CCJ against dealer for poor service.
 

Some of you may remember last year I posted about Scoobyclinic having found a standard fuel pump in my supposedly PPP’d 03STi when I went for a remap. In addition I had further issues with the dealer that did this regarding failure to adjust the Throttle Position Sensor (TPS) when he fitted the PPP and failure to set the alignment to the Prodrive settings after fitting Prodrive springs.

I was pretty mad about the fuel pump and so I wrote an itemised letter to the dealer showing the cost of correcting all these errors and suggesting that they reimburse me for work paid for but not done. Apart from an immediate acknowledgement of this letter I was stonewalled. After 3 weeks I sent another letter threatening a Small Claim in the County Court if they failed to reply to the substance of my claim. They continued to stonewall me so I went ahead with a claim for £370 plus £50 court fee.

The result of this was that I received a complete denial from the dealer’s solicitors with the interesting by-line that the dealer had mounted a separate action against Subaru (UK) for supplying the wrong pump in case they lost against me.

Case was heard yesterday. I’d done quite a bit of preparation for this and had loads of evidence all lined up and represented myself. Just before the case the dealer’s solicitor approached me and told me that Subaru (UK) had conceded that they had supplied the wrong pump so the main part of the claim was settled before we went in. Had a slightly nerve racking half hour but in the end the Judge found in my favour on all counts and ordered the dealer to pay me £420 within 14 days.

Nearly laughed when the solicitor asked me substantiate the expert status of Mike Wood as I used information he helped me with to support the TPS issue. While on the TPS issue it is easy for this to be missed on PDI on new cars and is why Prodrive instruct dealers to recheck this when fitting PPPs. This dealer missed it twice, once when new at the PDI and then again when the PPP was fitted. How many more cars (both std and PPP) are there out there with this wrongly set? On the standard fuel pump Mike assured me that it would just about be OK on the PPP but Prodrive call for the higher capacity for safety. If you intend to remap a PPP’d car then a fuel pump check is essential.

Many thanks to Scoobyclinic and Mike Wood for their invaluable help with supporting information.

Its easy to get carried away with this sort of thing so I add a warning “Beware of fighting with monsters lest ye become one yourself”.

The dealer is Jordans of Hull.

Cheers, Diccy.

Awesome!! Its really good to see that the big cat got beat at their own game.

Most people would have lay down and rolled over. Rather than going through the effort of CCJ. Hopefully more people will take this attitude and consumers will get what they pay for.
I'm guessing it wasnt about the money but more about principles

Great outcome :luxhello:

Fantastic, one the guy in the street:thumb:

Well done mate :luxhello: :luxhello: :luxhello: .

Well done :D

justice working for the common man:eek: wonders will never cease

well done:notworthy

another dealershp on the black list .........well done mate !

Its so good to hear a David and Galieth story for once, instead of the small guy being p*ssed all over like what normally happens!!
Well done for taking on the big guys and winning....

....the BIGGER they are the HARDER they fall!!

Lets hope not too many people experience the same hassle as you have!

Well done for sticking to your guns!!

From my experience the amount of effort you put in must have been massive.

Thats great news m8 :thumb:

I'm glad to hear that you won. Was it worth all your efforts though? £420 is £420 I suppose however it isn't really a lot of money these days :wonder: I'm not trolling I'm just interested to hear if you think it was worth all the hassle in the end.

TX.

I've had to do the same thing in the past. Its worth it. Twice I have had to go to small claims court. Once for a lot more than this post, once for a lot less.

Instead of trying to go to sleep at night getting annoyed with some twunk who was able to treat you however they wanted and get away with it....you can now just lie their with a smile on your face.

Not only did they get it wrong, they tried to get away with it and failed. The fact that you have a judgement that you can tell people about is really satisfying.

Hi mate and very well done for sorting out the dealers, I'm sure it is worth it.

Just out of curiosity are there any checks one can do themselves to ensure they have the right fuel pump and TPS sensor correctly adjusted etc....?

I have a MY05 WRX STI PPP, just bought it 3 weeks ago, I have the PPP certificate and also have rang up Prodrive who have confirmed the the PPP installation was done by the dealers where I bought my car from. Which is all well and good.

