Thank you for forwarding the information to your customer services dept Linzi. Helpful. I think the thread is still spot on. Does carCraft sell quality cars/what do they do to ensure they sell quality cars, which is entirely linked to my specific issue of did it sell me a car of reasonable/fair quality?

Linzi are you able to confirm what exactly is covered in the 120pt checks as it is my understanding that these type of checks are rather like a basic safety check rather than anything else i.e would not cover all major service items and would not look for quality issues only basic safety. Are you also able to confirm that this was carried out for my specific vehicle and provide evidence it was carried out and the findings/works carried out post the check? Re other posts above it does look like, despite being a huge retailer of cars, you place all the risk on the buyers, why not just ensure that you can confirm to all buyers that the cars have a full service history or at the very least tell customers if it does not. Your posts above seem to confirm that you do not check service history in all cases and cannot assure customers that cars have full service history? This seems a basic indicator of risk and quality of the car being sold and should be simple to do and provide to customers. Not very hard to look in the glove box and tick a check box on a system somewhere to give the customer the information.

As a quick update to this forum CarCraft have today issued a further rejection of this claim. The letter states that the car was in good condition at the time of sale, aux belts can go at any time and that the servicing garage (had a service in between purchase and breakdown) has confirmed to CarCraft that the aux belt was checked at the time of service and no defect was found. However, in my call to the garage in question (local garage of a chain) suggested they have not spoken to car craft or that their head office has not spoken to them in relation to a carcraft letter/question. To be clear and in fairness to CarCraft this information could be incorrect and they are double checking to confirm but having spoken to the manager, he was fairly clear. I am considering my next steps. Thank you to Linzi (carcraft) for the starting this most recent investigation. If possible can you confirm to my email who your query was addressed to, to avoid confusion on this point.

Thanks. I will send the service history this evening. But to point out that following the logic in your post above, that if it is correct that any belt fault would have been identiftied by your 120 point inspection pre sale then, since the engine still failed in such a significant way, there must have been a more substantial/different fault that was not picked up.Perhaps that is covered by the guarantee??? The auxillary belt was not due to be changed according to any schedule so it is not reasonable to say that is simply wear and tear on that post sale. I think it is clear that it would not be reasonable for an engine to eat itself 11k miles after purchase.

APologies, I missed the email address you have already put above Linzi. That is helpful. Thanks

Linzi, since you have basically just said the service history wont make any difference can you just tell me an email address to send it to rather than post and at least I will get your confirmation quickly and move onto next steps. Please also confirm that the documentation you hold on the repair, as per the above, is sufficient as your previous post suggests it is not.As an aside, are you honestly saying that car craft does not check service history before a sale? I know you do not service the car before sale but you would have though that a company as big as CarCraft would at least give the customer some reassurance that it is not selling them a car that has not been serviced properly and have checked that fact before it sells a car. If a customer wanted to take that gamble they would go on ebay to buy a car at 2/3rds of the price of CarCraft.... Sounds v odd to me and quite illustrating of the CarCraft approach.Also could you confirm exactly what would have been included in the free service so I can judge, what, if any impact that would have had on the failure. I doubt any as it is a standard service and would not have got to the underlying fault that the car obviously had. In particular can you confirm in writing that the service would have looked at the auxillary belts and relevant equipment related to their operation etc. If anyone else on the forum has expertise on the point above i would really appreciate any input.Thanks

