Can anyone help with this quandary I found myself in, please? Looking to sell my 2010 Citroen C5 a few months back, I took it to a CT station because it needed a less-than-6 month-old CT. There were a couple of minor faults, but one major. This involved the suspension, which is hydractive 3+ on this particular car; the tester said all 4 ‘corner’ spheres needed replacing. The car has 7 spheres in total, controlling the hydraulic suspension behaviour for the particular road surface, speed etc. The other three control stiffness. I could not believe that all 4 corner spheres needed replacing at the same time and told the CT tester so. He then pushed down on each corner of the car and, I had to admit, there was some bounce. This always was how you check for shock absorber deterioration. So off I go to Citroen garage and ask for a devi. Duly given, at about €900TTC. Gulp. Booked in for about a week later. Then I used a British Citroen enthusiast’s website forum to ask about this. It turned out that for this particular version, it was necessary for the engine to have been running for 30seconds before you can test by pushing down on the car corners, because the three centre spheres don’t stiffen up until then. I postponed the garage work until I was more sure of the problem. A friend suggested I take the car to another CT garage and have a fresh CT done. I did that and the car passed with no suspension problem. Back to the Citroen garage to discuss and sort out what to do. They insisted I buy the 4 spheres they had ordered, claiming they could not send them back (?). So I was forced to buy them, at €501TTC. How do I stand? Do I have a grievance with the first CT station?
Wow. That’s a bummer. I’m not sure how far you’ll get with the original CT tester but definitely worth a try. However, if it’s a Citroen main dealer I would have told them to stuff their spheres (in other words send the back to Citroen parts department). Unless you told them to order OEM ones which may be made to order.
Clearly you have incurred expense due to the incorrect testing procedure carried out at the first CT station you visited. Therefore it would seem logical that you should be able to register a claim against them.
However, it could easily end up costing a lot in lawyers fees and so may not be worth it.
I think that the Citroen garage tried it on with you over the parts, and that they probably could have returned them to the supplier although you may have been liable for some shipping costs.
However, as you seem to have already paid the bill it’s unlikely that you will get a refund now.
Perhaps the best thing to do is to cut your losses by advertising the parts for sale on the internet, or alternatively keep them in stock while you still own the car just in case you need them in the future.
I hope that you are able to arrive at being more at peace with the situation one way or another.
Can you sell the spheres?