Gabriella Jaszai took her vehicle to a car dealership in Mississauga a few days before Christmas. She’s been waiting to get it back ever since.
“We took a perfectly working vehicle,” her father Attila Jaszai told Global News, explaining how a simple vehicle recall appointment prevented his daughter from using her Audi A3 e-tron for nearly five months.
The 2017 Audi hybrid was brought to Audi Mississauga on Dec. 22, 2022 to address the recall issues. The car was updated and released, but it broke down a short time later on the road.
“It could have been potentially dangerous as steering needs electrical assistance,” said Attila Jaszai, who runs a Mississauga auto repair facility specializing in European vehicles.
His daughter’s vehicle was towed back to the Audi dealership where it remains.
In a statement to Global News, Audi Mississauga general manager Jonathan Breton expressed regret that the vehicle has not been repaired to date.
“We are aware of the ongoing and unfortunate situation involving (the) vehicle. Since the onset of this matter, we have been working diligently in order to achieve a resolution to the complex technical issues that the vehicle is experiencing.”
Contacted by Global News, Audi Canada spokesperson Cort Nielsen said the company is providing a free loaner vehicle until the repairs can be completed.
“We are working to conclude this repair as expediently as possible and regret the experience” for the customer, Nielsen said.
He told Global that Audi Canada “will be offering a gesture of good will reflecting the experience she (the owner) has had.”
But having waited almost five months, the owner and her father lost patience and hired a lawyer to communicate with the dealership and Audi Canada.
“It’s just an issue of negligent service,” said Stathi Balopoulos, a lawyer at Scardicchio Law Office in Mississauga.
Balopoulos wrote to Audi Mississauga and gave an April 7 deadline to repair the Audi A3. But the work has not been done to date.
Balopoulos said if Audi is unable to fix the vehicle, they should buy it back from Gabriella Jaszai. He said his client had two buyers willing to pay as much as $32,500 for the vehicle if it was in working order.
Audi Mississauga did offer to buy back the vehicle at one point, although for thousands of dollars less, he said.
“This was a properly working vehicle brought to them in perfect working condition until the recall work was done at the dealership,” Balopoulos said.
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