This is exactly how all these traders operate. There is no evidence-based culture. You experience problems with the gears. They inspect and they pay you lip service “they all do that sir”.
There is no interest in finding out the problem. When you insist, they will do some minimal work but only if it is paid by the insurance company.
For sure the car can be fixed but they do not want to pay for it. They can change the whole gear selection set up, from the clutch pedal and the clutch, to the gearbox and the gear change mechanism. For sure this will fix the problem but they do not want to pay for it.
I know a case of a Toyota car having the gearbox open for investigation but that was not the problem. They found the problem in being something else that they had overlooked.
I am suffering from the second generation recalls. They left my passenger airbag being dead and my driver’s seat being loose on the right back side and dropping making it painful to drive.
When I contacted them, they emailed back that they would investigated. When they disappeared and I chased them again, they emailed back that they had the car in for several additional repairs. That was a shock as they never took the car back.
They did all that because they wanted to charge £100 per hour to do investigations and repairs. I contacted the local Consumer Advice Scotland and they told me that according to the Consumers Rights Act 2015 the trader has to apply reasonable skill and care.
But the burden to prove this is on me. I made a case to the ombudsman and the ombudsman accepted it. I am left with less than 3 months of MOT and getting stressed whether I will have the car fixed. The trader went over the top and deleted my case when I reached the ombudsman but what else could I do with a car that cannot pass the MOT because they vandalised it?
Once I reached the ombudsman the trader emailed me that the car is old. They tried to remove the hatch struts and they could not fit the impact wrench and so they wrapped the bodywork. There is water leaking from the struts in the car.
They removed the passenger dash and they broke it. It does not fit in properly. They have thrown it back but it does not fit as it should. The passenger airbag died and there is a constant airbag light on. If the airbag was working and there were an accident, there is no guarantee that the dash would not break and cause serious injury.
All the screws which hold these plastics together have gone missing. I found some of them loose in the car and fitted them back. But there are so many more missing. These screws should not be decorative for sure as they were hidden away. They wanted to remove some sensors that are under the centre cup holder and on the way they broke it. There is a hole in the cup holder showing the sensors below it.
All these plastics have been removed with the big hammer. As a result they have scratches and some of the securing clips have been broken. The trims that cover the driver’s seat are broken. The seat is loose and rocks on the corners.
The reply from the trader is that the car is old without inspecting the car. The reply from Mazda UK is that all the responsibility is with the trader and as the trader says that there is no wrong without even inspecting the car, then there is no wrong. Both Mazda UK and the Consumer Advice tell me that there is no law to protect me. In the best case scenario, the car will be returned to the rogue trader and they will fix it.
But the trader has no skill to fix the car. The trader will not fix the cosmetic damage. The trader will only do a bodge if they are forced by the ombudsman.
This is what they try to do with your car. They want to show that they did something. From what I have seen, I do not believe that a franchise has the skill to open a gearbox and investigate. It is impossible to imagine this when I check the attention to detail they paid to my car.
The problems with the traders are the deregulation and the lack of interest in their job. As long as there are no laws to protect the consumer, no trader is interested in doing the job properly. There is a deep sick mentality of the class system. I am the trader. I can say anything and they will believe me and not the customer because I am the qualified trader and the customer is some kind of finance buyer.
But most of these school drop-out apprentices just cannot do any job without damaging your asset. It is meaningless to come back that the car is old just because they do not know how to do their job.
There is a good chance that they replaced some of the synchros because you told them that you experience difficulties in specific gears. I had a coolant change in Halfords. Before I let them do their witchcraft, I highlighted to them that they had to use FL22 coolant. But it was like talking to the wall.
They used a random coolant and the car was left with no water and runs cold. So I went back and did a second change. I explained to them again about the concept of using the right coolant. They did not get it. When I explained that the original coolant was orange and they used a green coolant, they replaced the green coolant with an orange one.
But then the problems did not go away like your gears are not any better. When I did my homework I found out that the Comma coolant that they had to use is violet. These apprentices never bothered using the right coolant with the right instructions because it did not matter to them. When I told them orange they fit some random orange product.
I feel that is how Mazda operates. You told them about the gears and they replaced the synchros for these gears. But they did no real investigation to find out what is going on. So the problem is still there but for them they fixed it. Your case will become harder and harder from now on.
I think you should negotiate to have the gearbox investigation carried out by a gearbox specialist. With a specialist you have more chances of finding the problem because they do these investigations every day. I have my 2 cases with 2 different ADRs because Mazda and Halfords are just fronts with no technical knowledge and interest.
I am not sure whether you can be compensated to do these investigations to the specialist. From my ADRs this appears to be the way. You get some money as the traders do not apply reasonable skill and car and you fix the car elsewhere.
Try to do a google search for a “gearbox specialist” and email them your story. Because these people do this every day, they know where to start based on your description. Take what they say and email back Mazda and explain that you got this independent advice for such work. Mazda must either do this job or pay you to do it externally.
After months of back and forth with Halfords, they agreed to replace the wrong coolant with the right one, together with the thermostat. But as the pandemic started, I did not do anything. They emailed me that I should not worry and I should wait until the pandemic eases.
But the pandemic got worse and worse. When the MOTs restarted on August, Halfords replied that now so much time passed that they will not repair the car. They argue that the 11 years and 125K miles coolant is now too bad to replace it. The ADR does not agree with them though.
I am afraid Mazda postpones you in a similar way. It is part of the trader culture. You will need to speed up your case. You need to put down a timeline, when you started noticing the problems, when you contacted Mazda and when Mazda took action. You want to show that the problem is over a long period and Mazda takes it easy and does not try to fix it.
I am afraid that if the car could be repaired by Mazda, they would have already done that. But the gearbox is beyond their skill and they cannot do it. You will go back to them asking for a new gearbox and they will come back to you that there is no problem.
All that happens because the traders operate in a semi-legal fashion. They cheat on the customers selling them lies and promises. When the customer insists, then they consider the customer being one of them, semi-legal persona. And this is where the customer loses because of the deregulation. Being innocent nowadays does not pay off.