Marshall skoda

My car went in for an a/c re-gas in October 2017. Immediately following this service the heating/aircon system did not work properly, with the car blowing out hot air in an uncontrollable way. The dealer's response was that the problem could not have been due to the re-gassing "as no mechanical parts are touched" in the process, according to them, and in essence refused to take a look at the car without charging me. ?I took the car back to the Kidlington Skoda garage on 13th November. Service manager said that the aircon recharge could not have been the cause of the problem as "no mechanical heating/aircon system parts are touched during a recharge". He did not offer to get a mechanic to take a look at the car. I asked if perhaps they could check it to see if it was working properly? His response was to say that this could cost me £200 or more and at best might only turn up a diagnostic from the plug-in code checker to say that the a/c and heating system had logged a temporary fault, but "not what was creating the fault". I got the impression that this was something the garage did not want to look at. After vainly trying to get Marshalls to investigate the problem I made a formal complaint to Skoda. The car was then grudgingly examined by Marshalls in January 2018 (no courtesy car was provided), and they claimed not to have found any faults with it, nor it seemed had they detected any problem via diagnostics. The fault however reappeared: unpredictable bursts of uncontrollable heat billowing out of the vents despite the a/c being on the cold, off or low settings. To cut a long story short, I got an independent diagnostic check done on the car in February 2018 showing that the a/c system had recorded a lot of faults connected to various parts of the system - which would have been showing when Marshalls had the car in January 2018. Skoda customer service then arranged for the car to go to another garage, Hughes in Aylesbury, where the service I was given was both courteous and exemplary, with a courtesy car offered for the entire period the car was off the road, and Skoda UK paid for about 60% of the cost of repairs.

I have bought two Octavias from this garage, been thoroughly satisfied both with the cars and the service offered by the garage, and shall no doubt get my next car there. Whenever possible, the staff will fit you in even at difficult times of the week (e.g. for servicing) at short notice, and the car always returns cleaned and tidy. Their approach to treating customers properly is presumably what keeps their customer base loyal. We were, basically, tempted from Citroen to Skoda partly through their polite friendliness, and then by the quality of their products and work.