Paint warranty

[Amigo]

I contacted the local Audi dealer regarding some corrosion on my 7.5 years old Audi A6 Avant C7, and I provided them with the following information:

- The locations of the corrosion:





Issue 1:



Issue 2:



Issue 3:



Issue 4:



Issue 5:



Issue 6:




All apart from Issue 5 are on aluminium panels, from what I can tell.

The response I got from the Warranty Assessor at Audi is:
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Thank you for sending this enquiry through to me & apologies for the delayed response. Thank you for the excellent details & images regarding the areas of concern on the body. They have been very helpful in me checking these body complaints.

Regarding Audi’s warranty cover for paint & body, all vehicles have a 3 year unlimited mileage for paint & 12 year unlimited mileage for ‘through corrosion’. An important fact to be aware of is that through corrosion is only applicable to steel panels on the body. The Audi A6 has an aluminium body. As a result of this, it’s not possible for the bodywork on this vehicle to suffer from through corrosion.

As mentioned before, the images supplied are very good and looking at these & my knowledge from previous inspections of similar complaints I can confirm that the defect on the vehicle is classed as ‘Aluminium oxidisation under paint’ (paintwork damage type 0004 in Audi’s internal paint damage code). The reason this defect manifests itself is due to water moisture in the paint when it was first applied. Very slowly this causes oxidisation to the aluminium panel underneath and then causes the visual defect that you can see on the vehicle now. This is considered a paint defect and therefore falls into the paint warranty category. I have completed a factory goodwill check to see if there is any repair contribution from the manufacturer and I’m afraid to say that the result was 0% repair contribution. (The goodwill check is done via an internal system that checks a matrix based on vehicle age, mileage, component & damage type).

IÂ’m sorry this isnÂ’t better news but IÂ’m afraid repair costs for these defects canÂ’t be recovered under the manufacture warranty.
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My question is this: is this the end of it, or should I push for a fix, at least on the Issue 5, which is on the arch above the B-pillar, and it's clearly steel?

Either way, is it worth fixing them, will they get worse in time? I reckon it'd be a couple of grand, which is a lot and almost certainly I will not get that back in extra value if and when I sell it, not even if I do it right after the fix, although I have not yet got a quote from a body shop. The car has been serviced religiously—I owned it from new—and still runs flawlessly after 176k miles (2L Ultra).

Regardless, I thought it would be a good idea to present my experience to the forum members as the email I got back from Audi Warranty contains useful information. Thoughts, ideas, suggestions welcome.

[Whippy53]

So, to summarise, "it's shoddy paint that we put on your car at our factory, yeah we know all about it, tough. You're on your own, so sue us".

Slightly unbelievable. I would press on. Try getting the world of media onboard.

[johnsimcox]

So, to summarise, "it's shoddy paint that we put on your car at our factory, yeah we know all about it, tough. You're on your own, so sue us".

Slightly unbelievable. I would press on. Try getting the world of media onboard.

Would agree with Whippy53. The response from Audi implies that for the A6 the 10 year body warranty is worthless. Wonder if this exclusion is spelt out in the Ts&Cs. I certainly have never heard of it before

[johnsimcox]

There is nothing in the Ts&Cs on Audi's website to suggest Aluminium bodied cars are any different to steel bodied cars. https://www.audi.co.uk/dam/nemo/uk/O...ion-030723.pdf

Ate the very least I would ask the dealer to show where in Ts&Cs provided tot he customer at the time of sale this exclusion is spelt out