Breakdown - Waaranty refusing to pay

[slik000]

Noted that warranty management services is mentioned here or UVW as they sometimes go by. I have a 2007 Peugeot 407 coupe on which the original dealers warranty ran out in January. As it hadn't done lots of miles I decided to keep it another year but as its a complex beast thought a warranty might be a good idea in case something big went bang. Chose them as they inspected the car first so I thought at least no arguments about what the car was liek when the warranty was taken out. Six weeks later, complete loss of power and engine stopped. Turns out to broken cam belt which had sheared off the timing pulley and potentially damaged the glass rockers which stop any more serious damage occuring. Total bill £3000. All these items listed in the warranty and as a sudden premature breakage not normal wear and tear. WMS are refusing to pay out on the basis that at some point in this carnage a bolt broke (on an engine which produces 330lb/ft of torque) and that bolts are excluded from the warranty (even though this isn't mentioned in there). They refused to send anyone to even look at it untiln threatened with legal action and the so called independent assessor (who I'm not allowed to know) surprisingly agreed with them (but I'm not allowed to see a copy of the report). Whilst I can accept that parts not listed aren't covered, trying to exclude parts of parts which are covered really takes the biscuit. Am currently complaining to the underwiters and will take legal action if necessary but I'd warn anyone thinking about one of these policies to realise that virtually nothing will be covered by it

[ellingtj]

Unfortunately silk000 the method used by the 'warranty' company is typical of the lower end of would be warranty providers, they use these general part exclusions to extend to whatever they can in order to get out of claims. Unfortunately I don't see an easy way to proceed outside of court action in which you would need to provide your own, via an independent professional, report to counter theirs, but I am no expert when it comes to court action. Your description implies the belt breaking damaged the pulley but I suspect you meant the other way round. When was the cambelt last changed and the tensioning pulley? Not sure what glass rockers are, where did you get this term, but there is a chance the rockers and valve train will also be damaged?

[slik000]

Hi ellingtj and thanks for your comments. The cam belt hasn't been changed as yet (although it is being now!) as it was nowhere near the manufacturers interval (and it's been main dealer serviced throughout). Apparently according to the dealer, premature failure is pretty much unheard of. The dealer told me that the rockers are glass as they contain a glass core which is designed to be sacrificial in the event of this sort of thing happening. As the valves aren't driven directly from the cams, then if there is valve/piston contact, the rocker will break preventing further damage. They've opened up the engine and apart from the fact that there are some slight marks which show something's touched, the pistons and valves are all fine with no damage. Surprisingly no rockers have broken either but they can't be sure about any hairline cracks so they're getting replaced. According to the warranty company a bolt broke jamming the pulley, then jamming the cam belt and then breaking one of the chains connecting 2 of the cams together and they claim the dealer agrees. I spoke with the service manager who I've known for years who was outraged and he told me that there's a box of broken parts but no way of knowing what happened first and in what sequence other than all the bits are broken. I complained to the underwriters of the policy who after 4 weeks just fobbed it off back to the claims department who surprise, surprise agree with themselves so they don't even follow their own complaints policy. However, at least I do have something which says final letter (although they still won't show me any report on which they are relying) so it's now gone off to the Financial Services Ombudsman. I'll keep this link posted with progress. As I said in my earlier post, I'd advise anyone thinking of buying from this outfit to keep their money in their pocket.

[slik000]

Update - thanks to some exceptional work by the dealer (Peter Ambrose in Castleford, West Yorks) who I can't recommend highly enough, Peugeot have agreed to meet virtually all of the cost of this repair on a 6 year old car so hats off to them too. I've left the complaint about WMS with the Ombudsman so although they are off the hook in meeting the cost, there's still a point of principle about their actions which left me worrying for weeks about the size of the bill I was expecting and they need sorting out. The fact that Peugeot met the costs seems to indicate that this breakdown was so unexpected that WMS had no grounds to refuse as I had no expectations on Peugeot paying for this but a very pleasant surprise for which I'm very grateful.