Durban - do you know when your car’s next service is due?
Not knowing could be an expensive oversight, because if it’s still under warranty, and if you don’t get it serviced when you should, your warranty could well be voided.
Confusion tends to arise because dealerships express a car’s “next service” as being due by a certain mileage, or within 12 months of the previous service.
So, somebody who does lower than average mileage and concentrates only on the mileage - for example, 20 000km - could well fail to get the car serviced within a year, because they won’t have come close to reaching that mileage in a year.
Likewise, someone who travels excessively would reach the mileage service interval in less than a year, and, if not keeping a close eye on their odometer, could fail to get it serviced at the stipulated mileage.
Manufacturers generally allow some leeway in terms of missing a service, but it’s limited.
The engine of Diepak Kallan’s Range Rover Evoque - bought new in 2012 from a Land Rover dealership in Pietermaritzburg - seized in October 2013, resulting in an estimated repair bill of R110 000.
Jaguar Land Rover SA rejected his warranty claim as he was due to have the vehicle serviced at 42 000km, or February 2014 (whichever came first) and the mileage at the time of the incident was 48 000km.
But Kallan claimed that the fact that the vehicle’s service light did not come on was partly to blame for the missed service.
He told Consumer Watch that when he raised this, he was told that his model did not have one, but later it was conceded that it had malfunctioned.
GESTURE OF GOODWILL
So I asked Jaguar Land Rover SA whether, in light of this, the company would consider bearing some of the repair’s cost as a goodwill gesture. The company responded by saying that Kallan had missed his service interval twice.
Media affairs manager Lesley Sutton said: After the first missed service incident, we reinstated the vehicle warranty as a gesture of goodwill and Mr Kallan was reminded of the warranty agreement and its requirements.”
But the company was prepared to conditionally reinstate the warranty a second time, as a goodwill gesture, provided Kallan paid for the repair by a Jaguar Land Rover dealership, she said.
And what about the service indicator light issue?
Sutton said it had never been advertised as a standard feature for the South African market “and is therefore not always fitted”. In other words, the Evoque in question does not have that feature.
“The responsibility still lies with the customer to adhere to the service schedule parameters as detailed in the vehicle’s warranty, service and care portfolio to ensure that the vehicle functions at an optimal level.”
Pretoria News