What are the chances? Getting a dealer to admit fault

stoofa

stoofa

stoofa

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Just leaving my mums house on Saturday evening and I managed to get a puncture.
A major one I fear - front drivers side went from fully inflated to totally flat in seconds.
Now I've only just come out of hospital and so I'm afraid I called for the aid of the recovery people - may sound pathetic but I was in for some serious bits & pieces.

Anyway, I digress.
Recovery man comes out, loosens off the 3 standard bolts, takes one look at the locking wheel nut and tells me that is more or less rounded off.
Takes a look at the locking wheel nut "key" and says that looks broken to me.
He thinks somebody has used a good old machine to tighten up the locking wheel nut, gone too far and rounded off the nut and broken some of the parts of the key.

As I'm stuck on the side of the road he offers to try and remove the locking wheel nut using some "tricks of the trade" which he says have worked in the past.
Basically we both want me back on the road ASAP and if it means me having to buy a new wheel nut next week then so be it.
Long story slightly shorter - his attempts fail, we cannot remove the wheel and I end up being recovered back to the local main dealership.

The reason for that destination is that two weeks ago my car went in for a service. While in it also had new pads fitted to the front of the car.
The main dealership were the last people to remove and replace my front wheels so it can only possibly be someone there who did the damage to the locking wheel nut and key and then literally just put the broken key back in my glove compartment knowing full well that I was never going to inspect a locking wheel nut after getting my car back!

Tomorrow morning I shall be contacting the dealership and explaining why my car is there and my keys were posted through their letterbox.
When I subsequently go to collect my car I shall be speaking to the service manager about this whole sorry situation.
What do you guys honestly think my chances are of them admitting fault or just simply not charging me for the removal of the now quite badly destroyed locking wheel nut on my car?
 
Old post Resurrection warning!

In case anyone was even the slightest bit interested.
I contacted the dealership on the morning after that horrible weekend, gave them the brief of what had happened and set them lose.
I went back to collect the car to get a bill of £100 for labour to remove the rounded off nut and the puncture repair.
Also I would need a new locking wheel key for the other 3 locking nuts remaining - on order, £40.

As there was only one poor girl on hand when I went to collect the car I decided to write to the dealership manager.
I wrote him a calm, two page epic explaining everything and how I had no proof of anyone to blame but all fingers pointed at the dealership being at fault etc.

One day later I get a letter back.
They are sorry.
They cannot tell if the locking wheel nut was at fault or if it was rounded due to somebody attempting to remove the wheel.
They are going to let me have the new locking wheel key for free and also a brand new set of locking nuts (I've declined this as I've lost faith in the Peugeot part).
So instead they will supply the required standard bolts and when I go in to collect the new key (as they take around 2 weeks to get them) I will have the £100 refunded back onto my credit card.

As you can imagine I'm extremely happy and I must just say that Marshall Peugeot here in Cambridge have always been great in the past from the day I bought my car and this has just been the "cherry on the cake" so to speak.
 
Excellent result mate. Just goes to show its better to be calm in situations like that, i bet if you had gone in raising your voice etc you would have got nowhere.
 
We are currently have a whole spate of locking keys rounding off just from the force of the torque wrench I firmly believe that the 'pin' type simply arent upto repeated use air gun usage or not.
 
When i had locking wheel nuts, all the tyre places i went to knew not to use the gun on locking wheel nuts

they just cant take it. They allways did the normal nuts with hte gun, the switched to the spider brace to do the locking nuts.

Sounds like the trainee has had a bash, and just boshed them on and broke it. Being new, darent own to up anybody so has just stuck the key back in the car and hoped nobody would know.
 
Those airguns are deadly in the wrong hands. I remember using one when I worked at a garage in my summer holidays to put a wheel back on a Spitfire.........and cross threaded all 4 wheel nuts until they simply span around. It took one of the mechanics about 3 hours to fix the problem. I was put onto car cleaning after that!

DOH!
 
stoofa said:
As you can imagine I'm extremely happy and I must just say that Marshall Peugeot here in Cambridge have always been great in the past from the day I bought my car and this has just been the "cherry on the cake" so to speak.
Click to expand...

They are ****. I used to work for them and get decent discount and still wont take my car there. One of my collegues when I worked there checked his oil after his car had been serviced. It was full. When he demanded to see the service manager, the service manager bought the mechanic out.

He asked the mechanic, a young guy how he serviced the oil and the mechanic said he filled it until he couldn't get anymore in.

Another collegue took their Ford galaxy to the ford section and they sheared off one of his wheel nuts with a gun. They then proceeded to tell him that having one broken was acceptable as you was allowed one in three.

Having worked there for 17 years I can reel of story of woe after story of woe from workmates who have had poor experiences with the whole of the franchises down newmarket road.

We where once asked by the company director why more people's cars in the car park where not bought and serviced from the company they worked for. He didn't know what hit him.
 
dannyjo22 said:
They are ****. I used to work for them and get decent discount and still wont take my car there. One of my collegues when I worked there checked his oil after his car had been serviced. It was full. When he demanded to see the service manager, the service manager bought the mechanic out.

He asked the mechanic, a young guy how he serviced the oil and the mechanic said he filled it until he couldn't get anymore in.

Another collegue took their Ford galaxy to the ford section and they sheared off one of his wheel nuts with a gun. They then proceeded to tell him that having one broken was acceptable as you was allowed one in three.

Having worked there for 17 years I can reel of story of woe after story of woe from workmates who have had poor experiences with the whole of the franchises down newmarket road.

We where once asked by the company director why more people's cars in the car park where not bought and serviced from the company they worked for. He didn't know what hit him.
Click to expand...

I was possibly a little mis-leading in my post.
It is actually Marshall Peugeot Huntingdon and not Cambridge - I forgot that they now have a Peugeot area (I think) down "Marshall Road" in Cambridge.

The incident with the locking wheel nuts is the first problem I've had with them in the 4 years I've been using them.
My couple of product recalls went without a hitch and I've always taken it back for services so I've got a complete set of Peugeot stamps (well need them if I want to retain any value on the car - or so I'm told by the French haters :) )
I have heard things about Marshall in general - however not having been a customer of them in any other capacity I can't really comment.

As somebody above said, I am 99% sure that a trainee rounded the nut off and broke the key and being worried just put the key back in my car - what would be the chances of me getting a puncture...
Anyway, just goes to show that the polite and calm approach works - if it hadn't then my next letter may have been slightly stronger.
 
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