You clearly don't live here. The nearest motorway to me is in Kent and is an hour round trip and there are no dual carriageways within 40 minutes of me!

the m23 is in West Sussex!

Thank you for this. I have driven a diesel for the last 7 years and this was the first time I had come across the DPF. When I went to a local garage they could smell the smell and told me to speak to Toyota asap as they didn't know what it was.

There are 9 counties actually that do not have motorways in the UK! I do leave the county but I don't have the time to drive a two hour round trip to get onto a motorway every week!!!! The drive alone there is not enough to get the desired effect. I feel that if by not being able to get the regeneration to activate properly it is acceptable to bring fumes into the car to endanger my children then Toyota have some responsibility to advise me of that!

The car is a 64 plate and I bought it in February 2016. It was an ex demo car and so was only doing short journeys for them. It had 2000 miles on the clock when I bought it and now has 13000.

I just find it bizarre that initially denied any knowledge of a telephone call from him explaining his situation and asking for help and only supplied the 'hand written notes' once we supplied telephone records showing the date he called and the length of the call. is it all just a waste of time? Even if we do the SAR where will that leave us? One week after charges he had £2.00 in his account after he got paid. He had to find his travelling money to get to work and so was immediately back in the red again accruing more charges. I completely understand that the debt was his fault prior to the date he contacted them but afterwards for at least another 6 months he was in the same situation even though he'd asked them for help.

Well of course this will depend on whether or not there is a recording. And my understanding was that a bank is not supposed to perpetuate a cycle of debt especially when the person has raised the fact that the charges were pushing them into an overdraft that the bank would not authorise to limit the amount of charges. Since becoming aware of the problem I have tried to educate my son and offer advice and support about managing his finances which was why we started by approaching the bank directly for help in the first place. We raised the issue of the amount of charges only after they refused to help him get out of debt. I will try the subject access request as you suggest Thank you. We will look at this I was wondering if we would have a case to take to the Independent Assessor

Fair enough but the fumes entering the car can surely not be right and this is one of the issues that Toyota will not acknowledge.

I did look into petrol versus diesel and at the time I did not see anything that suggested a problem with the diesel. I did not know what a DPF was and it wasn't until after I had the problems that I searched about DPF and found the issues that arise with it. I had a diesel before and that did not have one so I had no idea that this new technology had come about or the implications of it. I did discuss with the salesman the way in which the car would be used and I understand that some manufacturers issue specific information regarding the upkeep of it. Toyota admit in their letter to me that during the sales process it is prudent for discussions to take place in relation to customer preferences in order to ensure that the right model is purchased to meet their day to day requirements.

Thank you for you reply. It smells acrid and yes it does have a smell of burning rubber. I live in East Sussex, the one county in the country that has no motorways. I feel that the ins and outs of the DPF, should have been explained to me at the point of sale and it was never mentioned. I would never have bought the car had it been explained to me as I am not in a position to ensure the DPF operates correctly. I have only been aware of the DPF since this all started. Why is the smell entering the car and are the fumes damaging to me and my children's health?

Hi, my 19 year old son who has recently been diagnosed with depression got himself into a muddle with his banking due to inexperience and the ease of contactless payments. He was paying charges of £80 per month for the majority of a year and was unable to get himself out of the financial mess he had got himself in. Once I became aware I advised him to speak to the bank HSBC and ask them to give him an authorised overdraft so he could limit his charges and get himself out if the situation he found himself in. He contacted HSBC and as he failed a credit score (no surprise there, he has never had credit) they refused to give him an authorised overdraft. He buried his head the sand a little longer and then finally took my advice to contact the Financial Ombudsman. HSBC initially denied to the FOS that he had made a call to them explaining his financial situation and asking for help but after we supplied a telephone bill detailing the date and the fact that he was on the phone for in excess of an hour they agreed that he had made contact. The FOS requested the conversation. However HSBC did not submit a recording of the phone call they supplied hand written notes. These notes failed to mention that he was experiencing financial hardship. Therefore the FOS said that he had no case. He stressed that he did state this in the phone call but the FOS decided that as it was not mentioned in the notes submitted by HSBC then that was the end of the matter. My son has paid in excess of £800 in charges on a paultry income and it feels that he has no redress against HSBC. Can they not be forced to submit the original recording?

