Rejectting/ accept a reject/refund?

2158 Views 15 Replies 9 Participants Last post by Dogger, Jan 16, 2002

cmt

Discussion Starter · Jan 10, 2002

I'm trying to reject my MINI due to it pulling left despite being KDS'd and spending 3 days at the service dept. last week. (This is still to be agreed by MINI/BMW). Would you try for a refund or go for a replacement bearing in mind they say they won't give me full purchase value of the car due to milage etc... and there is still a chance that the replacement car could have the same fault and maybe the others that have already been fixed on the car I have. Good news though. They are openly admitting that there is a known fault and that 'a large number' of cars will be recalled to have it fixed in March. I don't want to keep the car til march as I don't know how much damage could have been done to the chassis, suspension, steering, tyres etc etc in the 6000 miles that my car has covered with this fault. Also, the question I shouldn't really ask, just what do you replace a MINI Cooper with???

P.S. if anybody wants to buy a Chili Cooper (with TLC) for £13000 and save me all this bother let me know

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Dogger

· #2 · Jan 10, 2002

cmt said:
I'm trying to reject my MINI due to it pulling left despite being KDS'd ..... and there is still a chance that the replacement car could have the same fault and maybe the others that have already been fixed on the car I have.

Sorry to hear you've had all this grief Colin - I'm a borderline rejection case myself, but is it really possible that the chasis or anything else on the car could have been affected by a left pull? I'm sure mine is one of the 'afflicted' cars and even after the current fix/KDS it still pulls more than I'd like, but having said that it still drives better than any loan car I've had..

Any mechanically minded people out there who know what the long term affects of an OTT drift can be on the car? (and please Mr.Bill, if you respond to this, try to lay off the doom and gloom!

)

cmt

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jan 10, 2002

Thanks Dogger. I'm not sure if it could have affected the chassis, but i'm pretty sure it could have affected the tyres and possibly the power steering. Who knows? I'm sure BMW/MINI wouldn't tell us if it had... Customer Services and the dealer do seem remarkably in favour of me rejecting it, strange, they didn't even suggets that I wait until March

BrianMini

· #4 · Jan 10, 2002

cmt said:
I'm trying to reject my MINI due to it pulling left despite being KDS'd and spending 3 days at the service dept. last week. (This is still to be agreed by MINI/BMW). Would you try for a refund or go for a replacement bearing in mind they say they won't give me full purchase value of the car due to milage etc... and there is still a chance that the replacement car could have the same fault and maybe the others that have already been fixed on the car I have. Good news though. They are openly admitting that there is a known fault and that 'a large number' of cars will be recalled to have it fixed in March. I don't want to keep the car til march as I don't know how much damage could have been done to the chassis, suspension, steering, tyres etc etc in the 6000 miles that my car has covered with this fault. Also, the question I shouldn't really ask, just what do you replace a MINI Cooper with???

P.S. if anybody wants to buy a Chili Cooper (with TLC) for £13000 and save me all this bother let me know

Unless you reject a car straight away, you often find that it is near impossible to reject a car you have done any major distance in. Best advice i can think off is contact Autoexpress! My mate did that and he got his car sorted (eventually), but the garage refused to let him reject the car, as he'd already covered over 5,000 miles. He had a garage courtesy car for a couple of months, while the company tried to prove there was nowt wrong with the car etc etc!

Apial

· #5 · Jan 10, 2002

cmt,

If you go for a replacement are they going to give you any compensation? I'm sure the dealer would love to sell your car, at a profit, to some other un-suspecting punter.

My replacement car is better than the first. This latest ONE at least manages to keep the coolant inside the cooling system. However it, and another ONE that we have bought for our business, both pull to the left. We do still like the MINI enough to have bought the second MINI though. If you can put up with the wait until March then I would keep what you have got and get some compensation, provided that the faults so far are not going to cause consequential damage that will either be a safety issue or only appear after the warranty runs out. If you plan to keep the car longer than 3 years, why not ask for extra warranty cover? That is something that will be worth more to you and little to them.

Sorry I can't suggest much as a replacement. If I was buying as a non-company purchase I wouldn't mind a Fiat Coupe 20v Turbo LE though. 0-60 in 6.5s and top speed 155+mph. Designed by Chris Bangle who now works for BMW ie new 7 series. Running costs though will be much higher!

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cmt

Discussion Starter · #6 · Jan 10, 2002

no such luck...

oh well, just as i thought it could be getting better... the guy who has to test drive the cars to approve a rejection only visits 'once every couple of months' and they don't have a date for his next visit (surprise, surprise). More realistically I think I'm going to be waiting for the recall in March (If they think mine is one of 'the affected') The MINI service engineer who drove mine last week apparently didn't think mine was 'any worse than any other MINI they've driven', nice. Time for a call to customer service, if that reaps nothing, which is likely, expect to see a MINI in autotrader some time soon.
Yours,
Another digruntled MINI customer.

Dogger

· #7 · Jan 10, 2002

Re: no such luck...

cmt said:
oh well, just as i thought it could be getting better... the guy who has to test drive the cars to approve a rejection only visits 'once every couple of months' and they don't have a date for his next visit (surprise, surprise).

