Hi Poolmarket,

I was very fortunate believe it or not, as I had only had my car 3 days before the BCI, Renault tried to palm me off with a Nissan Micra at first but I repeatedly said I wasn’t paying for petrol and battery hire. They reimbursed me for the fuel I had purchased and gave me a another Zoe for the remaining 5 weeks that they had my car.
I’ve had my car back a week now and no issues at all with BCI. In the end I ran up 1700 miles on their Zoe and they have agreed to pay me £400 in compensation + petrol.

I found that by arranging regular call backs from Renault HQ and escalating it early, you are in a position to pull them up on their incompetence at every opportunity. By repeatedly doing this you are in a better position to negotiate a deal for yourself.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not a complainer, in fact I’m a very laid back person and although I wasn’t happy at only having my car for 3 days before it went wrong, I wasn’t going to kick up a stink as these things happen it’s new technology after all. But after the 5 time of ordering the wrong part and finally installing it (it being a major component) then returning my car without carrying out any regression testing I discovered they hadn’t checked the cruise control which was now broke, everyone has a breaking point!!!!

“How easy is it to open a case with the financial ombudsman?”

Very easy, just give it a google but be warned you will be dealing with a bunch of desk tied chimps whom don’t understand the concept of a screwdriver.

If I where you then I would push for the battery charge controller unit to be replaced and then replaced again if the BCI state reoccurs as the financial ombudsman proved to be an agonising dead end for us.

and @poolmarket “I will ask them about covering the battery lease as I have made 2 payments”

In the 3 months that we where without our car we had to pay the battery lease as come what may it has to be payed according to Renault and the battery rental agreement but good luck!

You must have been one of the other people on the list Renault kept telling me I was on waiting for the charging unit. A shame that I had the car back 1 week and then yesterday it gave me the battery charging impossible error again!
I have now taken the car back to the dealer and have told them I want to reject it as am not prepared to have it gone for another 3 months whilst they try and fix it.

I hope yours is properly fixed unlike mine!

No No not a challenge as such it just as the weather gets colder the miles reduce like this morning Zoe was down to 78 after the charge I am with British Gas home charge it takes about 3 hrs for a full charge from empty its a very good service and I have not even noticed and major rise in my bills in fact Lndira I have been so impressed on how much I have spent on the charging or not spent on charging in the last year, and on my travels I only use ecotricity so its been cool

But the Zoe battery performs so much better in the sun a bit like us all I guess

Dr Steel

Thanks for letting us no lndira As i said in my last post they are getting back to me next week

I bet your getting very excited now of your new car you will enjoy it so much I love mine shame you will have to wait till next summer to get the full use out of the battery I got 99 miles on the clock last month funny how little things like that put a smile on your face

Thanks again

Dr Steel

Think about it. No clutch, no gearbox, no points, no spark plugs, no timing chain, no petrol pump, no coil, no fuel injection, no water jacket and circulation pump, no exhaust pipe and silencer, no oil changes, filters and pumps, etc, etc.

I have thought about it before…. It is an attractive argument, but it has a rather bleak corollary:

If you compare an ICE consists of £5k of ‘car’ and £5k of 100 bits that are waiting to go wrong, to an EV of £5k of ‘car’ and £15k of 4 bits that can go wrong (motor, battery, inverter and charger, basically), then if something goes wrong with the ICE it’ll cost £50 on average in parts, and if something goes wrong with the EV it’ll cost £3,750 on average in parts.

…hmmmmm….

You can talk yourself into either argument, and you’ll make the argument fit what you want to do. It’s not a logical decision you’ll actually be making. Just pick what you want.

I was one of the early adopters taking delivery on 28-May-2013 and two days later Zoe was on a flatbed on its way to
Renault ZE service Birmingham.

Three months and four more trips on the flatbed Zoe is now working as intended. sort of as the dreaded
“BATTERY CHARGE IMPOSSIBLE” still rears its ugly head on occasion.
Through extensive experience with Renault customer support and Renault dealers I conclude that they know nothing about EV’s and don’t appear to have received any training on the subject as I found myself doing the education on more than one occasion.

That apart, I am driving the best and most advanced mass-market EV available period and she is simply fantastic to drive.
Wife and I still fight over who is going to drive 🙂 🙂

I would hope that Renault have learnt something from our bad experiences but looking at these forums new owners can still pick up an expensive lemon!