Mapfre warranty issues

LacticAthlete

Bought a 142 Skoda Rapid last Aug.

After nine months of having the car we have had to bring it to Mapfre on three separate occasions.


An issue with the condenser for the Air Conditioning, a problem with the water pump and finally an unexplained loss of power/turbo issues.


The car has actually been off the road for 5 weeks now due to incredible incompetency on the part of Mapfre and as of yet un-diagnosed issue.

Just to give you a timeline of this problem:

Fri Night:
A piece of metal bracket is spinning around while connected to the engine making noise. Recovery arrives and removes bracket and noise is no longer present but there is low power in the car.

Monday 30th of April to Fri 4th of May
Mapfre contacted For this week,diagnostics take place in garage near where it broke down and it is eventually decided that there may be an issue with Turbo, Turbo is then removed and sent for analysis the following Tuesday. During this i mentioned about the bracket and was told that it hadn't featured in their diagnostics.


Tuesday 8th of May- Fri 11th of May
Continued back and forth with possible repair and replacement of Turbo.


Monday 14th to Fri 18th of May
Continued attempts to replace the Turbo and work out why the power output hasn't gone up.


21st to the 25th of May
On the 23rd of May the car is then moved to Skoda dealership


28th to the 1st of June
On the 30th of May Skoda are contacted and they explain that the car is now working but they dont have any idea of how it is working again. He mentioned there being a problem with the ECU and issues with the Lambda sensors. Essentially they seemed to plug out and plug back in the Lambda sensors and that has the car working again. Even though they have no idea how this has worked.


When I spoke to Skoda i mentioned at the end of the conversation about the bracket mentioned at the start of this post and they replied that they had never heard about it and that the first garage had never mentioned it.

Mapfre happy to hand back the car as it is working again but Im obviously freaking out that its a temporary fix and will revert back to not working just as easily.

Already booked driving holiday to spain and will be out of pocket big time if car goes tits up.

Any ideas on what to do with Mapfre?
Any ideas on what the hell is going with the car?

Toyotafanboi

To be fair, you've two seperate issues here.

It sounds like your initial mechanic was/ is incompetent, not Mapfre, they are just an insurance company, they aren't working on the car. The turbo is either faulty or it isn't. I'd highly doubt the turbo was even removed and send for "inspection" if I'm honest. Then when your mechanic ended up in over his head or going round in circles he referred it to Skoda.

That and Mapfre are ****e anyway, they aren't really too interested in you. They are mainly a get out of jail free card for independent dealers without workshops, their whole objective, like any insurance company is to avoid payouts.

The whole bracket thing is a bit odd, in fact everything you've said sounds a bit odd. At the same time, if it looks, swims and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. If Skoda have given it a once over and there's no fault codes and it's driving fine, it probably is fine.

I'd just take it back and put as much mileage on it as I could as quickly as you can. One of two things will happen from there. Either nothing will happen and the car will continue to be fine and every mile you put on it will be a mile more confident in your own head that the issue is gone, or, the driving will provoke a re-occurance of the fault and hopefully this time it'll fail worse and therefore be easier to diagnose.

If it breaks down on your driving holiday, that's be **** but you can't do much but take the chance. Have you been servicing it with Skoda? I think you get European breakdown cover with their services, or you may have it as part of your insurance? You may never need it anyway.

LacticAthlete

Toyotafanboi wrote: »

To be fair, you've two seperate issues here.

It sounds like your initial mechanic was/ is incompetent, not Mapfre, they are just an insurance company, they aren't working on the car. The turbo is either faulty or it isn't. I'd highly doubt the turbo was even removed and send for "inspection" if I'm honest. Then when your mechanic ended up in over his head or going round in circles he referred it to Skoda.

That and Mapfre are ****e anyway, they aren't really too interested in you. They are mainly a get out of jail free card for independent dealers without workshops, their whole objective, like any insurance company is to avoid payouts.

The whole bracket thing is a bit odd, in fact everything you've said sounds a bit odd. At the same time, if it looks, swims and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. If Skoda have given it a once over and there's no fault codes and it's driving fine, it probably is fine.

I'd just take it back and put as much mileage on it as I could as quickly as you can. One of two things will happen from there. Either nothing will happen and the car will continue to be fine and every mile you put on it will be a mile more confident in your own head that the issue is gone, or, the driving will provoke a re-occurance of the fault and hopefully this time it'll fail worse and therefore be easier to diagnose.

If it breaks down on your driving holiday, that's be **** but you can't do much but take the chance. Have you been servicing it with Skoda? I think you get European breakdown cover with their services, or you may have it as part of your insurance? You may never need it anyway.

Yeah i appreciate that Mapfre are not directly incompetent but they recommended it stay at the garage it was recovered and he turned out to be in over his head.

Yeah i know that from chatting to them, they just want it sorted and for me to go away at this stage but just upset at a 5 week delay and it just starts working again with no explaination. Yeah i know what you mean, it mostly likely is absolutely fine but just the fear of going down the rabbit hole with a car out of warranty. Yeah ill be probably driving over 2000km of trips in the next month outside of regular driving so it will surely crop up!

Been serviced with Mapfre approved dealers the last year. not all were Skoda. I have european breakdown with the Mapfre warranty so hopefully wont have to use it.

Cheers for the reply, actually made a lot of sense to a frazzled mind!

Cee-Jay-Cee

Where is the bracket that was removed (and obviously never replaced)? If you have it then take it to a skoda garage and ask them to identify it. I would hate to think something was missing from my car, it wasn't put on there for aesthetic purposes, it has some function which obviously now cannot happen. If you don't have the bracket then is it possible to identify where exactly it was removed from? It'll either be bracing something or an actuator arm of some sort. I wouldn't let it lie until its been resolved and I certainly would not be heading off on a European trip in that car till its been resolved.