The last straw

Monday 15 January 2007
Spoke to Mike at Fife Mitsubishi again. He was quite helpful and arranged for someone to come and pick up the Grandis and take it to Fife Mitsubishi for full assessment and repair. I explained how fed up we were that the problem had still not been resolved (6 months after having bought the car) and that we really needed to get it sorted out once and for all. Once again I said that I thought that both rear seats would have to be replaced.

I also explained that we bought a 7-seater car for a reason and that we really need a 7-seater courtesy car as we are involved in school runs with up to 5 children and this repair could take several days. Mike said they'd come and collect car on Thursday (18 January) at about 9.30am and leave us a 7-seater Ford Galaxy courtesy car.

Thursday 18 January 2007
This was a very snowy day and Mike called to say he thought we should rearrange the collection of the car for next Tuesday (23 January). This seemed sensible as the weather conditions were pretty poor.

Tuesday 23 January 2007
Instead of coming at 9.30am with a 7-seater courtesy car the Fife Mitsubishi mechanic turned up at 11am with a 5-seater, just as I was about to leave on a school run to pick up 4 children! I couldn't rearrange the school run at such short notice so we said he couldn't take the car that day.

Mike from Fife Mitsubishi phoned after I got back from my school run and said he had spoken to Alan Walker and they had decided that they would not come and pick up the car again. If we wanted the repairs done we would have to bring the car to them.

I just felt this was unreasonable and went back on the arrangement made previously with Mike. Alan Walker did not appreciate that the problems we were having were things that should have been rectified before the car was sold to us. We had been sold a car that did not do what it was advertised to do. Fife Mitsubishi had had plenty of opportunity to repair the seats but instead we were having to spend money to take the car to the garage again, with no apology and certainly no offer of compensation.

To summarise, we have a car in which we cannot fold away the rear seats because the head rests have been forced and jammed into place - a supposed repair to fix the fact that when we bought the car the head rests would not go into the seats!

I'll finish here with three Mitsubishi quotes:

Of course, in addition to buying a vehicle which should provide you with many years of trouble-free motoring, you are also buying from a company which is totally committed to providing the best possible customer service…

Mitsubishi website

I've got more important things to worry about than your car

Source: Alan Walker, Fife Mitsubishi

That's what you have to expect when you buy a second-hand car

Source: Alan Walker, Fife Mitsubishi