Thread: Am I unreasonable ?

There is so much here that rings bells with me, including stuff about stupid LRO's who keep buying the things even when they get crap service.

1) D1 TD300. Threw timing belt 2 weeks out of original pathetic warranty. Engine totally destroyed, first LRA denied warrantly and said bad luck, also denied that it was the result of a known problem. Fortunately my brother was friends with a LR front desk guy who told me that it was a known problem and there was even a fix kit made for it. LR never recalled the vehicles or told customers they just told the techs to look for timing belt shavings in the oil and if they found them to install the fix kit. When I went back to LRA with this info they finally admitted a problem and agreed to fix under warranty. I then found out they were reparing the motor not replacing it which considering the damage I was shocked at, I took this up with them but they refused to replace it, I then asked for an extended warranty on the motor which they refused but by calling them every five minutes for two days I eventually wore them down and got them to agree to it.

2) D2TD5 ES. 2 weeks after taking delivery I found a pool of oil on the driveway, and after sepending an hour under my 20 year old jag looking for the leak, I eventually looked under the Disco and found the front diff ****ing out oil. Dealer looked at it and came back and said, its not warranty it is insurance, I looked at him incredulously and he looked me in the eye and said in an accusing tone "you have had this offroad" to which I replied "have you seen your ads?" he took me out the the vehicle and pointed out a tiny chip of paint missing from the weld around the diff cover plate and he proudly said you have hit something to which I replied loudly "bulls***" and demanded he pull the diff apart with me standing there watching. when it was pulled apart he had to admit that it was a broken locator pin which was a warranty issue. Everything went wrong with that car including a roof leak (no sunroof) that tokk about 6 visits to the dealer, 2 new windsreens, welding painting, 2 new headliners etc to fix. The final insult was when I went in after 15 thousand k's and only 2 thousand k's after a service to get my squealing brakes checked out to be told that I was up for 4+ grand for new pads and discs when I squealed I was told this was normal for a "high performance car". I squealed a lot more until they gave me "trade price" of $2k which I still regarded as unreasonable after 15 thou.

I took a break for a while and had a Pajero, and BMW but I now have a 6 month old D3, (god knows why I went back again) but so far knock on wood it has been almost perfect and I love it, 1 recall for brake issues but this was efficiently handled by the dealer, going in this week for its first proper service so fingers crossed all is ok.