Did Audi dealer damage my alloy?

LiE

LiE

Caporegime
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I'd hope not given your car is an Audi

Basically a CAT-C with that alloy

Spoke to Susannah at Audi MK and she has passed it onto her manager, so we shall see.

I'm still racking my brain to understand the damage. It's not kerb damage and Audi are the only ones to have done any work on this car.
 
Soldato
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Sure guilty. Few years ago, had the 4 alloys refurbished, nice 19" Peugeot RCZ, and a week after, decided to have 4 Michelin Pilot Sport 4. Formula One Autocentre marked all of them. And later was reluctant saying that they are careful, but using a Sunday service, when the only greasy monkey changing tyres is well overbooked, a receipt for disaster.

Formula One are absolutely atrocious. I got 4 new tyres fitted there once when I'd just bought a new car. One of them kept deflating so I went back. They said they'd refitted the tyre and if it deflated again it was because of corrosion they had found on the inside of the rim. So yes, it deflated again.

I bought some 2nd hand wheels and had them refurbed to the tune of about £600. Had the tyres fitted and low and behold, there was nothing wrong with the original wheels.

All they had done when I took the car back was reflate the tyre. Absolute cowboys.
 

LiE

LiE

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Audi have agreed to do a refurb for free. Didn't have the push for it, the service manager agreed it looks like something they may have done. So there we go.
 
Associate
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Audi have agreed to do a refurb for free. Didn't have the push for it, the service manager agreed it looks like something they may have done. So there we go.
Had this with a previous Golf GTI tyre replacement. Refurb was the worst job in the world so I pushed for a brand new alloy and they agreed. Doing the refurb is them accepting that they did this, so if the refurb is bad then push for a brand new alloy.
 

LiE

LiE

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Had this with a previous Golf GTI tyre replacement. Refurb was the worst job in the world so I pushed for a brand new alloy and they agreed. Doing the refurb is them accepting that they did this, so if the refurb is bad then push for a brand new alloy.

What was poor about the refurb? I’ve not much experience with refurbs so would be good to know what to look out for.
 
Soldato
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Sometimes its easier to just forget diamond cutting and get them resprayed as normal alloys. It can look better on some cars if you pick the right colour :)
 

LiE

LiE

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I'm in this morning for the refurb, a bit of a pain, but on the plus side I can do my morning Skype calls from the dealership while helping myself to their hot drinks.
 
Soldato
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100% that can be caused while changing a tyre.

Local place did it to mine recently while repairing a tyre, damage was identical to yours. They denied it was them of course, even showed me their scruffy machine's "nylon brushes that mean it can never ever damage an alloy", I pointed out that it had a large metal bit sticking out where they had damaged their own machine at some point that could easily do damage and there was even clear metal shavings in the brushes, they just told me I didn't know what I was saying and that they wouldn't accept responsibility.

In the end I gave up and paid to have the wheel repaired, luckily it was an easy repair so more or less invisible now.

I'll be taking pictures of all of my wheels before I let anybody touch them in the future, normally I would anyway but this was a rushed puncture repair and I got rewarded with poor quality workmanship and lies for letting my guard down for just a moment.

Fight it with the dealers, get them to replace the alloy, go all the way to Audi HQ if you have to, it's definitely tyre-removal machine damage and it looks very fresh in your picture, I'm sick of garages in the UK treating customers like we're dirt.

EDIT: You updated the thread while I was posting, great news, well done on getting it repaired.

EDIT2: I didn't read the thread, still, well done.
 
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Man of Honour
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Dont get me started on MK Mercedes - Shower of %^&$

Great job on getting that repaired by the dealership though, shows they care about their customers

To be fair, all brands have shocking dealerships. It's not a Mercedes or an Audi thing. North Oxford BMW are possibly the worst dealership I've dealt with across any brand, but the Dick Lovett BMW dealership 45 minutes or so away is one of the best. Mercedes Newbury are fantastic to me, but no dealership has come close to Jaguar Oxford (who have closed now unfortunately and relocated to 2 minutes from my house, and gone way downhill).

Those guys were incredible, always went way beyond where they had to to make you feel valued, and despite my cars with them needing a lot of work because of various issues, they always made sure they did everything they could to get to the bottom of it, giving me F-Type R's for the week and all kinds of great cars as a nice gesture, free days out to places and nice freebies here and there.
 
Soldato
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Lexus seem to be regarded as being pretty good. I've had a good experience with Toyota as well so far, they have fixed stuff for free even out of warranty (a whole side window mechanism and glass).

Ford were a bit mixed, so was Mazda. Audi were no better but charged like they were.
 
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