mread Posted April 20, 2005 Report Share Posted April 20, 2005 Around the beginning of March some clown in a dodgy Rover clipped the back right wing of my S4. His car was a bit of a mess. Mine had some damage to some panels and a big chunk taken out of the back rear wheel but was still driveable. On the way home I felt that something wasn't quite right with the handling and the next day I had a closer look and realised that the back right wheel was closer to the front of the wheel arch than it should be. My uneducated opinion was that the "something was buckled". About a 2 weeks later his insurance company finally sent out an insurance assessor who agreed that it looked like the suspension was buckled and authorised all the repairs to be done by my local Audi stealer. The "man that deals with insurance claims" at Audi was at great pains to tell me that before the body work was done they would use their very impressive lazer alignment machine to check the suspension. Just to recap - I thought the suspension was buckled, the insurance assessor thought the suspension was buckled and the Audi man agreed that it should be checked first. So I swap my car for a big fat A6 3.2 that feels like a barge compared to my S4 and await news. 11 days later I haven't heard a thing so I phone up asking about my poor car and they say that the bodywork has almost been completed. I say, "how about the suspension?" They reply, "I'm sorry sir, we need to do the bodywork first otherwise we won't have anything to measure the suspension against." Huh? Suspension is lined up with body panels until it looks about right then off you go? What happened to the lazers? There wasn't a lot I could really do about it at this point so I just asked that he keep me up-to-date with progress. 4 days later I get a phonecall from the same guy who enthusiastically announces that the suspension is actually buckled! No sh1t! I point out that I already knew this, the insurance assessor knew this and the "man who deals with insurance claims" had his suspicions, but this didn't seem to have much effect. The good news was that the parts were on order from Germany and would take a mere 10 days to arrive! So I'm still looking forward to seeing my car again about 5 weeks after I last saw it. Fortunately I'm not in the 1 litre Cinquecento that the insurance wanted to give me otherwise I'd be pretty p'd off by now. My questions to the learned and experienced readers of TSN is, should I complain about this? Who to? If I did, what could I expect to achieve? At present I'm so awestruck by this magnicant display that I don't have the energy to get angry. Thanks for reading, Gatt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a4tdi130 Posted April 20, 2005 Report Share Posted April 20, 2005 Just get your whiplash claim in to the insurance company and enjoy a free holiday. (KIDDING!!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Insurance Jon Posted April 21, 2005 Report Share Posted April 21, 2005 Not really, apart from being slow they haven't done anything wrong as they do need to get the car roughly sorted before they put it on the 4 wheel alignment bed. Audi dealers aren't known for being fast, and I would just have used the insurance companies garage and used your legal cover to get you a decent courtessey car. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mread Posted April 21, 2005 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2005 Fair enough. Five weeks does seem like a very long time but assuming I actually get it back in perfect condition it's probably worth it. I'm interested in what you said about using the insurance company garage though. My main reason for not doing so was that although they offered a warranty on the parts I didn't fancy having different bits of my car warrantied by different people. I had images of getting the back half of my car fixed in one garage but going somewhere else to do the front. Did I misunderstand what was being proposed? Also, I would be concerned about the quality being offered from the small garages that were suggested. Obviously Audi quality is a bit dubious but at least if something really goes badly wrong you know that you can pursue Audi themselves. I wouldn't feel that I had the same options with a independent garage. Gatt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Insurance Jon Posted April 21, 2005 Report Share Posted April 21, 2005 The warranties with insurer garages are good, and they don't get approved these days until they are ISO approved. You will also find that they do a lot of main dealer work anyway and half the time your car ends up with them anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mread Posted April 28, 2005 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2005 7 weeks and counting... apparently it's being worked on. How much does an S4 depreciate in 7 weeks? Gatt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PDMaster Posted May 9, 2005 Report Share Posted May 9, 2005 The dealer is right, the body needs to be straight before the alignment can be laser checked, the suspension most likely wouldn't have fitted else. 7 weeks and I'd have been screaming at them. Depreciation - quite a bit. (oooh my neck) T Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mread Posted May 9, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 9, 2005 Hot off the press, it _might_ be ready tomorrow or maybe Wednesday. I've actually forgotten what the car is like, I hope I can still remember how to drive it. Come to think of it, it'll be a complete novelty again, just like it was when I bought it - I'm quite excited now. Gatt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mread Posted May 16, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 16, 2005 Got it back last Thursday, took it out for a drive at the weekend and low'n'behold, the knocking I got under heavy acceleration immediately after the accident is still there. It's now booked in for a day for them to have a look, in 10 days time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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