Skoda as you are only causing confusion. The law is extremely pedantic and if you start confusing different parties it will only be to your disadvantage.

BTW there is only one Skoda dealership in Melbourne who stores their new cars on a rooftop. You have already identified the business to most people already even though you haven't named them.

Good point, I was going to mention that as well, particularly as I am waiting for delivery of my car from said dealership and it does add an extra element of danger reading about this.

[brad]

The warranty situation is the bit that REALLY confuses me. The standard 3 year warranty should begin on the day the car is first registered - how can this be any earlier than the day you signed the contract if you're the first owner?

Warranty starts when the warranty is registered with Skoda & is independant of registration date. My warranty started 10 days before my reg date.

In this case the dealer registered the warranty when he registered the demo. It appears the dealer let the rego lapse & stored the car on the roof for a while.

Either way, the buyer appears to be getting done over. I would hope that for an 18 month old 118TSI wagon, he didn't pay more than $22kish as that's all it's worth.

Dear OP you keep referring to Skoda but I'm confused as to whether you mean the dealer or Skoda AUS. They are 2 different entities & should be referred to as such for clarity.

BTW: For the important correspondence, I'd send a hard copy letter via registered post. That scares the bejeesus out of people. It's too easy to claim that an email wasn't received. Any emails I'd follow up after 24 hours and get confirmation they had received them. I'd also ask for a back-up email address to send to just in case your emails are going into their spam folder.

[Guest001]

Warranty starts when the warranty is registered with Skoda & is independant of registration date. My warranty started 10 days before my reg date.

In this case the dealer registered the warranty when he registered the demo. It appears the dealer let the rego lapse & stored the car on the roof for a while.

Either way, the buyer appears to be getting done over. I would hope that for an 18 month old 118TSI wagon, he didn't pay more than $22kish as that's all it's worth.

Dear OP you keep referring to Skoda but I'm confused as to whether you mean the dealer or Skoda AUS. They are 2 different entities & should be referred to as such for clarity.

BTW: For the important correspondence, I'd send a hard copy letter via registered post. That scares the bejeesus out of people. It's too easy to claim that an email wasn't received. Any emails I'd follow up after 24 hours and get confirmation they had received them. I'd also ask for a back-up email address to send to just in case your emails are going into their spam folder.

Just enable receipts in Email and you get to see if they received it

[SnowMotion]

I can't talk about VIC Consumer affairs but I can give you some info on my experience on NSW consumer law.

I had a problem of a specific part ordered on a factory car not being supplied. After 7 months of back and forth with the dealer and eventually getting to a point of going no where I was forced to go down the path of speaking to consumer affairs.
I did try through all this time, speaking to VW as they were the company who did not supply the ordered part but really I found them to be quite pathetic at assisting with my problem. In terms of advising on a possible solution they were deliberately evasive at advising of possible solutions to get the part ordered fitted to the van. I found out more doing my own research on the net and talking to another dealership.

I first contacted NSW Fair Trading who basically spoke to the dealer, tried to encourage the dealer to resolve the problem but when they refused they could not help any further.

From here I had to lodge a complaint with CTTT (Consumer, Trade & Tennancy Tribunal). This involves registering my complaint and a small fee. A date is set to meet at the CTTT offices where the 2 parties involved are sent off to try to reach a solution, if no solution is reached a Mediator tries to help reach an agreement, if this can not occur you then go back in front of the Magistrate who will make a judgement based on law. Any judgement, be it agreed or by the Magistrate is then typed up and registered with a time frame to complete.

In our case we had a contract that specified the supply of an item that was not supplied. Legally very straight forward.

From what I have read of your problem it sounds like you have a fairly straight forward case.
You were sold a NEW vehicle that was not new and is problem for the dealer.

The thing I did learn in this process is that the inspection at the time of collecting a vehicle should never be rushed and if not satisfied do not accept delivery.

Good luck.

[omega31]

On looking at your dates and warranty limitation it appears to work out like this .
You say car showed registered as a Demo on 29/11/11

You bought it a month or so ago so that is approx 14 months since it was registered.

You got 1.8 years of original warranty which would mean they changed it to you 14 months after it was originally registered as sold
and fits in with the timeline. They do have a 3 year warranty I presume.

Did you get a copy of the original contract which magically disappeared and if so how does it differ in wording from the second one.

I came to the same conclusion and hope I can work everything out, and yes, it is the Skoda Dealership I bought the car from NOT Skoda , point taken.

To prevent any confusion I will use the term "Dealership" instead.

Yes, the contract is the same except they moved the tinted windows from manufacture genuine to Dealer fitted.

[omega31]

I can't talk about VIC Consumer affairs but I can give you some info on my experience on NSW consumer law.

I had a problem of a specific part ordered on a factory car not being supplied. After 7 months of back and forth with the dealer and eventually getting to a point of going no where I was forced to go down the path of speaking to consumer affairs.
I did try through all this time, speaking to VW as they were the company who did not supply the ordered part but really I found them to be quite pathetic at assisting with my problem. In terms of advising on a possible solution they were deliberately evasive at advising of possible solutions to get the part ordered fitted to the van. I found out more doing my own research on the net and talking to another dealership.

I first contacted NSW Fair Trading who basically spoke to the dealer, tried to encourage the dealer to resolve the problem but when they refused they could not help any further.

From here I had to lodge a complaint with CTTT (Consumer, Trade & Tennancy Tribunal). This involves registering my complaint and a small fee. A date is set to meet at the CTTT offices where the 2 parties involved are sent off to try to reach a solution, if no solution is reached a Mediator tries to help reach an agreement, if this can not occur you then go back in front of the Magistrate who will make a judgement based on law. Any judgement, be it agreed or by the Magistrate is then typed up and registered with a time frame to complete.