Sounds like a stalliing tactic on belhalf of the dealers if you ask me Colin. It'll no doubt go down in some sales stats chart somewhere as to the number of cars sold/returned and they probably don't want to look bad in BMW's eyes. By the time their part-time rejection guy appears you'll have covered too many miles for them to be obliged to take it back. That said, there have been a couple of people on here who've returned their cars and been given a demonstrator to drive while they're next MINI arrives. It all depends whether or not you'd trust the build quality of the next car?

madcaser

· #8 · Jan 10, 2002

my car is lefty type car

hi yes i got a mini that drifts left only done 240 miles but bmw cant fit it in till next thursday and want it for the afternoon and will not have a loan car for me

And they dont think that there is a problem with it ?
so are they stalling me so i cant return my car ?
i told them that i want to reject it and they said its not as easy as that .
What do i have to do to reject my car .
its already been in for a dodgy handbrake it rolled down a hill and hit another car ouch i now have to pay the other guy £350 for a new bumper stupid hyundai thing my car was ok thank god.

M

· #9 · Jan 10, 2002

A dealer needs to be given a fair chance to repair the car before you can reject it. Don't ask me to define fair chance I don't know. I seem to remember that the dealer can't ask for a rejection until there have been three seperate faults, but that may only be applicable to the engine. If you've kept it too long to reject you can always ask for a buy back. I've never heard of a man who comes round testing the cars for rejection, they normally go back to distribution, a man does go round to check warranty claims though so maybe there is a modicum of truth in what the dealer is saying.

blade929

· #10 · Jan 10, 2002

Have too many been rejected ???

Just a thought.

Having read posts earlier and indeed having our car rejected and a new one ordered. Could it now be that somebody at BMW has said 'sorry too many rejects, we now need to stall them'.

I must say that our rejection was 'relatively' simple. We had no huge problems with the car, just the similar faults as seen on MINI2. I kept polite, put everything in writing, did not threaten media action, and got what I consider to be excellent service. Even got a free CD Boost and Alarm fitted by way of compensation.

As for an official 'reject person', that just sounds like rubbish. My dealer sorted by talking to Customer services.

cmt

Discussion Starter · #11 · Jan 11, 2002

we continue...

I wasn't happy about a possible wait of 2 months before this could go any further so I told them so. The dealer I am with is part of a larger group so I think the visiting person could be one of the head people, this would make sense. Anyway, I managed to get the service manager to go out for a drive in my CAR

last night (the sales manager seems to think he may be able to advise the main guy) and he admitted that mine 'did pull left' and was 'one of the worse ones' hopefully I should know more today. They are being extremely helpful so far, lets hope it continues.

Varse

· #12 · Jan 11, 2002

I rejected my Cooper after 4000 miles and about 3 months due to multiple minor problems and then the 'magic' doors and windows.
I just put it all in writing and that was that.

Already had a CD multichanger as good will but also when I ordered my replacement yesterday they threw in the TLC for free and I have a Cooper to use until mine arrives in 2 months time.

Someone is trying to put you off rejecting the car. They can't give you less than the full cost of the car, although they don't have to give you a replacement just a refund if they choose.

Moley

· #13 · Jan 14, 2002

REJECTIONS

I have rejected my Cooper this morning and Im ready for a "fight" with the dealers, so far I have been a paragon of patience .However my 56 day old car has been recovered twice and is still in dealers-15 days and counting. A Golf GT TDi looks more tempting day by day

cmt

Discussion Starter · #14 · Jan 15, 2002

I won't know any more on my rejection until the 30th (when the 'main man' comes round) hopefully all will go well, everybody seems quite agreeable so far. I have however just spoken to MINI customer services with regards to wether I should put my complaint in writing. They advised me I should, 'just to be on the safe side' So I'm off to do that now.

cmt

Discussion Starter · #15 · Jan 16, 2002

it gets you down...

Isn't it amazing how something like this can really get you down when it starts nagging at the back of your mind? Last night I wrote The Letter. Writing down all the faults that I've had on my car (which is incidentally the most expensive car I've ever bought) really put into perspective how much of a problem it has been. That in mind, I've decided to reject the car under the Sales of Goods Act even if the pull isn't deemed to be strong enough. I'm leaving work early today to hand the letter in person to the Sales Manager and try and get some sort of closure on this. If I need to seek legal advice/take legal action so be it, I've had enough of this niggling me and I think I have a case. More later for those of you that are interested, if you're not, don't read this thread (that seems to be being said on here a lot recently?). And thanks to all the other users on here who've posted their stories of rejecting faulty cars, it's really pushing me on. Thanks MINI2. This thread may seem a little self indulgent, but there are people on here who I know are interested and sending this out into the ether is a little like sharing a problem, and that helps.

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Dogger

· #16 · Jan 16, 2002

Re: it gets you down...

cmt said:
Isn't it amazing how something like this can really get you down when it starts nagging at the back of your mind?

I'm sorry to see that it's got to this stage Colin - I take it you're getting another MINI though?

I was considering rejecting my car at one stage (and still might if it does the 'Christine' trick on me). But the nagging doubt at the back of my mind is the memory of the loan cars I had to suffer each time mine has been in for repair. I won't labour the point as it's been said by others in the past too, but I can't think of any other car I'd rather be driving and unless someone can prove that driving with an 'extra' drift is damaging the car then I'll grin and bear it for now.

Hope your rejection is as painless as possible.

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