Please help! I have no idea where else to turn. On 29th February 2016 I bought a Toyota Verso Excel D4D from Motorline Toyota. Since taking ownership of the car on the 10th March 2016 I have had a problem with a recurrent smell inside the car. Initially I believed this to be as a result of me following other vehicles that were emitting an acrid smell. It happened regularly enough that it became a talking point in the car with my two older children who were then aged three and four. The smell often occurred on the school run which is approximately 4 miles from home. Initially I noticed the smell occurred approximately once a month then on the 5th August 2016 whilst filling up my car with diesel at a petrol station, smoke appeared inside the car via the vent in the centre console. At the time my two sons and my baby daughter aged four months were inside the vehicle. Having paid for my diesel and returned to my car my eldest children asked me why smoke was coming inside the car. I immediately telephoned Motorline and told them about the problem and received a curt response which was that I had AA cover and I should call them. I was informed that they would decide if the car needed to be returned to them. I contacted the AA who came and inspected the car and diagnosed that the oil filler cap could not be tightened sufficiently enough without it popping off. He advised me to contact Motorline and inform them. This I did and I was again surprised by their initial response. I was informed that they were unable to supply me with a new oil filler cap as they were having a problem with their suppliers. I replied that that was unacceptable as I could not be in a situation whereby my three children were in a car with smoke entering the inside. I was then advised that if I were to bring the car into the garage they would attempt to locate an oil filler cap that would fit from another car. This I did, a forty mile round trip. However they did manage to source an oil cap that fitted. I decided that the smell that I had noticed in the car must have been the result of the faulty oil cap and felt assured that now that the problem had been identified and rectified it would no longer be a problem. However it did reoccur and I called the AA again on the 2nd September. They reported that they could find no reason for the smell and reassured me that everything appeared to be fine. The smell continued to occur approximately every three weeks and after yet another occurrence I called the AA out again on the 23rd December. Once again no obvious fault was identified and I was advised to contact Motorline Ashford. In November I had received notification from Toyota that there was a safety recall on my car relating to the Throttle Body. I decided that I would contact Motorline in the New Year to arrange for the recall repairs to be carried out and to discuss the issues regarding the smell. In the meantime, on an occasion when the smell occurred, I drove straight to a local garage to ask their opinion. They advised me that in there opinion the smell was not right and they advised me to contact Motorline . I took the car to Motorline for the initial inspection on the 18th January 2017. I was advised that they would look into the car but they mentioned it may be due to the DPF. I had now noticed that the smell was occurring approximately every two weeks. When I returned to collect my car I was advised that they had been unable to replicate the smell and so there was nothing that they could do. I explained that that was not acceptable and became emotional. I asked for advice as to what they thought I should do as when I stopped the car the smell would go. As far as I could see the only way I could get them to smell the smell would be to drive the 30 minutes from home to Ashford with at least two of my three children, if not all of them, being subjected to the awful fumes which I was concerned were harmful. I asked what they would advise I do in the event of the smell occurring again given that I did not feel it was appropriate to subject my children to the fumes in order to drive the car to Ashford. I asked if there was a garage local to me that they would not be happy for me to go to for them to give an initial assessment. She just repeated that the problem would have to be replicated whilst with them. Following this event I decided to call Toyota Customer Relations. I rang them and relayed the problems I was having. I was informed that a case manager would be in contact with me within a few days. I never did receive a call from a case manager. I did however receive a call from the After Sales Manager. He agreed that they would use the car in a manner similar to myself in the hope that the smell would be generated. I agreed with this plan. My car was collected on the 3rd February by Mark. The After Sales Manager rang me later that day and asked me if I knew how many miles I had done since I last noticed the smell as he was able to tell when the car had last gone through a cycle and how many miles I had driven since. He believed the smell was to do with the regeneration system. Given when the smell had last occurred and how many miles I had done since I concurred with this. My car was returned to me on the 6th February. He told me that the smell was due to the regeneration system but assured me that the fumes were not coming into the car. I asked how I was smelling them if they were not entering the car. He said that the system was close to where I sit in the car and that was why I may be able to smell it. He explained that the regeneration system was designed to flood the engine with additional fuel and burn it off at a high temperature before dumping the fumes out of the car via the exhaust. He also explained that if the car had not completed a cycle it would emit a smell once stopped. He said that a regeneration cycle should occur on longer journeys and he felt that the problem may be because I was doing shorter journeys as I had been on maternity leave and doing more local journeys. He felt that this may also be the reason why I was smelling it more often. I explained that that did not make sense as I had recently driven a 30 minute drive and that the smell had occurred when I parked up at my destination. It was explained to me that as well as a longer journey other things had to be happening in the engine such as it getting to a particular temperature etc. to ensure a successful regeneration. I asked that if I needed to do longer journeys for the regeneration system to work properly then I should have been informed of this when I bought the car as, knowing I was due to start Maternity Leave, I knew that I would not be doing long journeys. I suggested that the car may therefore have been mis-sold to me. He advised me that the regenerations system had now been reset to the factory settings (I believe he said that this was every 2000 litres of fuel). I asked what advice Toyota gave to their customers about the regeneration system and was informed me that none was available. He also told me that he had found out what he had by looking on google and reading chat forums. He asked me why I had chosen a diesel and I explained that it was what I was used to driving and that it was what I was advised to purchase when I was buying the car. He suggested that he could speak to Matt Brown about me changing my car and suggested either a petrol Verso or a Prius Plus. I said I would consider this. We met with the manager on the 11th March. He agreed to see what he could do. He listened to my concerns and appeared to understand my distress. I explained that I knew that I would lose the £3204 I had paid in repayments but that I did not expect to be out of pocket as I believed the car was faulty. He agreed that finance would be 'sorted'. Matt agreed to look for a suitable car. I was happy to consider an older Prius Plus as well as a petrol Verso. I received a telephone call from the dealership on the 20th March. I was given details of a Prius Plus. I was getting ready to leave the house and took quick details about the car including the repayment details. A day or so later I rang and spoke to Toyota and asked if I could have a more detailed breakdown of the finance for the car. I explained that whilst I accepted that I would lose the £3200 that I had spent paying for the car over the past year, I was not prepared to lose the £2200 part exchange value of my previous car as I was returning the car because I believed it to be faulty NOT because I had changed my mind. I was told that there was no way that I would get the £2200 back. I said that I believed that I had a case to take to Toyota Finance to say that I was in dispute over the car as I believed that the car was faulty. I believe the car to be faulty and that it was mis-sold to me. I want to return my car and have the finance cleared and I wish to be reimbursed the £2200 I put down as a deposit (part exchange value of my Toyota Yaris) I have written to Toyota Finance and have not yet had a response but I do not hold out much hope as I did write to the CEO and have had a response saying that 'the issues I have are a consequence of driving styles and usage.' they go on to say regarding my claim that the car was mis-sold that 'we have not been privy to those sales discussions and are unable to pass comment'. The car was bought on finance. The initial cost was £17495 and I had £2200 deducted from that for the part exchange of my old car. The car continues to smell inside the cabin on a regular basis and happened last week with all my three children in the car. It is a revolting, acrid smell that makes me feel sick. I am greatly concerned for my children's health being exposed to this smell. Thank you to anyone that takes the time to read this.