Do I have to have my bike serviced by a franchised dealer during its warranty period?
Martin Duce
The short answer is that if you have your bike serviced by a perfectly reputable, fully qualified mechanic using all the appropriate parts and specified fluids, the exemption that applies to cars under the Office of Fair Trading guidance, which led to the OFT threatening to take all major motor manufacturers to Court, does not apply to motorcycles.
However, there could well be arguments that such a guarantee contract is unfair and if you felt strongly enough about it you could refer the contract to the Court, but if I were you, I would get my servicing done by the franchised dealership as you would have a massive fight on your hands with a well resourced manufacturer. Most dealerships survive on the servicing and clothing sales. The margin on new bikes is genuinely tiny.
I have acted for a number of motorcycle dealers and I know their mark-up on new bikes is very small. Those dealers have got to survive, and if they lost the servicing, I think a number would collapse. Also, if your motorcycle developed a fault, you could well fail on having the fault repaired as you would have to prove who caused the fault. If, for example, your Ducati has only been in the hands of franchised dealers, then Ducati would not be able to allege a breach of contract and you would not have to prove the fault was a manufacturing fault or other defect.
A practical example I saw recently involved a high performance machine that had, under its warranty period, been chipped along with its wheels, pipes and swinging arm changed. It developed an engine management fault and both the dealer and the manufacturer denied the warranty claim as they felt, correctly in law, that what had been brought back for a warranty claim was not the bike that they sold. Without the “block exemption” that car owners enjoy, you are left with a tightly written contract.
Andrew Dalton
Fast Bikes May 2013
Andrew Dalton has been writing articles for Fast Bikes Magazine for a considerable period and have condensed what we believe are the most useful articles to you. White Dalton Motorcycle Solicitors deal with personal injury claims and our sister company, Motor Defence Solicitors, deal with any road traffic offences.
Good Afternoon Andrew
A local well known motorbike dealership have had my bike since 24th September 2021 with a suspected BBS unit.
It is still in their possession, and still no where closer to having it back, as you can probably tell
this email isn’t going to be a nice one.
I am so fed up with the dealership and the way I have been treated. Their customer service is non existent
I am chasing them up every couple of weeks to get answers, Only once they have contacted myself with an update.
Where do we go from here, I have bought the bike and they couldn’t do enough to get me on it, since then the customer service is is non existent to say the least. I have asked to be bought out of the bike, all I got from the manager is “Its no good to me like that” and walked away!!
I haven’t been offered anything in compensation for the situation, i.e another bike etc
I need to get this sorted asap, I need to be financially settled with the bike at a good market value so I can basically keep my house due to the bills getting more and more every week. Also I would like to know who will subsidise the depreciation I have lost in the 11 months its been at the dealership for?
I have dealt with head office who has helped to move things along a bit, but even they have struggled with communication from this dealership.
Please advise as I have quite frankly had enough of this situation, and this has put me off the brand
totally to which I am considering selling my other bike from the same manufacturer just because of the way I have been swept under the carpet.
What’s the best action I can take please
Keith, I am sorry to hear your tale of woe but there are just too many variables here for me to give a meaningful answer. If the ike was brand new the answer is very different to a second hand bike. if brand new there is a presumption in law that any problems arising at less than 6 months old is a manufacturing defect. if I am right and the part which has packed up is part of the ABS system then it should not be a part that fails or wears out. I suspect you may need to go to court for this. If your bike was over £10k then, if you win, and successfully get a refund on your bike then there is the upside that a good chunk of your lawyer’s fees will be paid. If you lose though, you’ll be paying the dealer’s legal costs. Less than £10,000, each party bears its own costs, win or lose. In my experience a Court summons tends to get you to the front of the queue. I have done it myself with one of my bikes and suddenly the bike was repaired out of warranty but this is my environment, so it holds no fears for me.
iam having trouble with a motorcycle dealer i bought a bike the suspension is not useable they took it back but now after 2 weeks say its ok and dont want to replace the shock absorber what is the best way to deal with this
A lot depends on whether the bike was bought brand new or not and also – what is a suspension problem? To me, all sports bikes feel they have suspension problems because I ride enduro bikes, dual sports and adventure bikes. You could jump on any one of my bikes and feel the brakes were all wrong because most of my bikes have a single disc up front and long fork travel and the suspension would feel very odd for a sports bike rider. if you think the suspension is wrong you will have to get an engineer to give a report saying how and why the suspension is wrong. if the bike is on factory suspension and set to manufacturers’ tolerances and there is nothing objectively wrong witht he suspension, it may well just be a matter of taste.
