Pricewatch: Your consumer queries answered

Pádraig Hogan is one unhappy BMW customer. It all started when the airbag light on his 2008 car began coming on intermittently. "In my wisdom I contacted my local BMW service garage to try and fix my problem," he writes. "I thought to myself that being a BMW specialist and dealing with the cars day in and day out, they would be quickly able to resolve my problem."

So, at the start of September, he booked the car in, and was told there would be an initial cost of €80 for diagnosis and more for any work that needed to be done.

He ended up paying €350. They told him the active headrest in the driver side was causing the problem but they were not entirely sure what was going on. “They cleaned all the contacts and checked the integrity of the wiring. This included taking out the front seat. After three days of driving, the light came on again. I was then told might need a new airbag control unit,” he says. He was told it would cost €850.

“I explained I wouldn’t be able to pay straight away as I had to save up. I did and booked the car in to have the unit fitted weeks later. It was done on October 31st,” he writes. Days later the light was on again. He contacted the garage and said that the car was due for an NCT so fixing the problem was urgent. He was told to bring it in and was then asked for another €80. The garage said BMW could not stand over the initial diagnosis because he had driven more than 10,000 kilometres since the first diagnosis while he saved to pay for the repairs.

“It turned out that it was the same problem with the active headrest and it was going to take more money to fix the problem and they would have to start from scratch because of the mileage I had put on the car. At this stage I was not too pleased to hear that I had spent over €1,200 for nothing.”

Home solution
Fast-forward three weeks and he now has a new NCT cert and, finally no airbag light. "And it has nothing to do with BMW. On the day of the NCT he fixed the problem himself. "I managed to strip the seat apart, find the problem and fix it. It stemmed from a wire coming from the headrest airbag down to the bottom of the driver's seat, which, when the driver was in it, was being pinched between the back of the seat and the base. I did not tackle this problem initially because it had to do with the airbag, and I did not want to mess about with the electrics. I only tackled it out of sheer frustration. I thought I was paying for a specialist to look after my car but how come a guy with limited experience could find the problem in such a short time and BMW could not?"

He wrote to BMW directly, and was assured that the “satisfaction of all BMW owners, concerning both the products and services provided by our organisation, is of great importance to us”. However, the letter said that while the service garage represents BMW, it is “an independent business, and as such they are responsible for any customer issue that relates to their own business”.

While BMW said it was “sorry that you have had cause to contact us on this occasion it could “only recommend that you once again discuss your concerns with [your local service team] .

Well we didn’t think that was good enough so we contacted BMW ourselves.

The car maker again said it was “sorry to hear about” out reader’s difficulty but expressed confidence in the standards of the service work carried out by the dealer . It said the history of the car was “complicated by the fact that work was carried out by an independent technician, our BMW dealer and by [Hogan].

The company is trying to make things better however and has said our reader can have his car fully appraised at a BMW dealer of his choice at no cost “to give him the peace of mind that the problem has been resolved or identify any further difficulties”.