I just wanted to know if there are any personal checks one can do to confirm the right fuel pump has been installed or does this have to be carried out by a qualified person, i.e. someone like Scooby Clinic or Powerstation etc....?

I mean the car feels super quick and goes really well, just wanted that extra piece of mind.

Thanks.

TX, hear what you're saying. Just before I went in to the hearing I was wishing I hadn't started it (nerves). No £420 isn't a lot but I didn't see why the dealer should be allow to keep it by just ignoring me. Truth is that when Scoobyclinic discovered the standard pump I was mad and then I got ignored...a bit like drinking out of a spittoon, once you've started you can't stop.

If these dealers knew they'd get this treatment every time they screwed up perhaps they'd start providing a better service.

jubhi,

The only way to see if its the right pump is to take it out the tank, messy job best left to others. Prodrive pump has a black rubber sleeve and ground off markings, Standard pump is a bare bronze ish colour and marked UNISEA JECS .. (sort of Japanese unipart).

TPS needs Subaru computer access to the ECU. Someone who knows what they're doing can do this quickly. If it was my car I'd have both checked for peace of mind.

Cheers, Diccy.

Excellent result :)

I can't believe how stupid some of these dealers are, actually appointing a solicitor will have cost them more than your original claim so why not just pay out when they realised you wouldn't just go away.

Well done for taking it all the way.

Chris

Well done!

I hate companies not accepting responsibility for their work/actions in cases like this. The majority of us would complain but but end up just taking it up the a$$ because of the whole time/cost/hassle of pursuing it. I'm gald you didn't let it lie and took them on and won! I wonder if it will make any difference to the dealers attitude or work ethics? Still great to hear of Joe Public getting some satisfaction once in a while, nice one bud :thumb:

Good news and obviously bet really glad of the help from Scooby clinic and Mike Wood :D

Tony

Well done.

And well done to Mike and Scoobyclinic for helping-out, I'm sure a lot of other garages/specialists would have tried to get-out of it.

Brilliant :)

Firstly congratulations on your victory over the giant.
Secondly whats the TPS all about?
Had my sti ppp'd last year and was told that the fuel pump would sound different when priming up on the turn of the ignition key, which it did :) .
Nik.

As abobve :thumb: and :wonder: .

Nik,
If pump sounds different then it was probably changed OK.
Nik/Bob,
TPS is throttle position scaling. ECU needs to know actual throttle position to judge load and set fuelling/ignition/boost accordingly. This is important because if as in my case it was left at 91% at WOT then the ECU will reduce fuel and advance ignition and risk det. The dealer is supposed to check this on new cars at PDI and if this is done there's no prob when fitting PPP. Prodrive instruct dealers to check this as they are cr*p at doing this right the first time. Mike Wood says they do this as most are found OK at 100% on new cars so they don't bother checking any more. My dealer couldn't be bothered to check at the second opportunity either. This info from Mike made the dealers case look very poor in front of the Judge (cheers Mike, I owe you a beer). Cheap to get checked by a specialist, mine cost £35 and I'm getting that back as part of my claim. I recommend everybody gets this checked as it makes a difference how the car runs.
Hope this makes sense, Cheers, Diccy.
Bob if you're running 340 then you must have been to a decent mapper who will have checked this as part of setting up.

nice one

Would the TPS issue be a cause of all these hesitation threads we see? I know that cars i've had before with TPS issues have led to a slight judder at a certain rpm, not much, a flicker but a problem easily fixed!

5t.

Thats great news mate, glad to see you had the balls to take it all the way:thumb:

Thats a good read there mate, nice to know that an average joe can take down the big cats.

No offence with the average joe, just a term for everyone vs the stealers,

Well done mate :thumb:

Does this mean the dealer has a proper CCJ go against them? will it show on their credit rating? :)

Simon

Only if they refuse to pay!

Which they clearly haven't

5t, Car certainly ran better for having TPS set properly. I wonder if some people who have PPP performance issues on the rollers are suffering from this.

Simon, This isn't a credit issue (yet). Court gave Jordans 14 days to pay. I havn't got the money yet and if they choose not to pay then the drill is that I go back to Court and get an enforcement order (at their expense). If they continue to refuse then the Court will send in the baliffs. Personally I'd love this to happen so I can go and watch.