I had a full service of my 2008 Audi TTS Petrol car at 27000 miles by a London Audi Dealership.

There were no issues prior to the service, aside from noticing the brakes likely needed replacing.

I was informed that the front discs and pads needed replacing as well as an oil change, oil filter and sump change, air conditioning filter and service, new wipers and I was also told there was some type of electrical fault with the radio that did not need work at this time as it would not present any functional issues with the radio unit. I agreed to the work and paid the full amount which was more or less £800.

However when I collected the car, within 24 hours I began noticing a host of new problems:

1) The front left external grill looked odd, as though it had been removed but not properly re-fitted into position. The panel that sits behind this grill was also missing and I could see straight through it to the mechanics behind it. Unlike the right side where there is a flat plastic panel behind the grill.

2) There was an oil drip from both front corners of the car, but predominantly the front left corner of the car.

3) The dashboard would intermittently be illuminated throughout the day, even when the headlights/sidelights were switched off. It would be an intermittent problem but occur about 80% of the time.

Despite sending photographs of all the faults and numerous emails, it took over 10 days for the dealership to offer another collection of the car. During this time I had to replace around 4L of engine oil myself and I would still keep getting warnings "switch off engine immediately and replace oil" during this time due to the oil leak ad constantly needing to further top up the oil.

The dealership admitted to fitting a faulty oil filter which was causing the oil leak and rectified this but refused to refund me for the cost of engine oil I had to top up whilst waiting for them to fix the issue.

They categorically denied that the missing panel behind the front left grill and that the dashboard illumination issues were anything to with their initial service, however they did not formally assess the dashboard fault to see what was causing it. It seems astronomically unlikely that the dashboard fault occurred independent to the service work spontaneously at the same time?!

I was told by the sales person that a fault of that nature with the dashboard would require replacing the entire dashboard cluster, which costs around £1000 and so I should just leave it alone for the time being.

Can I ask the following two questions:

1) Am I right in assuming there would have been some reason that one might remove the front left external grill and panel in order to gain access to mechanics behind it during a service? Why would one typically remove that panel?

2) What kind of reasons would cause the dashboard to intermittently fully illuminate despite the lights being switched off? Am I right in assuming that some kind of switch / electrical / software issue could have been tripped during the service that has caused this problem? Surely you can't just leave such an electrical issue "under review..." without further assessing it; what if the dashboard illumination or cluster failed in some other way whilst driving or it's part of a wider electrical fault?

Many many thanks for any information anyone can offer. The dealership are not being helpful at all and just denying that any of these issues could be anything to do with the service. Whilst I'm not a mechanic, I'm also not an idiot and I'm incredibly observant with the vehicle and these faults all showed up within 24 hours of collecting the car so I'm just trying to understand how they might have happened.

Regards

 

i feel you need to take them to court get some advice and take pics. i had problem with my a6 at garage in bangkok found that they had swaped parts of my car to fit on to the boss a6 got a bit nasty untill a rang the police. dont let them get away with this. all the best Paul