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schu040
By schu040 | Community user | 1 Post | 10 June 2014 at 11:07am

My 2008 VW Golf has travelled 61,000km's, is NZ new and I am the only owner. I have had full servicing on it as per manufacturer instructions.
It was running poorly and the computer check resulted in Piston land and cylinder damage. Dealer has said it needs a new engine. They say it will cost $15k and we need to pay $3k of it. We believe we should not pay anything as an engine with such little km's on the shouldn't do this and it is a serious fault.
We have offered to pay $1,500 as we think that is fair. Should we pay up or not pay anything and what are our rights?

Thanks

ABayliss
By ABayliss | AA Expert | 2169 Posts | 10 June 2014 at 11:54am

This is certainly a serious defect for such a low mileage vehicle.
One issue you have is that the warranty was for 3 years and the car is now 6 years old, but manufacturers are usually quite generous with goodwill warranty requests on serious failures that occur within a reasonable timeframe outside of the manufacturer's warranty if you are the first owner, the vehicle has low mileage and you have always serviced the vehicle within their dealer network. Therefore, you meet most of the criteria.
You say the vehicle has been serviced as per manufacturer's instructions, but not if it has been done within their dealer network where genuine VW oil filters and approved lubricants are used. If it has always been serviced by one of their dealers, it strengthens your case.
The other question I'd have is what fuel have you been using? We know that modern forced induction engines such as the VW TSI engine do crack pistons if they are run on 91 octane fuel, so hopefully you've been using 95+ which is recommended. I'd imagine they might want to test the fuel in a situation such as this.
Now to your question.. The Consumer Guarantees Act may work in your favour. However as you have had 6 years and 61,000km out of this engine, it's possible that if you went to dispute, the $3k the manufacturer is asking you to contribute may be the decision an arbitrator would come to. Obviously, there's nothing stopping you from trying to negotiate this down, but if you can't reach an agreement, you may need to go to dispute, and there are no guarantees that you would win and it's even possible that the finding could be that you should contribute more.