Motoring Discussion > Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's Buying / Selling
Thread Author: mikeyb Replies: 27
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New Sun 15 Jul 12 21:26 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - mikeyb
A colleague of mine has just decided on a Citroen DS3 for his wife. They gave him a good offer on either a petrol or diesel model on a lease which worked out within a few pence per month of each other, so the obvious choice in his mind was the diesel being cheaper to run.

....however, his wife drives from the edge of the city into the city center in heavy traffic and covers about 5,000 a year.

I told him that the diesel was unsuitable for what it would get used for so he ordered the petrol, but did raise with the sales guy the lack of information regarding DPF's - the guy was a bit sheepish and said "oh yeah, I meant to talk to you about that"

Is the miss-selling of DPF equipped cars common, or was he just unlucky?
Last edited by: mikeyb on Sun 15 Jul 12 at 21:27
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New Sun 15 Jul 12 21:42 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - MD
Aren't all car salesmen low lifes? or is it just 99%
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New Sun 15 Jul 12 22:02 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Bill Payer
>> Is the miss-selling of DPF equipped cars common, or was he just unlucky?
>>
Apparently Skoda quietly took cars back off taxi drivers who weren't told DPF's would be a problem.

We bought a Golf last year and did buy a petrol but when I asked about the diesel version the salesman didn't make any enquiries about the type of use the car would get.
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New Sun 15 Jul 12 22:08 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Londoner
Whilst I have met some very switched-on salesmen, a depressingly large number of them seem to know tiddly squat about cars or motoring!

“Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte
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New Sun 15 Jul 12 22:12 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Armel Coussine
If there are blanket rural speed limits of 40mph downward, being threatened, it won't be possible for a lot of owners to keep them in proper fettle without breaking the 'law' as it is laughingly called. They will have to seek out motorways and dual carriageways and waste fuel going there and back.

Nothing would make me buy a diesel car with a DPF. The technology hasn't been developed sufficiently to justify imposing them. It's moronic and a bit outrageous.

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New Sun 15 Jul 12 22:17 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Bill Payer
>> If there are blanket rural speed limits of 40mph downward, being threatened, it won't be
>> possible for a lot of owners to keep them in proper fettle without breaking the
>> 'law' as it is laughingly called.

Presumeably they could just drive in lower gear?
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New Sun 15 Jul 12 22:20 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - MD
Ankle socks!
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New Sun 15 Jul 12 22:25 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Armel Coussine
>> they could just drive in lower gear?

That of course being just what you want to do with a high-geared diesel car acquired for its exceptional economy...
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 08:33 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - TeeCee
>>
>> Presumeably they could just drive in lower gear?
>>

I suppose that you could grind along at snail's pace in 1st along a nice, long piece of road in a 40mph area. You might then just manage to keep it at 2000RPM or higher for the necessary 20 minutes or so to complete a DPF regen before having to stop for the next junction.

The inevitable queue of vehicles behind might have a few choice words to say on the subject though.
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New Sun 15 Jul 12 22:19 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - mikeyb
I kind of suspect that most salesman would be economical with the truth if they thought it would get in the way of a sale, but I wonder how the law interprets this?

If I want to buy a car on finance from a dealer they have to offer me gap insurance to protect myself and make me sign to prove that I have been offered XY + Z, so is there a case to claim against a dealer if the car is not suitable for its intended purpose?
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New Sun 15 Jul 12 23:30 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Dutchie
Don't trust anybody who wants your money.They are a bussiness and you have to find out yourself about the pitfalls of these DPF's.The dealer will blame the manufacturer.You never know if somebody took them to court for misselling a car they might win.
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 03:45 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - idle_chatterer
Am I alone in thinking this is a trivial matter ? Of the 3 cars the Idle household has had with DPFs only one has ever regenerated its DPF (the awful 170PD Audi when very new) and even that only did it once to my knowledge.

When SWMBO was in the market for a Golf we opted for the TSi to avoid DPFs and because she did such a low mileage, IIRC whilst the salesperson didn't specifically 'cite the DPF, they recommended the TSi as the car would likely be very low mileage (3 or 4K PA) so the additional cost of a diesel couldn't be justified.

The simple fact is that ALL cars cost (quite a lot of) money to run, if that means spending 2 Pounds on a 10 minute 60mph drive 'for the sake of it' once a fortnight what's the big deal ? Surely if this is too much money then that particular car is not a sensible use of your limited resources?

Wasn't the same argument about the cost/likelihood of failure applied to Catalytic Converters when they were first introduced, then maybe to aircon as it became ubiquitous and no-doubt ABS and airbags too?

