Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Three Wheeler & Super 3 Warranty extension for when car is awaiting repair

I bought my car in August 2013.
3 days after I bought the car, the engine failed and it was unusable for 7 weeks because Morgan didn't have the parts available.

Recently, a few days after the standard two year warranty expired I had several problems with the car. To my mind, the warranty should be extended by the period of time that the car was unusable and waiting for repairs. However, my dealer says this is not standard practice and they have contacted Morgan but it has been several weeks and they have not had any answer.

Does anyone else have experience with this sort of situation? Where the warranty was or was not extended for the time the car was unusable?

i think you are looking for a goodwill gesture which legally isn't required but morally perhaps is.

Letter to Steve Morris would be my approach.

Nice and short letter, single side of A4 at the most. Express disappointment not anger etc and make the letter very hard to reply to in any other than the wanted way!

I used to write letters for a major broadcaster as part of my job.

One of the hardest things to explain to customers (and the biggest argument generator) is that warranty is not cumulative, the warranty expires on the anniversary of the date of registration however many years its for. Anything else is just goodwill. Volvo had Lifetime Care at one time, it was not a warranty or guarantee it was a 'consideration' some customers argued but the basis was regardless of age or mileage if a component should 'reasonably' last 50,000 miles with correct maintenance and it fails after 40,000 miles we will make a 20% contribution to the cost of replacement. Those days in the industry are long gone, sadly.

Very true. If you want "pay per use" you hire a car. "Limited annual costs" go lease. etc.

On the other hand it would be interesting for someone to collect annual running costs (service etc fees + reliability / repair fees) for Morgans - the large fleets no doubt have the numbers for normal fleet vehicles but that hardly describes a M3W!

Some sound advice on this thread Mr PB.

Hope you have better luck than me. My car spent 13 weeks off the road in the first year for rectification of manufacturing defects. I thought, like you, that a warranty extension would be a perfectly reasonable gesture of goodwill, after all it would cost nothing provided the car lived up to the promised craftsmanship MMC prides itself on. I was directed to Mark Evans who blamed the dealer for the problems and challenged me on the fact that the car had been off the road for that amount of time. I responded with the actual dates during which the car had been off-the road. I never got a response, despite several follow-up e-mails and phone calls. I love my car and fortunately it has been 100% reliable since, but Mark Evans' approach to customer care is a joke.

My brother had a New Zealand manufactured washing machine that had a guarantee against corrosion of the metal for 5 years. Afeter 4 years he made a claim because some surface rust had appeared. They replaced the washing machine with a new one and when he said "I suppose the warranty runs out in a few months time" he was told "No, you get a complete warranty from today just the same as if you had bought a new one. After all it is a new macine."

Guess what brand of washing machine all his mates bought after that. It cost the company a new machine but that was probably a fraction of what they spent on advertising and it brought them more sales per dollar than any advertising campaign.

You can't buy goodwill, you can only earn it.

As others have said, a Warranty has a fixed time and that is it. That the product is unusable for a part of the period doesn't mean the warranty is extended, pro-rata.

Worse, many car warranties clearly state that any part fitted under warranty is only warranted until the end of the original warranty, not for 12 months as one might expect.

As of YESTERDAY the consumer rights act in the UK has changed.

2015 Consumer Rights Act

This link explains what it means as far as cars are concerned:

New Rights

The key change is that there is a 30 day right to reject. Be interesting to see how this works through the motor trade.