Second hand Instrument cluster route!?
The story goes like this.
Cluster LCD display NBG.
action one: Watch You tube vids until early hours on how to strip dash and then how to change/ repair the LCD ribbon
The Cause: Just found out that the reason my instrument cluster was playing up is that previous owner had had a go at fixing the LCD and he has totally **** *** it up smashing the temp indicator needle, I think it looks beyond economical repair. BLEEP BLEEP!
Not much hope of fitting a replacement LCD strip to this one.

The question is can I fit a reclaimed one with same mileage from same mod of car ei: 2004 L322 4.4 vogue. If so anything to be sorted out afterwards and who would sort it.

Answers one: Should swap out OK. if its pre MY05 it will retain the mileage of the replacement clock, but indicate it has been changed out by a small red dot on the readout which can be addressed. post MY05 the replacement clock will adopt the vehicle mileage.

Action two: found just the one in a relatively local car being scrapped on Fleebay in an add for a wheel nut, scrapping whole car ad. so I phoned them. After establishing that they had a fully functioning cluster with same sort of mileage and agreeing the price of £100 I parted grudgingly with my Card number, he would not take Pay Pal! " even though his ebay ad said he did accept Payment by PayPal. that should have told me something perhaps" But I needed the parts and it was not an out of the way sum really! anyway the parts arrived in good time well packed. things were looking hopeful

Conclusion:
Well that was a none starter.
Despite the on the phone assurances from the vendor that it was in good working order and the price being charged £100.with a no quibble 90 day warranty. It wasn't!!!!!
the invoiced amount taken from my card was £1oo + £10 post+ VAT = £136,
few if any pixels worked on the display when I plugged it in.
It cost me an extra half an hour on the telephone arguing the toss with the guy about the refund and the amount he was prepared to refund.
ie: he would not pay for returning the item and he would not refund the cost of sending to me or the VAT on the Postage.
He still has not refunded any money as of today but will give him a little longer on that!
I have had to send my original off to have it repaired to "thekeymen", in Peterborough. who have quoted me £95 for the pixel repair + £25 for a new fuel sender the return postage included in the price..
so if anyone asks you in the future send it or take it to a good known repairer.
Hope this will help someone else in the future. Big Cry
My cluster along side S/H one



S/H Pixel display or lack of it.

S/H clock temp fitment showing Vendors yellow lettering
 Eddie the eagle watch out 👀

Not sure of the rules but could your credit card co do anything? Eg charging more than quoted and not accepting returns when goods are defective?

Yep they probably could but I am going to see if he coughs up in the next day or two. Eddie the eagle watch out 👀

when people refuse to let you paypal them, its normally replied with 'becuase of the fee converting the money' etc. if you offer to top up the say, £100 with the fee on top, say, £5, then they sort of have no excuse. then YOU have a sort of insurance. though, without an ebay transaction, im not sure how you claim a refund. also, to be double sure, if you buy it now on ebay, and paypal, you are rock solid, under distance selling regulations. ie full refund, however, if you bid and win, you are not fully covered, and seller does not have to take it back, or refund, unless he states refund or returns accepted, and the postage can be worked out etc.
i changed my pixel strip, and somehow managed to ping off my fuel needle, and when i replaced it it was reading very wrong. i had to strip it back down, and guess it. i did the guage test cycle before refitting it, to see all the guages 'rev up' and reset.
i too had bought a secondhand one, with some huge mileage on it, which meant that i would have to drive for some mystery mileage, untill it caught up with my actual mileage. so, i returned it.
fixing the pixels is not an easy job, there's drilling and delicate work needed. 2 years ago, you could send it to them for a repair for about £100 the same as a secondhand one. that will be often as bad, and with the black dot. mine is 95 percent good, just a couple of slightly feinter verticles, but its all there!

Hi, as I understand it from the chap that is repairing the cluster Airidas.AKA KeyCarMan Peterborough.
he will replace the temp sender as a new unit at an additional cost of £25, which I felt was very good indeed.
The chap comes well recommended by people in the trade who have been using him for some time.
so fingers and toes crossed. Eddie the eagle watch out 👀

I guess what I am trying to say is.
Leave it to those who do it for a living, it will be cheaper and better in the long run.
he also will guarantee the repair for life, which can't be bad..
Yes I know that's as long as you can find him but!!!!!!! Eddie the eagle watch out 👀

Even if it's an auction you're still covered against faulty goods under the sale of goods act.

What you're not covered for is change of mind returns on auction items, ie. it turns up and you don't like the colour.

Paypal have their own buyer protection separate to Ebay's.

The trouble with paypal is it's been used by so many scammers and paypal are too ready to just refund money without bothering to investigate. Perhaps great if you're a buyer, but you can understand why sellers are then put off accepting it. People seem far less ready to falsely claim non-receipt etc via their bank. Banks are usually pretty helpful for genuine cases, especially if youve paid via credit card and it's £100 or more.