There is no mis-selling, caveat emptor surely......
Last edited by: idle_chatterer on Mon 16 Jul 12 at 03:47
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 07:44 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Meldrew
ISTR that nobody really wanted them, as such. They were one way for the manufacturers to comply with the then new EuroIV emissions regulations.
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 10:19 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - rtj70
Most of us won't notice a DPF equipped car doing a regeneration because when the exhaust is hot enough the deposits just burn away. A car only resorts to regeneration by injecting fuel into the exhaust if there has been no chance of regenerating automatically.

I do a lot of short journeys but do some longer ones too. So far so good. And I drove like this in a Mazda6 for 4 years :-)
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 11:49 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Londoner
>> Most of us won't notice a DPF equipped car doing a regeneration because when the
>> exhaust is hot enough the deposits just burn away.
I agree.

There have been a couple of times when the damn thing has just started a regen at the end of a long journey though, just as I am getting home. When this happens, the fan keeps going like the clappers when the car is stopped (with or without the engine actually running). It is VERY noisy!

It would be great if I could somehow inhibit the car starting a regen when I am getting close to home - a "Not now, Kato" button.
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 11:11 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - oilburner
>>
>> Is the miss-selling of DPF equipped cars common, or was he just unlucky?
>>

Unlucky. I was in a Citroën dealer's a few months ago, working with my laptop whilst they did a recall on Mrs OBs car. In the meantime I overheard the full sales chat as some young girl with her family went through the process of buying a new Citroën.

The salesmen was very informative and helpful to them (as far as I could tell) and went to great pains to stress how a DPF equipped diesel would be unsuitable for the low mileage the girl would be doing.

I guess it depends on training/awareness of salesmen?
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 19:20 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - mikeyb

>> I guess it depends on training/awareness of salesmen?
>>

Or the honesty :-)
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 19:29 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Runfer D'Hills
On the other hand... A good ( or consistantly successful anyway ) sales person instinctively knows that "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"

If someone has decided they want a diesel and has come to buy one, the sale is far more likely to be made if that's what they get help to buy. A genuinely well intended steering to a petrol might unnerve the customer into being indecisive.

Fault is rarely a unilateral thing.
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 19:54 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Dutchie
I agree Humph that is the art of selling.
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 21:20 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - swiss tony
>> >> I guess it depends on training/awareness of salesmen?
>> >> Or the honesty :-)
>>

An honest car salesman?
more chance of the Loch Ness monster winning a gold medal.
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 23:05 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Dave_
i've delivered quite a few DPF-equipped new lease cars to drivers whose usage patterns aren't regen-friendly. I'd be interested to know whether the DPF's requirements are spelled out in the lists at car-choosing time, assuming the driver does the choosing without going near an actual human salesperson.
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New Mon 16 Jul 12 23:57 
 Mis-selling Diesels / DPF's - Avant
"They gave him a good offer on either a petrol or diesel model on a lease which worked out within a few pence per month of each other."

In Mikeyb's colleague's case the salesman was stupid rather than dishonest, as the deals were similar.
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New Tue 17 Jul 12 17:44 
 Mis-selling Diesels / DPF's - Mike Hannon
To my surprise I am beginning to see warning advice in French motor magazines about the suitability of diesel against petrol. And the letters page in their equivalent of Auto Express (Auto Plus) are full of people complaining about problems with regeneration, DMFs, etc.
This is the market where 80 per cent of cars sold are diesels, purely for fuel price reasons, as successive governments have played the populist card by manipulating the tax on diesel.
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New Tue 17 Jul 12 18:14 
 Mis-selling Diesels / DPF's - DP
It is ironic that the masterpiece of precision engineering and fuelling technology that is a modern diesel engine, relies on a Heath Robinson contraption that traps crap in a bin, and then throws an almighty strop if it isn't presented with the right conditions to start a chimney fire before it clogs up with soot.

You couldn't make it up. It would be funny if it weren't causing such grief. The Victorians would have laughed it out of town.
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New Wed 18 Jul 12 09:05 
 Mis-selling Diesels / DPF's - oilburner
>> You couldn't make it up. It would be funny if it weren't causing such grief.
>> The Victorians would have laughed it out of town.
>>

True..but...I'm surprised there isn't an alternative system yet to do the same job more reliably.
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New Wed 18 Jul 12 07:18 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - L'escargot
Here's what the AA says about DPFs. tinyurl.com/382vzg
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New Wed 18 Jul 12 09:09 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - henry k
>> Here's what the AA says about DPFs. tinyurl.com/382vzg
>>
A interesting read.
I suspect that "RTFM" is not the norm so what chance is there of joe public using a car to these requirements ?
Helps keep the garage trade alive.
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New Wed 18 Jul 12 16:56 
 Miss-selling Diesels / DPF's - Dutchie
Reading the AA reports there have been kidnapping threats driving south to Rotterdam Amsterdam and places in Belgium by East European gangs with British numberplates.

Have a nice holiday.>;)
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