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What is this about?
Imagine buying a brand new car for the
family. A
nice, large people carrier that did well in the safety tests, from a
well established company. A car that will provide them with safe, reliable,
comfortable motoring. Of course it is expensive, but you feel your family
is worth it. That is what I thought I was buying when I purchased a brand new
Peugeot 807 Executive back in March 2003 from one of my local dealers for close to 23,000 pounds.
Now imagine how you would feel if that car
had endless faults, many of which needed several visits to the dealer
network to resolve - and after three years the car is still not reliable. Imagine
spending more than a full working week of your life just driving the
car backwards and forwards to the dealers. Imagine driving more than
1,000 miles in visits to the dealers. Imagine having to order your life
around a faulty car. Managing without the car when it is unsafe to drive.
Working out when you can get it to the dealer for repairs. Wondering how
you will manage without it or with an inadequate courtesy car (we have
had an 807 courtesy car on two occassions - when the car was in for
four weeks and when it was in for three weeks. We have also had some 206s
and a 1007, on most repairs we have not had a courtesy car). Imagine the cost in
time and money of endless phone calls and letters trying to get somebody
at Peugeot or Peugeot's own finance company to accept that this car is not,
and never has been, of satisfactory quality. Imagine how you would feel
when the manufacturer infers that you are being unreasonable in not accepting
yet more repairs - and then has the gall to complain that they are spending an inordinate amount
of time on your car! Imagine the feeling of panic when your child is in distress
in the car and you cannot open the door to get to them because, as you've just
discovered, the outside handle doesn't work.
Imagine dreading the BEEP that warns you of another fault - real or imagined
by the unreliable electronics. Imagine the stress of owning a vehicle like this
- one that whenever you drive you wonder what will break next.
This has been our life with the Peugeot 807. We had the car for three
years, and did not have a single fault-free week in the car. Many of these faults have also been
experienced by others - we are apparently not alone in having an
appallingly bad car. Out of the last 12 months of ownership alone, the car spent more than
three months at the dealership. We have been told
by Peugeot that we should expect problems with a new car, and that providing
a replacement vehicle would be "inappropriate" - even after I offered to pay a reasonable
contribution towards one. Peugeot have refused absolutely to explain this
arbitrary decision, even though it would probably have cost them less than the
many thousands of pounds and hundreds of man hours they have spent trying
to get our car working correctly. One of their "customer service" advisors actually told me it
was ILLEGAL for Peugeot to replace it!
Peugeot and the dealer absolutely refused to accept that there was anything unusual or
unacceptable about the number of faults with our car or their inability to rectify them in a reasonable time period. I never received any apology for
the amount of time it was off the road, nor the inconvenience caused, nor the hundreds of
hours wasted trying to get somebody from Peugeot to care about our car, nor the stress and
many sleepless nights, nor the thousands
of pounds that I lost due to their incompetence. It was repeatedly made clear to me that
Peugeot UK have no empathy for customers who are suffering with shoddily designed, built
and maintained cars. I feel abused and ripped off by this company - their profits were
considered far more important than customer satisfaction. Peugeot claim to give you the
drive of your life; they certainly took me for a ride!
Even now, in discussions I've had with the dealership (as they set their lawyers on me
for daring to tell others about the appalling car and how they failed to fix all of the faults despite
having it their garage for over three months in the final year I owned it) it is clear that they
think it is unreasonable for me to warn others about my experience. My car had a totally
unreasonable number of faults. It spent an unreasonable amount of time being fixed. I
received absolutely nothing in the way of compensation for the lack of use of my car, the
hundreds of hours I spent trying to get it repaired, the stress and worry they caused.
They eventually bought the car back from me for no more than I could have traded it in
at any other garage - but in all conscience I couldn't sell the car to an unsuspecting
person so it had to go back to them. I lost thousands of pounds due to their inability to
provide me with a working car, but they say I should forget about it as it is all now in the past...
I must stress that the contents of this site are based upon my personal
experience of the 807 and the poor service we received from Peugeot and
their dealers.
It is correct to the best of my knowledge. These faults were all
experienced on our car; some have been fully resolved, some have simply
disappeared (possibly fixed by a BSI - main computer - replacement, or
possibly just in remission waiting to turn up again), others are still
causing problems.
It is interesting to note that the 807 courtesy cars we
have had have shown some of the same faults as our car.
