Hi all
A few weeks ago my wife's DS3 Cabrio on a 63 plate had an issue with the left side of the roof sticking. I thought it might have been the cold weather but after a while she decided to ring around to see if it needed fixing. Having looked on this forum I feared the worst! A couple of reputable local garages refused to look at the job, even a local specialist said it was better to go to a dealership.
So definitely fearing the worst at this stage, my wife asked Tates Citroen in Crawley (we're in W Sussex) to have a look at the car. Years previously we bought 2 DS3s from them but recently we've decided to own our cars instead of using PCP so having not been their customer for while I did not having very high expectations for good service if I'm honest.
Having collected the car from our house and promised to only charge us to investigate the issue, the initial prognosis was not good. Cables were ruled out as a source of the issue and eventually a motor on the passenger side of the car was found as the culprit.
As others have noted on the forum, the electric roof is German made and parts like motors are not available. The whole damn thing has to be replaced and the cost is enormous, like ?5-6K. Pretty stupid as the car itself is only worth about 4 grand at this stage, even if it is in decent nick.
After the fact, we were told by Tim Smith at Tates that Citroen are fully aware of issues with DS3 cabrio roofs as they got themselves into hot water with an angry customer on Facebook (or something similar) and they had to give a replacement roof FOR FREE! Tim made the same argument for us to Citroen saying that it's stupid to have a car that's not very old with an unsustainable parts situation where customers are being asked to spend more than the value of their car to get a fairly simple fault fixed. He told Citroen that it would be bad service to say this was the only way forward for us as the customer - damn right!!
So thanks to Tim, Citroen agreed and a new roof is exactly what is happening for us as well. The brand spanking new roof has been ordered from Germany and will hopefully be fitted to the car this week.
It's pretty rare that you find a main dealership (especially the service end of things) going that extra mile to really help a customer, so I thought I would share this in the hope that anyone in the vicinity of Crawley go to Tates to get their DS3 serviced... and if you have a problem with your DS3 Cabrio roof, take it to Citroen immediately, no matter how old the car is!!
Can't give enough thanks and praise to Tim and team at Tates... will update once the car is fixed and back on the road. Next week I hope. Fingers crossed.
A few weeks ago my wife's DS3 Cabrio on a 63 plate had an issue with the left side of the roof sticking. I thought it might have been the cold weather but after a while she decided to ring around to see if it needed fixing. Having looked on this forum I feared the worst! A couple of reputable local garages refused to look at the job, even a local specialist said it was better to go to a dealership.
So definitely fearing the worst at this stage, my wife asked Tates Citroen in Crawley (we're in W Sussex) to have a look at the car. Years previously we bought 2 DS3s from them but recently we've decided to own our cars instead of using PCP so having not been their customer for while I did not having very high expectations for good service if I'm honest.
Having collected the car from our house and promised to only charge us to investigate the issue, the initial prognosis was not good. Cables were ruled out as a source of the issue and eventually a motor on the passenger side of the car was found as the culprit.
As others have noted on the forum, the electric roof is German made and parts like motors are not available. The whole damn thing has to be replaced and the cost is enormous, like ?5-6K. Pretty stupid as the car itself is only worth about 4 grand at this stage, even if it is in decent nick.
After the fact, we were told by Tim Smith at Tates that Citroen are fully aware of issues with DS3 cabrio roofs as they got themselves into hot water with an angry customer on Facebook (or something similar) and they had to give a replacement roof FOR FREE! Tim made the same argument for us to Citroen saying that it's stupid to have a car that's not very old with an unsustainable parts situation where customers are being asked to spend more than the value of their car to get a fairly simple fault fixed. He told Citroen that it would be bad service to say this was the only way forward for us as the customer - damn right!!
So thanks to Tim, Citroen agreed and a new roof is exactly what is happening for us as well. The brand spanking new roof has been ordered from Germany and will hopefully be fitted to the car this week.
It's pretty rare that you find a main dealership (especially the service end of things) going that extra mile to really help a customer, so I thought I would share this in the hope that anyone in the vicinity of Crawley go to Tates to get their DS3 serviced... and if you have a problem with your DS3 Cabrio roof, take it to Citroen immediately, no matter how old the car is!!
Can't give enough thanks and praise to Tim and team at Tates... will update once the car is fixed and back on the road. Next week I hope. Fingers crossed.
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