Interested in your thoughts on this Andrew:
I brought used (very near new) Yamaha Tenere privately last year with 18 months warranty remaining. I had a major engine failure at 3000 miles and returned it to a main dealer for repair. The warranty was approved but I’ve waited nearly 6 months for parts (I’d expect some delay due to Covid etc but not 6 months). Trouble seems to be all coming from Yamaha and not the dealer. Last info I received is that the new cylinder head is subject to a recall (before it was even built) further delaying things. Do I have any scope to claim for loss of use from Yamaha? As an aside I’ve since taken the bike back and fitted a used engine (at my own expense but with the dealers permission) which will be replaced by the original once built.
Hi Luke – there is not really a remedy for loss of use for breach of contract – I have successfully argued thatt he depreciation of a motorcycle caused by it being off the road is a proper head of damage and I have had success with this the one time I argued it in front of a District Judge – but I had evidence of the value at the time the bike went into warranty claim, when it came back – after a very long time and the Judge accepted (after a lot of nose wrinkling and head scratching) that the capital loss on the bike when the bike could not be used was a head of claim but it was a technical argument with a precedent involving loss of use of a bus thinly stretched before the Judge. I got home, but it was a tough argument and despite all the reluctance displayed by the Judge, I think I was quite lcky to get home on that argument on a contract case. My apologies for not picking this up sooner. Hopefully your Ten is back up and running.
The position has not changed post Brexit – in fact all law (and this is not strictly law but an EU arrangement with the manufacturers) existing pre Brexit has just been written over to UK domestic law until changed by an Act of Parliament. I cannot imagine a change of substantive law on this point is a high priority for the UK Government.
This article is 8 years old – is the information still accurate in post Brexit UK in 2021, or has any sense prevailed?
Hi Luke – as a matter of law the faults were present within 6 months of delivery and you have given the vendor/seller the opportunity to remedy. You do have the right to require a reimbursement or a replacement bike so long as the problems are not as a result of your use, by which I mean you have not, for example, filled your bike up with diesel or ran it out of 2 stroke if it is a stroker.
I brought a bike from a lexmoto approved dealership in Feb 2020, it was brand new only had 00001 miles and unregistered,
I got my bike around 2 weeks later all road legal and registered, within the first two months my head lights was nakard, no high beam no low beam, told the dealership and they said they would order a new switch, any way that is one of many problems, took me over 3 months to get seen for first service and over 5 months to get them to look at lights, new switch dint work and it turned out to be a relay, had to wait for this too be delivered by, whilst waiting my bike started to stall userly in the mornings when I started it up, and did occasionaly do it mid ride after about 1 hour on the road, my idle revs was between 3-5 thousand revs and going between and I got my bike in to fix the head light this week and whilst the machanic was working on it some how the starter motor seized up and stopped working, they said they did not do anything and it must of happend before I left out to em which is crap cuz it worked fine for me, and today I was on a busy dual carriage way and my revs just died on me and whole engine cut off, took over 1 hour before kick start would turn over and just keeps cutting out now I’m taking it back to dealer tomorrow,….. What I want to know is have I any rights to demand a refund or a replacement bike as its one thing after another and I’m sure there should not be this many faults with a brand new bike,
Less than 7 months on the road
Done littler over 2500 miles
2 year parts and warranty
Brought it in Feb 2020
Any help would be great
Many thanks
Luke
The same block exemption applies to commercial vehicles. It was an historical compromise. The EU intended to bring in a Directive which is a big and slow job. The mischief that was to be avoided was consumers having warranties invalidated. Car manufacturers agreed to vary their warranty terms but bike manufacturers were not joined in. Neither were commercial vehicles. The big, perceived problem was cars. We are a small and politically unimportant group of road users. The most likely reason is the EU regarded the current method as sufficient to put off a full Directive.
Hi
How can the eu justify having the block exemption on servicing/warranty for cars but not bikes? Isn’t this tantamount to discrimination? Have they ever formally commented on why bikes are exempt? Aplogies if you’ve had this 100 times already.
Regards,
Angry of Mayfair
It is not the manufacturer who is refusing, it is a dealership who did not do the work so I cannot think of any method by which you can compel anyone to switch off the service light. I hope your bike is reliable because I do fear you will might have a big fight on your hands if you have a significant warranty claim. Ducati are not as hard on warranty claims as some manufacturers but I would be surprised if they did not at least initially consider if your warranty was invalidated. I have some experience as a consumer of Ducati Warranty claims from my 2012 Multistrada – and it was pretty painless and minor but my bike had only ever been touched by a franchised dealer.
Can the manufacturer refuse to reset the service light unless they did the service?
This is now out of the hands of the dealer and belongs to Ducati.
1 dealer in the whole of Scotland and they won’t reset my 600 mile running in oil change because I got a local Kawasaki dealer to change the oil.