Defective indicator

[Inkyinman]

Dear Sirs,
A cautionary tale. Jaguar XFS Portfolio 3litre diesel 2012
The front near side indicator failed last week and I look the car to my specialist Jaguar engineer in Salisbury who told me that the head light unit had to be replaced complete as it was a sealed unit. I understand that the rear lamp cluster is also a sealed unit.
The cost of this headlight unit is somewhere in the region of £850. plus, VAT and fitting and, to fit it, the front bumper assembly probably must be taken off to get at the edge clips.
He suggested that I speak to Jaguar customer service as this was an unreasonable cost and imposition to remedy what is seen as a normal maintenance malfunction; I did but to no avail. The lady at Jaguar was polite and suggested all sorts of things such as speaking to the retailer who might knock 25% off the retail price of the unit if I was a regular customer! Unfortunately the car was purchased in Oxford and I live in Salisbury so regular serving was never going to be at garage 60 miles away.
In short Jaguar was not interested and from my conversation with Customer Service they had apparently not heard of this problem and felt that it was an isolated case.
However, from my search on the various Jaguar web forums, this does seem to be a common complaint and everyone affected is outraged at the cost and the ridiculousness of situation whereby a single failed lamp necessitates the replacement of a complete and expensive headlight unit.
Unhappy and mentally checking the piggy bank on my way home from the garage I was pleasantly surprised to find that when indicating to make a left hand turn the system had rectified itself and the indicator is now working correctly.
A very speedy telephone call was made to the garage to cancel the order for the new headlight unit.
Surely it cannot be beyond the capability of Jaguar or their suppliers to design a headlight unit whereby a single lamp failure can be cured by replacing only the defective lamp without having to dismantle the car and emptying one’s wallet.
As the car is diesel fuelled it cannot be long before the cost of a replacement headlight unit is going to be more than the re sale value of the car!
Yours faithfully,
Tony Inman

[rosemary]

The Headlamp Unit is a removable piece as a whole, 3:-8 mm bolts, 2 on top and 1 in the wheel arch. If its the same as mine . Any" Halfords" employee can change bulbs purchased from them for free. My car 2010 XF 3.0tdi Premium Luxury. Take about 15 minutes at the most.

[Inkyinman]

Thanks but I think that the face lift model has different headlamps and fitting.

[rosemary]

Hello Inkyinman

Oh dear, another retro-grade step by Jaguar. I thought they'd improved maintenance access over the S-Type where you do need to remove the front bumper to get the headlights out but it seems it was short lived.

Dave