[Lurker101]

The Dacia warranty says, with respect to anti-corrosion:
"The customer must present the Owner’s Handbook with the Service records duly documented (validation of the anti-corrosion check coupons) to justify entitlement to the warranty.
The application of the Anti-Corrosion Warranty depends on the anti-corrosion inspections carried out on the bodywork, subframe and underbody.
The inspections must be carried out at the mileages stated on the Warranty & Service Sheet and at least once every two years. The periodic services within the Dacia Network include these inspections."

A fully stamped book book from your local garage should be sufficient but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Dacia argue about it.

I forgot to add this yesterday, Dacia rejected the warranty claim due to the car not having a dealer service history, you have to have all servicing done through the dealer network to keep your corrosion warranty valid though, from our own experience, Dacia recovered the same car within 3 year general warranty period and repaired a fault without question.

Have the laws changed re warranties ? I thought as long as you had any servicing done at a VAT registered garage and any parts used were OEM then your warranty was unaffected ?
I say this because some years ago my son bought a 2ltr Hyundai Coupe from a non franchised garage, anyhoo the auto box packed in, did a bit of research and found out the gearboxes on these cars had manufacturing faults, we contacted Hyundai GB and they said to take it to our local dealer who fitted a new box, on completion the Manager told me we were lucky to have it done as the last oil change it had, they had used a non OEM oil filter and that would have negated our claim even though it was not connected to the gearbox fault.

I think it's done to make as much money out of their cars and their owners as possible and to give them enough wriggle room to get out of honouring warranties. We've been told they wont repair the car under warranty due to not using the dealer network for servicing. It's all done to generate money, from our own experiences and as an example, some dealers quoted us £80 to re-set something as simple as an oil service light (which also doubles as a warning light, telling you to drive to the dealer as soon as it's illuminated)

Digressing a bit ,

there are three possible arguments why DACIA might reject the claim. :

the car has not been serviced by Dacia
the problem has not previously been recorded during a service
the problem has been caused by a paintwork quality problem and this expires after two years.

The strongest route for a claim would be in my opinion, risk the cost of making a legal claim in a small claims court.
Even the possibility of this might persuade Dacia to be generous. and offer a partial contribution.

Personally I suspect that the car can never be refinished to the standard that you would expect. Even if you got a partial contribution it would not be much - they would take into account your 4 years use of the car and the value of this in any offer.

I would look to part exchanging the car especially if you can get what you paid 4 years ago.

Ambvol

Dacia did reject the claim due to the car not being serviced by the dealer network, the person we spoke to at the repair centre advised us to contact Dacia customer services to see if they would help or offer up some good will but advised us against putting any money into the car ourselves due to the likelihood of the same rust coming back or new rust developing due to paint issues.

I doubt we'll go down the court route, it's not worth the hassle for a repair (at best) on a problem car that won't last.

Exchanging the car is very much a possibility once we've exhausted all options with Dacia, at worst we would probably get £1K less than what we paid for the car in 2018

 

[tubaman]

The lack of main dealer servicing in itself is not a valid reason for them to reject a warranty claim - https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/new-car-warranty-servicing/
I would be pushing them for a written response as to why they believe they can reject it on that basis.

 

[Lurker101]

The lack of main dealer servicing in itself is not a valid reason for them to reject a warranty claim - https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/new-car-warranty-servicing/
I would be pushing them for a written response as to why they believe they can reject it on that basis.

I'm just going by what we've been told by the repair centre, from what we've read ourselves online plus other peoples experiences dealing with Dacia and Renault. It seems they will refuse any and all corrosion warranty claims if you've had your car serviced outside of the dealer network and the corrosion checks have not been carried out by them. I'm not sure how thorough these checks actually are but I very much doubt our problem would be spotted in dull workshop environment which makes it even more annoying. I'm just hoping they take pity on us due to the extent of the problem with rust beginning to manifest itself in multiple places throughout the car body. From prior experience, Dacia Customer Services don't respond to signed-for letters so we've emailed them asking them to reconsider their decision, if not a contribution towards repair cost and as you suggested, a detailed explanation as to why a corrosion warranty should be dependant on the vehicles service history, we've also attached 30+ pictures showing the extent of the problem. I'm not hold out much hope though.