Electrical
Faults
- Spurious low oil level warning on the
central display
- Random oil level readings on display
behind steering wheel (this took
over two years to resolve)
- Spurious low tyre pressure warnings (apparently the car still suffers from these, though I no longer own it)
- Missing wheel sensor warnings (over two
years to resolve this and the
low pressure warnings)
- Anti-pollution filter clogged warning
- Spurious braking fault warning
- Spurious passenger air bag failure warning
- Driver's electric seat moves randomly
when car unlocked
- Electric seat loses memory settings
- The cable to the driver's seat back motor
would fall out when the seats
were rotated, stopping adjustment of the seat.
- The electric height adjustment of the driver's seat has failed.
- Side sliding doors intermittently failing
to open when the button
pressed inside the car
- Intermittently the side doors do not open
first time from the remote
control
- Intermittently the sliding doors would
not shut or lock - disconnecting
the battery and rebooting the car was necessary to solve this.
- Intermittent burning smell when driving
- Engine immobiliser fault - the car had to
be recovered back to a dealer
- Complete loss of control of the car -
windows going up and down, wipers
starting and stopping, mirrors folding in and out, lights flashing; disconnecting the
battery regained control.
- Doors refuse to lock remotely
- Headlights staying on when parked and
locked (they should turn off
after 30 seconds)
- Headlights failing to turn on in the dark.
- Ventilation fan failure in the height of
summer, with a lead time of
several weeks for a replacement (with no fan, the air conditioning is
useless - a big problem in a car with this much glass).
- The ventilation fan started making a clicking noise, which became a squeal.
The second replacement fan was also noisy - the car was on its third when we got rid of it.
- The wing mirrors originally folded in
when the car was locked, then out
when the ignition was started. A software "upgrade" changed this to
fold out when the car is unlocked - making it difficult to get past
them in a tight car park space.
- The wing mirrors have remained folded in
when the car was started - a power cycle was needed to restore operation.
Electric
Windows
- The windows
should close when the car is locked - this became an intermittent feature
- The windows can no longer be opened from
the key fob (due to a software
"upgrade" in the car) - this means that on a hot summer day you cannot
remotely unlock the car and open the windows to let cool air in.
- All four window regulators have failed - the
symptoms include windows that
refuse to wind up (they go up then back down again), or refusing to
wind down fully. In total seven replacement regulators have been
fitted. One door is on its fourth regulator. On one visit we were
handed the car back with the metal channel that the window slides in
badly bent - the dealer had bent it out to remove the glass, but not
replaced it with a new one.
Trim/body
problems
- All four door handles had the metallic
coating crack and peel - in
areas where you would not touch it, demonstrating that this was not
wear and tear. Several attempts were made to refit new handles; we
suffered poor fitting, loose handles, incorrect alignment between front
and rear, faulty return springs and scratching to the paintwork.
- The driver's door did not shut properly,
and needed several visits to
have it correctly adjusted.
- The external black plastic trim on one of
the sliding doors would
gradually move forwards, until it fouled the driver's door
- The sliding doors intermittently would
not open using the outside door
handles, only from the inside or using the remote.
- Ventilation for the middle row seats
comes through channels in the
front doors, and then through the pillar where the front seat
occupants' seat belts are fitted. The trim seals very badly, letting
cold air blow onto the kidney area of the front seat occupants and
getting minimal air flow into the rear. (There is now a modified seal
availabe to cure this)
- The rear window washer pipe has a join in
the rear pillar. This join
falls apart, spraying the interior of the car with soapy water. This
has happened twice.
- The plastic trim panels in the rear pillars (as used to
gain acess to the rear light clusters and the wayward washer pipe) fit poorly, and once
disturbed do not remain in place properly again (also seen in both of our 807 courtesy cars).
- The rear window wiper missed large areas of glass
- The driver's seat foam seat squab was
collapsing - after less than
30,000 miles.
- The drinks cooler under the gearstick
would open whenever we went over
a minor bump, even when empty.
- The upper luggage net fixings would not
remain in place.
- The trim panel on the passenger sliding
door was badly refitted
following other repairs - the whole panel was replaced on our next
visit.
- The cables linking the rear seat folding
mechanisms to the control
levers comes adrift, needing a strip-down in place in the car as you
cannot remove the seat.
- The air conditioning unit's drain pipe
became disconnected, leading to
a puddle of water in the passenger foot well. This took two visits to
resolve.
- There is an extremely poor design in the rotating
front seats (you can make them turn around to face into the car - ideal for
picnics). If the driver's seat is at its lowest setting, the trim on the side
of the seat fouls the base of the seat as it turns. On both the driver and
passenger seat, the seat armrests foul the door pillars as they turn.
- The lining of the one of the upper dashboard storage
areas was damaged by the main dealer mechanic leaving the locking wheelnut socket
rolling around in it, rather than replacing it in the main glove box. This has not
been repaired as it would cost the dealer too much (it is a full dash replacement,
apparently), so we get to live with it ...
