Is the LED display covered in my peugeot warrenty?

Question

I took my peugeot 206 into the garage after booking an appointment to have my LED display that tells me the time and radio station looked at as it was dimming. I asked upon booking if the warrenty would cover it and they said yes. I just got a bill for £84 for fitting 3 bulbs in 40 mins am I right to complain?

Thanks

Answer 1

It is a little bit of a grey area. If you have a problem with the LED display the first thing you would check would be the bulbs!  Bulbs are'consumables' and not covered under warranty so what ever way you can be charged for the bulbs and the fitting cost for them.

now the £40 for wiring check is something else entirely. You could well say why was this needed when the bulbs were to blame. BUT it is unusual for the LED bulbs to be going so soon and the garage have therefore checked the wiring to ensure there was not a wiring fault which would cause the same thing to happen again. Now here is one of those situations where a garage is in a no win position! If they had not checked the wiring, and the new bulbs went down in a short time due to a wiring fault you would probably be asking why did the garage not check the wiring the first time around. £40 is probably your main dealers hourly rate, or even less, so you are looking at up to 1 hour max to check the wiring out which is not actually out of the ball park - it is not just a case of glancing at the wire next to the bulbs and saying that is OK!  On balance, i think that they were probably acting in your best interests in looking for 'cause'.

If you do not want bill's like this, when you check a car in, give the garage specific instructions of what you want done and emphasise that you will not pay for any other work unless they check with you first.

Incidentally this is a job you could have done quite easily yourself - a Haynes manual is an investment for any motorist. I did this same job on my 406 recently in about 20 minutes for just the bulb cost (i have a Haynes manual).

  

Answer 2

Yes, you are. A faulty display would be warranty, but faulty bulbs are up to you.

You can refuse to pay if they didn't confirm the work required & cost before doing it though.

Answer 3

OK this is a simple example of a verbal quote not being adhered to, you need to contact your local trading standards. Tell them what had happened and hopefully they will be able to help you get some of your money back.

The warranty would cover the cost of replacing the clock if it was defective, in your case the clock was not defective. However before the garage started to do the work it should have been very easy to confirm that the bulbs had blown. Having said that even when they had confirmed that the bulbs had blown they should have given you a full brake down of the repair cost.

Another issue worth thinking about is, the normal life expectancy of a interior bulb is several hundred hours. Why would three bulb blow at the same time? There may be an argument that this work should have been covered by warranty as its not normal for three bulbs to blow at the same time.

Ja.