BBA reman is another company that will repair instrument clusters and almost any other car electronic box.

I shall be watching closely to see how you get on with your repair as I have been thinking of using them as they are local enough to me for me to deliver and collect and save postage.

However it still has to be a good repair!

MW

Yep I will pm you when I get the cluster back. But the chap so far has been very helpful and been in touch on several occations because the Yodell courier service thought it was a good idea to try to deliver a parcel At 1900 hrs to a commercial unit that holds normal office hours.
A word to the wise is you are sending by a courier to a
Business address make sure that you can specifie a time. Yodell response to him and me was you booked a service that delivers from 0700 to 1900 hrs we are under no obligation to inform you we could not deliver. we do make the state of dispatch available via or tracking on line. You cannot even arrange a delivery time if you contact them.
Attached sis a screen shot of the live chat with Yodell Call centre, forgive my poor spelling but I am sure you will get my drift.

Click image to enlarge

Very few couriers let you specify an exact time window. DPD is one, but that may only apply to contract customers - those who have a contract to send items on a regular basis.

Most couriers offer what are called 'time definite' rather than 'day definite' services though, Royal Mail even do one (special delivery) you can specify that you want it delivered before 1pm or before 9am.

Most couriers will do pre-9am (or start of business) or 10/11am or by noon. They charge a premium for doing it though, as it means the van may effectively have to go well out of it's way just to make that time deadline, meaning the driver can deliver less parcels in the day, they may even have to send a van from the local depot to just to make one or two deliveries.

Most of them realise though that a business address will likely be closed at 7pm, so they'll usually attempt delivery well before then - the majority of drivers are either paid per 'successful' delivery or paid a bonus on top of their salary for each 'successful' delivery so they are given an incentive to not bring parcels back.

If you are doing a job then to my mind you do it properly and to the best of your ability.
To try and deliver a parcel at 1900 hrs to a well known business address. List it as unable to gain access and putt it back in the bins without even leving a card or a phone call when they had the number, then to just leave it there until some one complains that the parcel has not been delivered within their predicted time fram smack of a couldn't care less attitude.
I have been in business for fourty five years using couriers on a regular basis. The crux is that now you can not rely on some one using their initative, or was that common sense & integrity. Eddie the eagle watch out 👀

You did pick the cheapest service though didn't you?

Yodel are cheaper than most of the other carriers, and you picked one of their cheaper day definite services? they're cheap for a reason!

As i said, you can with almost all the courier companies, choose a service (for a premium) that gets there before a certain time. And they all publish their terms of service on their websites - Yodel will state they deliver between the times you mentioned. While it would make sense to attempt to deliver in office hours, it might well be the driver just couldn't get there in time, after all they might have had to make detours earlier in the day to deliver parcels where people had actually paid for them to be delivered by a certain time.....

The driver should have left a card though - even then a lot of business units don't have anywhere to put one when they're locked up. Other than that the driver has done his or her job 'properly' after all they were supposed to try to deliver the parcel before 7pm, which is what you paid for.

If you're so experienced with using couriers why didn't you know all this? Because they're all basically the same

Your not having a lot of luck with that dash Pete.... hope it gets back OK.....  Pete
__________________________________________________
2014 L405 Autobiography SDV8 4.4 Loire Blue Ebony interior
2011 L322 Vogue SE 4.4 TDV8 Baltic Blue. Sold
2012 L322 Autobiography 5.0 Supercharged Ipanema Sand Sold
2002 L322 Vogue 4.4 V8 Epson Green (Fatty Offroader) Sold
-Click for Project Fatty off roader-

Not the cheepest by far It was one that was supposed to collect the same day which they also missed, as the order was placed and deliver within Twentyfour hours. If I book and pay for a service that is the main selling point and point of attention I expect to get it. Not start arguing the toss over a get out clause in the small print manly because some prat of a driver can't be bothered to put his brain in gear and his back side.
I have a lot more faith in the way it is going to get back Pete. I am picking it up and paying the chap then via Paypal.
With the way it's going he may of gone back to his home county or even changed his normal Office hours 😏 Eddie the eagle watch out 👀

Then you need to shop around, Yodel are definitely cheaper than all but hermes (who only do 3-5 day services)

Well as i said the driver did the job they were paid to do - they get given a parcel in the morning (along with several hundred others) and are told they have until 1900 to attempt to deliver it, which they did. It's highly possible the driver would have had to abandon other deliveries to get yours there during office hours. What would have made yours more important? If you didn't pay for say a 'by noon' service then what do you expect?

So you didn't read what you were actually buying, perhaps because you're an expert and been using couriers for years, Is it really the drivers fault that you didn't read into what you were buying?

Having actually worked as a courier for a while, i think you have a very misguided idea of how (all) courier companies operate.