15/08/2006

Holiday Takes a More Leisurely Pace

Here is our new car - barely 3 months old - being loaded up to be taken to be repaired. Michael is not at all pleased but at least it's not his fault.


Two engine warning lights suddenly came on yesterday morning and the car was massively lacking power.

The garagiste looked inside the bonnet and said there was nothing he could do - it would have to go to the main Audi garage to have the fault analysed by computer and that we shouldn't drive it. I'm not surprised because under the bonnet everything is inside sealed compartments with no wires or pipes to fiddle with.

So he loaded it up , took it away and the EuropAssist girl organised a hire car and a taxi to take us to it. The hire car is a top-of-the-range Alfa Romeo, almost brand new, with air con, sat nav and all the other gizmos you can think of.

The strangest part of all this is that there is no mention of this emergency facility in the handbook and the Audi garage at home told us that to be covered under warranty for repair abroad we had to pre-arrange with an Audi garage near us here in France when to bring the car in to be looked at.

The first garage I phoned couldn't even look at it until next week because it's a bank holiday in France today; the second said if we were passing they could look at it but didn't recommend that we should drive it. It was only at the end of this conversation that I was given the emergency breakdown service number with the voice recognition phrase I had to use and from here it was plain sailing. An English speaking person took all the details, sent out the mechanic, organised the hire car and sent the taxi.

Now why didn't Audi in England know this???

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hope this does not give Michael (or you) ideas about new cars!!
What bad luck.
I think the throw looks really good.
My laptop has died!
Bar