A mother of two has detailed how she suffered from nightmares and severe bouts of anxiety after her brand-new $50,000 car was riddled with issues.
Ipswich woman Josephine Miller bought a Volkswagen Golf Alltrack from a Brisbane dealer in 2020.
She paid just under $50,000 for the SUV but it has caused her nothing but problems from the time she first got behind the wheel.
The mother of two says she has been in a three-year battle with the southeast Queensland car dealership over safety concerns and took to social media to tell her story.
‘My car is three years old this July and there have been clear issues showing the car is a lemon,’ she wrote.
‘I have lost sleep over this, been having nightmares, I have major anxiety and it’s something that never goes away,’ she said.
‘It’s just been an ongoing everyday problem. My partner’s 20-year-old Holden in comparison has no issues.’
Mother of two Josephine Miller (pictured) has detailed the nightmare experience she has endured after purchasing a brand new Volkswagen Golf Alltrack in 2020 that has caused her nothing but problems
Ms Miller told the Courier Mail the constant problems had resulted in her losing work as a bond cleaner.
‘We have had to say no to work when taking my car in and not being able to take on jobs we usually would have because of not being able to carry our equipment as we’ve been too stressed to, in case we damage the loan vehicle,’ she said.
Her problems began when the stop/start button stopped working which prevented her from turning the car on.
‘I had to wait two weeks to get my car in to be diagnosed and for the button to be replaced, so I couldn’t drive my car for these two weeks,’ she said.
She says the car has had issues with the brakes and rotors from the time she purchased it up until they were finally fixed this year.
However, after the repairs, she noticed her car had ‘major issues with reversing’.
‘When I would reverse the car after it had been turned off for a while, it would intermittently lose power and roll forward which was terrifying as our driveway is inclined and it would roll toward our fence,’ she said.
But things got even worse. Before Christmas last year, she noticed a pool of water on the floor which she promptly dried up but then again days later saw it had returned.
Diagnosis by Volkswagen found an issue with the air conditioning causing it to leak.
As a result of the moisture the car’s carpet began growing mould, leaving the vehicle smelling ‘unbearable’.
VA Australia ended up giving her dealership the go ahead to make the repairs and cover the $4000 cost to fix it.
After being without her car for six weeks while it was repaired, the Queensland mum said once it returned the car’s transmission somehow got even worse.
‘The issues with reversing were becoming more frequent and I had to call them up again,’ she said.
‘My car went back in for diagnosis and repair and I allowed their master tech to drive my car around for a week to and from work to hopefully have it diagnosed.
‘The master tech confirmed and replicated that there was a loss of power and ordered a new mechatronics under advisement from VW head office from Germany, I didn’t have my car for over six weeks again at this stage.
‘When I picked my car up, they advised that they replaced the mechatronics on a hunch that it would fix this, but if it didn’t I would need to return the car to where I purchased it for a replacement/buyback as they had exhausted all options.’
The mother of two says she has been in a three-year battle with the southeast Queensland car dealership regarding safety concerns and over issues with the vehicles transmission (pictured: Ms Miller’s VW)
She said while she noticed improvement for the first few days, it went downhill and the issues became even worse than before.
‘It intermittently loses power when reversing, when switching to drive it would shutter back and forth and not engage the gear, then roll back,’ she said.
‘This happened on an incline or just in flat parking – with people being stuck behind me when I’m reversing from shopping car parks.’
When she handed over the car to the dealership on May 15, she was without it for just over a month while they assessed it.
Yet they said there was no problem and handed it back to the mother of two and gave her extraordinary advice on how to fix the issue.
‘You just need to floor it in reverse when it starts to lose power,’ the Queensland mother said the dealership told her.
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) told Ms Miller in June that they contacted the dealer to negotiate a solution but told her: ‘Unfortunately, they weren’t willing to give you a remedy’.
The dealership told OFT that the tests they conducted found no faults with the transmission.
Last week local news outlet, Quest Newspapers contacted Volkswagen Australia resulting in the car manufacturer reaching out to Ms Miller and telling her that the matter would be resolved in the coming weeks.
VW Australia said they were working with her dealership to come to a solution for Josephine. Daily Mail Australia has contacted the dealership for comment.
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