The exploding Seat...

[indebtstudent]

I wish the title of this thread is a joke but it is not. My dad had the misfortune of purchasing a Seat car and said car did in fact set itself on fire. That is to say there was a fire and nobody was around and none of the windows were broken. The fire began in the driverside footwell.

This all happened a couple of years ago, he was promised a report into the fire which never materialized. Worse still under his insurance he had to have another Seat or accept only 75% of the value of a new car. He also had ot pay his excess, a bit of a kick in the teeth since he had done nothing wrong. He did not want another Seat but in the end traded it in for another make of car (his being sold for £1).

He has wrote to Seat and posed questions relating to the above but got nowhere. What I want to know is is there anything like the Subject Access Request we use for bank charges that can force them to disclose information they have on him?

It came to light once he opened up to me that there may have been some dodgy selling relating to the car he traded in (he claims he was sold some insurance which is not supposed ot be sold with new cars). He has requested information and all he got told was that the information would take some time to retrieve as it was in thier archives.

Any advice or suggestions welcome. I don't know if there is much I can do now that time has passed but I do have several points I would like to make. For example what if the fire is due to a fault and it had occured whilst he was driving on a dual carriageway? If it was a fault on the vehicle how can it be right that his insurance now costs him more?

Thanks in advance.

[calvi36]

Hi bud, can you give some more info on the car?

Was it new when he bought it?
What was the damage to the car...Cost etc?
Why did he have to pay excess?
Did he attempt to negotiate on the 75%
Why did he not chase for report?
Why have you waited so long to pursue?
Why was the car sold for a pound?
Did his insurance company investigate(they must have) Did he get a report from them as to how the fire started?


The more info the better bro.

[tiaposy]

Regarding the fire report. How old was the vehicle? I know VAG have a fire-reporting proceedure, so I wandered if they knew about it

[indebtstudent]

Will be back with info when I speak to him next. How strange that thier was a Watchdog feature on a problem with Corsa's? (I only watch it after the fact through on demand).

I can answer some q's now. He had to pay the excess because that was part of his insurance policy (even though the policy came with the car and as such he didn't have much say in the terms).

He got no report relating to the fire. We asked for this some time ago but he's moved a couple of time so that has got in the wya of me looking into it more. We did ask for documents relating to this but after being told they were in the archives we got nothing else.

The car was new when hw bought it.

In terms of cost the car was a shell. In general they handled things very poorly - a guy came to tow it away and he wasn't informed. Good job he was in at the time, thought with hindsight he should've never let them take it away.

The second car (replacement) was listed as £1 because he wanted a car, any car, that he would trust.

He was told the 75% was not negotiable, and it was in the documentation. Still I don't see why he should be penalised for a defect.

I confess I should've done something sooner but I didn't have access to these resources then and didn't really know what I was doing. I believe thier gameplan all along was to wait for us to go away and to some extent it worked.

As I've said above I'll give you all the info I can ASAP. My main concerns are has this happened to anyone else/are people in danger? Also it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that he has lost out fincancially (though in the grand shceme of things I'd rather he was still here!). They seem to have got off scot free, and as I said there was some shady deal to do with extra insurance he paid about £250 for.

[indebtstudent]

Bump

[indebtstudent]

Bump, Bump, Bump!

[indebtstudent]

Anyone?

[indebtstudent]

Idea here where do I stand if I send an Subject Access Request? I would be really interested to see what info they have relating to this vehicle and incident.