Linzi there was no mention that you required further information on the service history in the letter from the review manager. This is easy to send and i would be more than happy to send it. As I had sent carcraft the service history since I bought the car from you (in line with the manufactuere warrenty) I had assumed that this would be sufficient since the presumption is that CarCraft would know if a car had not been serviced properly before sale and would have made me aware of it, hence sending the service history post sale? I presume that CarCraft does not sell cars without a full service history in the first place so you would have confidence that would be the case without requiring me to send in the full documents. However, as above happy to do so and if that had been highlighted as still being outstanding (or that the service history post sale was not sufficient) I would have done so already.You also ask for 'any other documents related to the repair' I have already sent in all the documentation from the repair garage ie invoice and repair details. The claims department has also contacted the repair garage directly for information in the original claim. I also contacted CarCraft and asked if they would like to view the car and damage before the repair was carried out, which was declined. What else would there be from me on that?More generally you seem to have replied with almost a direct copy of the decline letter from the review manager and from my perspective are a) downplaying this somewhat b) missing the point. You refer to a 'fault' with the drive belt. I did not report a fault, I am trying to get fair compensation for the fact I bought what should be a high quality car from CarCraft that required £3.6k of repairs within 11 months of purchase and only 11k miles. I dont think it is unreasonable to be able to rely on what should be a high quality car from car craft for that period of time/usage without incurring that level of costs, regardless of any wording of your 'guarantee'. I did'nt get a car of reasonable/usable/servicable quality. I appreciate you looking into this. Can you advise of an appropriate email address and I will provide copies of the (pre sale from car craft) service history this evening.

Linzi, thanks for responding to this quickly. Appreciated. Purchase date was Dec 2012. Just had the reply/decline from the review manager.Sailor sam, thanks for the post. The car has been repaired and is back on the road. We just had to max a credit card to pay for it. I will check on whether the car was serviced by volkswagen pre purchase from CarCraft, certainly I did'nt use volkswagen for the service after we bought it. Will come back.So is it unlikely that the aux belt failure would normaly cause the damage?

Re the above i meant to also add that the car craft reply letter states that they will not overturn the claims rejection as 1) the auxillary drive belt is not covered but also 2) even though the car has been serviced according to manufacturer schedule we did not put it in for a minor service with carcraft within 6 months (part of the guarantee apparently). We had a major service done between purchase and the breakdown but that was 8 months from purchase and not with carcraft.? I still cant get past the fact that the car should not have failed so badly in such a short time frame. Repairs garage have advised that even a major service would not have covered the drive belt (def not a minor service) anyway and it does not normally need to be changed at that level of miles etc unless faulty.

Thanks all for replies. In answer to some of the questions the mileage at breakdown was 54k according to the repair garage (and Volkswagen who looked at the car but didn't do the repair) was that the an 'auxiliary drive belt' failed but the way it failed disrupted the cam belt which through out the timing. I think basically that resulted in the engine eating itself somewhat. In the breakdown itself the engine simply shut off on the Mway, no noises, just quiet, zero power, coasted to the hardshoulder and stopped. No smoke etc. Towed to repair garage. Cam belt was not due to be changed at the service done between purchase of the car and the breakdown. Does that make a difference? Volkswagen basically say that if the car had been bought or serviced by them at any point then they would look at goodwill aspect but since it hasn't then they insist they wont cover anything. Which sort of seems fair enough really.

Like many users on this forum we have experienced very poor and unfair practice from CarCraft and wondered if anyone had advice on how to proceed against CarCraft. We purchased a 59 plate Volkswagen Passat from the Lakeside branch for 10k, 45k miles on the clock. 10 months later in early November last year the car broke down on the m25 with my 5 year old daughter in the car. The car needed almost a complete new engine (after many investigations) to repair at a cost of £3600. We had serviced the car according to Volkswagen schedule between the purchase and the breakdown. CarCraft have declined both my initial claim and subsequent appeal to the 'review manager'. The key point car craft are putting forward is that the original cause of the breakdown was a failure of an alternator belt which is not covered within the guarantee. My point is that it cannot be right that a car that new, that is supposed to last to 250k + can breakdown so badly in such little time. Car Craft have sold a car that is not of usable quality, regardless of any narrow guarantee scheme they try to hide behind. We are left with a huge bill. We have a young family and wanted a reliable car, safe car, that would last us for years. We got none of that from car craft, we don't even have an apology. The cost of the repair is huge and car craft appear to be simply hiding behind the useless guarantee scheme. A £10k, 3 year old, Volkswagen simply should not have failed so badly. After two rejected claims attempts from the company I don't see any other option but to try the small claims court and I am looking at the process now. We had to use all our savings to repair the car so are desperate to try to recover the unfair costs. We have also been advised that due to the size of the repair the car us likely to also develop faults later on despite the best efforts of the repair garage. Any advice or does anyone have similar issues? Any advice on the small claims process or car craft responses. Would really appreciate any help.