We have a Subaru XV under warranty.
The car has two caps at the front under the headlights, which hide a spray mechanism that helps to keep the front headlights clean.
Around Oct 2015 we noticed one of them had disappeared.
The car is still under warranty, until 2017. We took it to service early 2016 and explained the situation, but our Subaru-authorised retailer / service centre told us that it would cost almost $300 to replace the cap because it was likely not a manufacturing defect, that it was probably a bump that caused it to fall off and therefore was not covered by warranty.
We could not recall any bump, nor was there any evidence of external damage to the car to suggest this. There are also no marks to suggest anyone stole the cap.
We thought that it was possible that, since we had been doing quite a lot of highway high speed driving during 2015, the cap might have come off while driving at high speed? E.g. when activating the headlight washers while driving at high speed. We have tried to think of all the possibilities re: how the cap could have fallen off, but nothing makes sense except if there was a fault in the attachments to cause it to fall off.
Since then we have attempted emailing Subaru Australia and they said that if the retailer said it is not under warranty, then they will agree with that assessment. We also called the Office of Business and Consumer Affairs (the ACCC equivalent for South Australia) but they said that we will need to have another 'professional opinion' in writing, and give that to them, for there to be any case to be made.
Does anyone have any similar experience with this or other cars and claiming a warranty? And has anyone had a second opinion and approached the ACCC, and how did this go?
Thanks for reading.
warranty is more Department of Fair Trading than ACCC related. Read this article from NRMA re car warranty.