In our case we had a contract that specified the supply of an item that was not supplied. Legally very straight forward.

From what I have read of your problem it sounds like you have a fairly straight forward case.
You were sold a NEW vehicle that was not new and is problem for the dealer.

The thing I did learn in this process is that the inspection at the time of collecting a vehicle should never be rushed and if not satisfied do not accept delivery.

Good luck.

How long did the process take from lodging the complaint to reaching the Magistrate and getting the issue resolved ?

[roshea]

From here I had to lodge a complaint with CTTT (Consumer, Trade & Tennancy Tribunal). This involves registering my complaint and a small fee. A date is set to meet at the CTTT offices where the 2 parties involved are sent off to try to reach a solution, if no solution is reached a Mediator tries to help reach an agreement, if this can not occur you then go back in front of the Magistrate who will make a judgement based on law. Any judgement, be it agreed or by the Magistrate is then typed up and registered with a time frame to complete.

From that description, it sounds like VCAT would be the equivalent body here in VIC: Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal | Fair, efficient justice for*all Victorians. It's the one mentioned on the Consumer Affairs' "Resolving a Dispute" page.

[SnowMotion]

How long did the process take from lodging the complaint to reaching the Magistrate and getting the issue resolved ?

The process was quite fast. A hearing date is set within 6 weeks of the lodgement. At the hearing some sort of resolution will be made by either mutual agreement or by Magistrate ruling. The dealer was given 6 weeks to resolve the issue.

[brad]

Just enable receipts in Email and you get to see if they received it

In Outlook, it asks if you wish to send a receipt & you can choose to do so or not. I never allow a read receipt to be sent unless I'm feeling quite benevolent to the originator.

I'm pretty sure you can disable (the sending of the receipt) in most programs.

[woofy]

To Sum up, it looks like there was a mistake in wording on their contract, but from what you originally said and agreed with there was already 6mths of warranty used up, so it was always a demo model, whether it had been registered or not and it should have sold with Demo in the wording. Rego is a red herring, sometimes as people say dealers register them as a demonstrator but don't always register them. It looks like their offered extended warranty to make up for that, but charged you for the cost of selling a NEW car that was actually an aging demo.

Hail dents indicate a sloppy dealer. Who doesn't check their cars with a fine tooth comb knowing they store on the roof and there was a hail storm. Having said that my last car had a brand new door dent in the drivers door from someone opening a neighbouring door into it and had spiderwebs all over the front grill and had supposedly been detailed for delivery that day....

Car dealers in that vicinity must be a special bunch, I drove there with my young family in tow to see a new car that magically wasn't there anymore that was advertised on carsales...eventually a sales guy remembered it being sold earlier in the week, and yet the car was sitting there in the showroom, exact stock number and everything....but no that wasn't the car...lodged a complaint with them and carsales and their dealer principal...never heard back but learnt the important lesson.....don't buy from them.

[Guest001]

Car dealers in that vicinity must be a special bunch, I drove there with my young family in tow to see a new car that magically wasn't there anymore that was advertised on carsales...eventually a sales guy remembered it being sold earlier in the week, and yet the car was sitting there in the showroom, exact stock number and everything....but no that wasn't the car...lodged a complaint with them and carsales and their dealer principal...never heard back but learnt the important lesson.....don't buy from them.

In fairness the car on show could have been sold. When I first saw my Passat it was in the back garage and we rang next day to put the deposit on it and it had been moved into the showroom as it was the only one they had for a week or so.
When we arrived later in the day to pay, it did however have a Sold sign on it.
Have seen cars on Car sales a long time after they have been sold as I have taken the stock number and rung the dealer to be told "Sorry that was sold over a week ago" When pointing out it was still on Carsales was told " We only update that very so often" Not often enough was my reply.

[woofy]

In fairness the car on show could have been sold. When I first saw my Passat it was in the back garage and we rang next day to put the deposit on it and it had been moved into the showroom as it was the only one they had for a week or so.
When we arrived later in the day to pay, it did however have a Sold sign on it.
Have seen cars on Car sales a long time after they have been sold as I have taken the stock number and rung the dealer to be told "Sorry that was sold over a week ago" When pointing out it was still on Carsales was told " We only update that very so often" Not often enough was my reply.

I rang that day before going across town to check it was still there, they were emphatically saying yep still for sale, and when we got there saw it in the same place as the pic. The guy then told me that's not the same car...sat and thought about why it wasn't there....to come back 2min later and then "remember" he sold it nearly a week back. The car on the floor was the same car, and hadn't been sold as he tried to sell it to me for the full retail. That same guy had to think long and hard about anything to do with the car on carsales, the truth is easy, having to come up with a lie takes time. He told me 3 versions before finally saying he "remembers" selling it now...It was the most expensive car that car brand sells, I would imagine if it were me, I could remember selling something like that a few days earlier.

[omega31]

The process was quite fast. A hearing date is set within 6 weeks of the lodgement. At the hearing some sort of resolution will be made by either mutual agreement or by Magistrate ruling. The dealer was given 6 weeks to resolve the issue.

Thank you.

A small update:
Today I received a letter from Skoda with the extended road side assistance so I assume I got an Extended warranty, but still don't know what it covers but now I have it until the 18/11/2016 = 3.8 years...

Is this the best warranty available ? I read allot about Alianz and other companies not sure what they provided.

In addition SKODA Customer service left my wife a message and asked her to call them back. tried to call them back with no answer so will follow up tomorrow.

The dealership emailed me a one liner informing me my issue has been transferred to the MD and he should be in touch with me in days to come.