 

[Lurker101]

Just to update this, 20ish hours after e-mailing Dacia directly asking them to reconsider their warranty refusal and sending them a folder full of rust pictures we had a call from an "Executive Agent" this morning (unsure whether this is a posh name for customer services rep or someone higher up in management) Sounds somewhat promising, they said the car being serviced outside of the dealer network should have no bearing on the corrosion warranty and asked us what we wanted, hinting at Dacia making a contribution towards repairs though we said we wanted the car repaired fully under the warranty we paid for when we bought the car new. They're going to investigate and get back to us later on in the week but get this, they actually said this looks like it could well be a manufacturing defect.

 

[ambvol]

sounds like it's good news. however

although I doubt that it will be cost effective to have the car brought back to a new standard. they are likely to offer an assessed value of the value of the car in its condition and what you might expect to pay for a similar age car in good condition. Whatever this difference is the assessor could then argue that you have had 4 years use out of the car and reduce the sum . This might be a settlement that they are prepared to pay

It is the same argument principle that could be used if a new car is finally rejected at the end of the legal time in the consumer protection legislation, eg if a new car is rejected because the garage has been unable to fix the fault to buyer satisfaction and seeks his money back. I suspect the buyer would find that if the return is accepted he would not get his full costs back. To start with it could be argued by the garage that the customer had 6 months use of a car and in effect this equivalent a car hire cost of £ XX pounds.

Alternatively they may offer to have the car resprayed ,possibly free of charge or offer a contribution towards this respray.
Yes I think you said that this might be too costly and in any case you would still have lost confidence in the finish ( I would too) .

Sorry this is not much help but at least you seem to have Dacia s acceptance now of a manufacturing fault.

Ambvol

 

[Lurker101]

sounds like it's good news. however

although I doubt that it will be cost effective to have the car brought back to a new standard. they are likely to offer an assessed value of the value of the car in its condition and what you might expect to pay for a similar age car in good condition. Whatever this difference is the assessor could then argue that you have had 4 years use out of the car and reduce the sum . This might be a settlement that they are prepared to pay

It is the same argument principle that could be used if a new car is finally rejected at the end of the legal time in the consumer protection legislation, eg if a new car is rejected because the garage has been unable to fix the fault to buyer satisfaction and seeks his money back. I suspect the buyer would find that if the return is accepted he would not get his full costs back. To start with it could be argued by the garage that the customer had 6 months use of a car and in effect this equivalent a car hire cost of £ XX pounds.

Alternatively they may offer to have the car resprayed ,possibly free of charge or offer a contribution towards this respray.
Yes I think you said that this might be too costly and in any case you would still have lost confidence in the finish ( I would too) .

Sorry this is not much help but at least you seem to have Dacia s acceptance now of a manufacturing fault.

Ambvol

I'm not expecting miracles here but if it came to replacing the car with something like for like, age and millage it would cost us around the £9K mark retail (we paid £8.3K new in 2018) and it's slim pickings when it comes to finding a low millage example with the TCe engine, the only cheap example anywhere near us under £7K is a damaged repaired CAT S right-off.

I think we'll be lucky to get anything out of them personally, but, if they were to give us options we'd probably push for it's trade in value which they could likely still make money off going by the Duster thread (selling rejected rusty cars for top dollar without doing anything to them) and a modest discount on a brand new replacement with us making up the difference. I know this is highly unlikely, I still expect nothing to come of this in the end and for them to hide behind their warranty terms and conditions. Regardless, it's doubtful we'd keep the car anyway what ever happens to it, as you say we've lost confidence in it and have basically been told by a body shop used by Renault to get rid of it ASAP.

Still waiting on them getting back to use regarding their "investigations" - the repair centre is on a go slow apparently, they did call us back when promised though, so far they've been pretty good. Before they offer anything I suspect they'll want the car properly looked at, the assessment at the repair centre was a brief affair.

 

[ambvol]

THis is a real cliff hanger.story.

Ambvol