- The grab-handle on the inside of the driver's door (i.e.
the handle you pull to close the door) is now loose. I assume this is due to the number of
times the driver's door has been stripped down and rebuilt (as a result of having multiple
replacement exterior door handles and window regulators). Update - following replacement of
the door card, the door now rattles.
- The door rattle was diagnosed as a loose hinge. The hinge was replaced, now the driver's door doesn't fit correctly - and it still rattles!
Engine/Gearbox/General
Mechanical
- When driven for a short time then parked,
there is a puff of grey smoke
(unburnt diesel?) from underneath the car and the whir of a motor in
the same area. This can come into the car if you open the passenger
side sliding door. Apparently this is a heater to get things warm quickly
on a cold day, it is just poor design that it fills the car with fumes.
Unfortunately nobody at our dealers or Peugeot seemed to know about this!
- Excessive uneven tyre wear - the tyres
would be illegal in less than
12,000 miles due to being worn out on one edge of the tyre whilst the
other has more than half the tread still remaining. This is a design fault, the cure
is to replace all 15" wheels with 16" wheels and realign the suspension.
- An anti-pollution fault left us in
limp-home mode, driving slowly to
get to the dealer.
- A gearbox fault meaning that the gear
stick's reverse-gate sleeve would
stick in the reverse position - you would then easily select reverse by
mistake rather than first.
- This car needed new front brake disks and pads at 24,000 miles,
then again at 36,000 miles (yes, that is 12,000 miles on a set of disks!). I have never had a car that needed new disks before at least
60,000 miles - several cars have done over 120,000 miles on the original disks before I replaced
the car. Have you ever had a car where the brake disks wear out at the same rate as the brake pads? It appears that the disks are either badly made or badly specified for this vehicle.
- The car lost power and stopped on a busy dual carriageway. The AA patrol's fault code reader registered a primary fuel pump failure and a speed sensor failure.
- The starter motor was replaced due to very slow turnover.
Unbelievable? Click here to see just one of the many warranty service invoices - this one for almost £4200! Some of the items on here had been looked at/replaced before, some were replaced again later.
Is your car worse than this?
Unfortunately I am not alone in having problems with the car that are not
dealt with effectively by Peugeot.
Try reading some of the
owner reviews at Parker's, the well know car valuation and review guide.
Or look at the amazing performance of the 807 in the Top Gear owner's survey 2005,
where the 807 came in at the bottom position based upon the lack of reliability, poor build quality and poor customer service - three things that we have experienced in abundance.
However, Peugeot are nothing if not consistent - gaining bottom place again in 2006 in a survey of 56,000 car owners, both for the 807 and as a manufacturer.
These quotes can be found on the Top Gear site referring to Peugeot or the 807:-
- "Falls down in every area. As satisfying as a dose of dysentery" (Sinners)
- "Perhaps it's forgivable to find the Peugeot 807 (149th) down this end of the list - yes, it's a heap of junk, but at least it's a heap of junk with no pretensions of driveability. The French manufacturer will be embarrassed, however, to see the woeful 307 (148th) keeping it company."(Best/worst to drive)
- "As naff as Skoda is good, Peugeot racked up three positions in the bottom ten - and came last overall in the manufacturer listing."(The Sinners)
- "Eight out of the ten least reliable cars come from across the Channel, with the Peugeot 807 propping up the table." (Best/worst reliability)
- "Yes, the French are in trouble again. Sixteen of the 25 worst-built cars in our survey are the spawn of the unholy Peugeot-Citroen-Renault triumvurate, and it's no surprise to find the Peugeot 807 propping up the list again."(Best/worst build quality)
- "Owners of the ill-fated MPV were shocked by its shoddy electrics and dodgy transmission, as well as excessive road noise and grumbling engines." (Best/worst build quality)
- "At the grand larceny end of the table, it's painful reading for owners of people-carriers and SUVs. The Renault Espace, Citroen C8 and (yes, you guessed it) Peugeot 807 all languish in the bottom ten..." (Best/worst running costs)
Will they fare any better when this years' survey is carried out?
Someone else has been having trouble with Peugeot - crushmy307.co.uk wants to deliver his car back to the dealer crushed into a cube!
Another 307 owner launched peugeotsucks.co.uk/
Clearly it isn't just me - Peugeot are failing to deal effectively with problems from many owners.
Want to contact me?
If you would like to ask any questions, or maybe add your own experiences, I can be contacted using the details below.
Telephone 0870 3210 807
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