Air con problems

[Mark kiddie]

Hey all,

Just asking for advice/knowledge as to how air con service and regassing works as I have an ongoing issue with my car and now potentially the quality of work done from a dealer.

I'll try to keep it as simple as possible.

Back in July I took my car to halfords as the air con had stopped working. They completed an Air con service and regas.

Less than two weeks later, the air con stopped and so I took it back. They tried again and unfortunately it failed again within two weeks. They gave me a full refund and advised me to go back to ford for their specialists to look at it

I rang up Ford customer services and explained the story as I wasn't sure what I would need to book it in for and so they booked it in for their Air con service and regas.

In September it was taken in and regassed. No issues discovered other than their their only being 410g rather than the required 590 grams. Now I know the air con worked for a couple of weeks however we headed into winter where I no longer used it. A few weeks ago when we had a nice day in April I tried to use it but once again it no longer worked.

I rang Ford back up and explained the history of my car and the air con services and they wanted to investigate it at a cost of roughly 80 pounds (fortunately I was able to haggle this away as I was certain it was linked the the issues that I had already paid for them to identify)

During the investigation, they discovered 2 holes in the air con condenser? and said it needed to replaced for about 200 pound and then needed an aircon service and regassing for an additional 200 pound.

My concern is I feel confident that these holes (i don't know of what secerity) must have been present throughout all of this however Ford claim it would have been impossible for them to have missed the holes. I would also point out that between September and April, my car has only done 1500 miles.

Is this true or is it more complex than this?

I would really appreciate any help.

Cheers

Mark

 

[Mark kiddie]

Thanks for the replies.

So what you are saying is, that it is unlikely they could have missed it if they had used the special uv gas?

What certainty do I have this gas was used outside of their word?

It just feels like such a massive coincidence that it was losing gas at halfords. As I said, halfords had regassed the unit and then a few weeks later ford discovered that it had lost 190grams. This time it was empty at ford.

Mark

 

[Mark kiddie]

Thanks for all the replies coming in.

Its sad to hear that I'm not the only person to have experienced poor work at a garage. I'm no car expert and so do not feel comfortable doing any of this work myself, thats why Im prepared pay someone to do it for me... they supposedly know what they are doing.

I feel like this is going to be very much a my word against there's. I will fight this and escalate it as far as I can as it doesn't feel right to me that same issue strikes 3 times in a row and now they finally source an issue.

The problem is also that I can't trust halfords to replace my condenser unit based on their work with my car, and I would prefer this branch of ford not to do it as I'm not convinced of the quality of their work (wether I am right or it is just a horrible coincidence).

The paperwork ford gave me says they checked for leaks (im going to assume this means using the dye)

Is it wrong of me to think that they could have detected there was not enough gas, and just replaced it without actually checking it using the dye? I understand that in theory they should have checked properly for no leaks, but I'm sure we all know of people who like to save time by cutting a few corners.

 

[Mark kiddie]

Not on the paperwork that I have unfortunately. Perhaps they have more detailed readings on their system.

I would be curious to see what they have on the system from the first call when I told them about the halfords issues - probably doesn't even mention it to the technician.