Central Coast Motor Group

"Your first won't be your last" definitely doesn't apply to myself following my distressing ordeal over the last five months with Mazda Australia & Central Coast Motor Group. I have refrained from sharing my story with the public as I believed Mazda Australia would have no hesitation in cooperating and assisting with this matter.

Unfortunately this is not the case. I took my vehicle in for a scheduled service at Central Coast Motor Group Wyong, the dealership in which I purchased my car brand new from in November 2014, leaving with the confidence that my car had been well maintained by their staff. Four days later on Friday 17th February, I had driven to a friends place for what was supposed to be a quiet night in... only minutes after exiting the vehicle we heard a car horn repeatedly beeping out the front, forcing us to investigate.

Upon opening the front gate, I was in disbelief to see my pride and joy pouring with smoke and flames from the engine bay. After the fire brigade had extinguished my car, themselves and attending police officers inspected the vehicle and deemed there to be no sign of malicious damage and assured me it would likely be a fault of the car which is stated in both of their reports. The following day I alerted Central Coast Motor Group, explaining my concern that the vehicle had only recently been serviced. I was assured they would make Mazda aware of this and someone would be in touch.

Weeks went by and I had not been contacted, forcing me to contact the service advisor I had spoken to on Saturday. I received a reply stating " On the 20/2/17 we had 2 Mazda Field Technical Specialist & our service Manager, go down to Vanderpoels to try and inspect the vehicle unfortunately it had already been taken to the Newcastle wreckers as it had been assessed by GIO & as the vehicle has gone to scrap there is nothing that we can do." This was in fact a lie as I obtained my belongings from my car at this location on 21/2/17. This set the president of "there is nothing we can do" which I would continually hear over the coming months. Days, weeks & months have gone on, countless hours wasted on the phone to Mazda Australia - constantly chasing up the status of the matter hoping to be given answers as to why my car just set fire.

On every occasion I was told they had passed the matter on and were waiting for some sort of response. It took more than four months from learning of the incident for Mazda Australia to do anything, they finally agreed to take possession of my vehicle for an inspection - two weeks passed and I received a demoralising & insensitive phone call from the Customer Relations Specialist advising the inspection was inconclusive, that they couldn't find anything and couldn't find the cause. I was told I "was making an assumption that the manufacturer was at fault and not a third party". I reminded the lady I had signed whiteness statements from neighbours who saw me drive past, park and watched the car fire start with no third party involvement; her response was "that means nothing".

I asked what the outcome would have been if I were still in the vehicle at the time as it was only minutes before that I was, considering all the electrics went and the vehicle wasn't able to be opened - again her response was "now you're just talking hypothetical". I was absolutely disgusted!!

Mazda are not offering any form of compensation and have not once been empathetic towards me for the situation I have been dealing with. It's the typical case of treating consumers' statutory rightsas an optional extra and even though my car was still under manufacturers warranty Mazda do not see the seriousness in finding why their vehicle caught fire!