My girlfriend bought an X reg 1.2 Clio MTV about 6 weeks ago, 16k miles on the clock, prestine condition, good price, from a dealer so 1 yr warranty and breakdown cover.

After a week the service light comes on with the airbag icon. Takes it in to dealer and they reset it saying nothing wrong. Comes on again randomly over next week or so.

Service book (with stamps etc) was supposed to be forwarded to us as they didnt have it to hand at the time. 6 weeks down the line still no sign of it. Dealer says its in the post and a stupid book listing service schedules arrives - no stamps etc.

Now the drivers window mechanism has broken leaving the window permanently down as the motor has gone. Takes it to dealer who charges £31 labour to look at it and put it up (disabling it so it wont go down again). Wants another £160 for motor but cant do it for at least a week. Apparently this part of the electrics isnt covered in the warranty - we will soon see about that mate.

To top it off the dealer (not the one she bought it from) doing the window work said it needs servicing at 18k. The car was supposed to be serviced before we took delivery of the car. We cant prove this as we dont yet have the service book.

No calls ever returned and she is getting upset and quite rightly so. Ive never rated French cars and Ive now read all the gripes on here which seem all too common.

Anyone got names and numbers of people up the Renault management chain as I have a feeling we will be needing to speak to them rather soon?

Thanks,
Simon.

 

Sounds about the usual level of service you can expect from Renault Garages. Used two near me in Surrey (one of which recently had a fire, disgruntled customer hopefully!) and both of them were fine until you have a problem and then they didn't want to know. They just fob you off and lie to you until they wear you down and you just give up.

From bitter experience I would never buy a car unless I had the log book and service history in front of me to check. If they can't find it and offer to forward it on to you then it means something isn't right.

 

Can you not give the thing back, as it's been sold to you with FSH which I'm guessing it probably doesn't have?

 

Yes I know that in hindsight, but it was from a dealer so stupidly we thought it would be ok. Rest assured we wont be buying another.

Youve described them to a t. Nice as pie and real friendly whilst your buying. Promise you the world but as soon as the money has been handed over they dont care. The guy is still nice on the phone but even said he had posted some docs himself but they never arrived. He then changed his story to say the guy who was sending it was useless and had been sacked.

Simon.

 

Sods law its at a real bad time. We move to Basingstoke (from Cambridge) next week and my girlfriend doesnt have a job yet. She needs a car to get around and sort a job out. I need my car as I have to come back here for 3 days to work (my job is moving location). So we really cant be doing without a car at the moment

Simon.

 

Ahh Renault customer service strikes again then !!

My Clio 172 has to go back again as it has developed some new faults and the exiting ones still have not been fixed.

1. Rear suspension clonking - will be 3rd time it goes in for this. Last time they swapped a shock and said its all fixed and it wasnt, it was clear they didnt road test it.

2. Headlamp washers leaking water down bumper and has stained it. Will be 5th attempt at getting it right.

3. "Volume down" switch on remote control for stereo is broken and stuck on, so that you cant turn the radio up over 0. Great for long motorway runs.

I will never choose a Renault again after this car.

Dave

 

Simon

Sorry to hear this.

My advice is get them to fix it, then sell it asap.
We just got rid of my otherhalves Clio ('02 plate) which was a nightmare from new.

I can honestly say that we tried three different Renault dealers and none of them were any good (Croydon , Aldershot and Guildford).

All the best in getting it sorted.

Alex

[Edited by DrEvil - 10/17/2003 3:07:41 PM]

 

Same thing happened to our 03 Clio Dynamique, Yesterday....

Found this on cliosport.net

http://forum.cliosport.net/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=2&TopicID=53112& SearchPagePosition=1&search=airbag&searchMode=allw ords&searchIn=Topic&forum=0&searchSort=dateDESC&Re turnPage=Search.

Hope this is not going to happen every 3000 miles......

Gavin

 

I'm starting to think from these stories that french cars are just a load of crap........

 

.. shouldn't that be merde ?

 

Been into Inchcape's in Southampton this morning to get the Airbag problem fixed. They can't reset it, it needs a new airbag computer,

........but its all OK as they reckon this is a safety feature.

Lets hope I don't need the Airbags in the meantime

Gavin