broken windscreen

[gideonssword]

My Daughter took her car to Halfords to buy new wiper blades and have them fitted by their staff.

 

when she was driving home shortly afterwards she noticed an hairline crack in the windscreen about 12 inches long

 

my wife went with my daughter to complain to Halfords as the crack was not there before.

 

They spoke to their customer care care centre and said its a stone chip which must have already been there.

 

We spoke to the manager and he said he will try to call in some favours to get it fixed

 

is there any course of action we can take if they cannot resolve this?

[scaniaman]

This is rather a strange one. Could you provide more info as to exact location of crack.

I cannot think of any action in replaceing windscreen wipers that would cause a crack.

Modern screens can only be damaged by "Impact" ie a sharp stone thrown up at high velocity.

[citizenkain]

Ive cracked a modern windscreen myself scania when I was trying to replace wiper,after pulling wiper out on the spring loaded arm removing wiper,I accidently let it spring back against the windscreen,the metal bit on the wiper hit the screen and cracked it,easy done

[Tony P]

Modern screens can only be damaged by "Impact" ie a sharp stone thrown up at high velocity.

 

The extreme cold here cracks screens regularly - but possibly there are original chips that the cracks start from.

 

To the OP - screens are often covered by the car's insurance without affecting NCD.

[scaniaman]

Thats what i was thinking about Tony---crack from old chip.

On reflection, when i had to replace my last screen (long sad story by SAGA) i noticed there was a significant difference in screen prices. It may well be that the cheap ones, whilst meeting the regs, are more easily damaged.

Kain, i have never heard of a flat object cracking a screen, it's usually something sharp.

Years ago, there used to be an advert which showed a guy hitting a windscreen with a big hammer---no breakage done. Then this wee fellow came along with a toffee hammer and a centre punch---small tap and windscreen was shot.

[citizenkain]

theres a sharp point in the metal insert for the wiper

[The Glassman]

Modern screens can only be damaged by "Impact" ie a sharp stone thrown up at high velocity.

 

Football, a fist, downward pressure when clipping the wipe cowl back in... there are many ways to crack a screen. A windscreen is a sandwich construction of two layers of glass with a Poly Vinyl Butyral interlayer. It's not as forgiving as say, a toughened window can be.

 

For the sake of being objective, a customer drives away after having wipers fitted and returns later with a cracked windscreen claiming that it was the (wiper) fitter's doing. It's not something which can be proven. For example, dropping a spring loaded wiper arm onto the glass without the wiper blade on it will almost certainly create a starbreak; drop the arm with the blade on it and it may only be a short crack if it damages it at all (different results if there was already damage there too!).

 

There may also have been a stonechip in the blacked-out part of the windscreen and it just happened to spread at that time; it's easy to point the finger at the last person to be near the damage because that's how most of us would think.

 

If the store manager does 'pull a favour' I think that's all he can do; it's a goodwill thing and very much down to discretion (in my opinion).