By that point, she wanted a complete refund, not a repair, and continued with her case.
The tribunal has now ordered that she be refunded the full purchase price of the car.
“It has been the biggest nightmare of my life for about a year,” she told NZME.
“When you open the door, on the ledge before it hits the carpet, the water just lay there, and when you opened the door, it got your feet wet.”
The problem got worse over time, and the car was routinely wet on the inside after it had rained.
‘This is not normal in any vehicle’
According to the recently released tribunal ruling, the buyer contacted the dealership, Linn Motors in Paeroa, a few months after buying the vehicle, asking about the water pooling around the seals and was told that it was “typical for Isuzu vehicles”.
“Are you telling me that you believe it’s normal that I should have to go and dry the car every time it rains? The amount of water is huge, it’s not a couple of spots,” the woman replied by email.
Isuzu NZ said that water pooling was normal.
Linn Motors agreed to realign the doors, but it made no difference and, in October last year, Isuzu said the condition was normal. “We’ve compared this with another MU-X and found the same moisture around the door frames,” the company said at the time.
“We are confident that the water you are noticing in the wet zones is normal and characteristic of the MU-X.”
An independent Isuzu service agent inspected the vehicle in December and said the problem was not normal. The next day, Isuzu NZ denied there was a fault, but offered to replace the seals on a goodwill basis.
That was completed in March this year, but the problem persisted. The buyer tried again to get a refund for the car, noting that “this is not normal in any vehicle”.
Isuzu continued to maintain that it wasn’t a fault and sent a representative to view the car in May. That person conducted a water test, ultimately concluding there was an issue with the butyl tape. Isuzu then offered to repair the vehicle.
The woman declined the offer, saying she wanted a complete refund.
She told the tribunal that, since the May inspection, the problem had worsened and water was getting on the carpets inside the car.
At the tribunal’s request, the car was inspected by another independent third party, who found water was running down the inside of the doorframe, which was “causing moisture to enter vehicle and pool inside door seal”.
The buyer said the problem got worse over time and was particularly bad after rain.
By the time a hearing was held between the parties in June, Isuzu NZ had admitted there was a fault that had probably been there since the start and had worsened over time. The company maintained that it had taken a reasonable amount of time to attempt to repair the vehicle.
Isuzu also admitted that it received a similar complaint about the same model of vehicle from an overseas customer.
Unreasonable timeframe
Tribunal adjudicator Crystal Euden granted the woman’s claim to reject the car and ordered Linn Motors to refund her the $73,000 she paid for it.
“I find that the vehicle has a fault in its rear doors which causes excessive water pooling in its wet zones,” she said.
Euden also found that the time taken to repair the vehicle was unreasonable, with the woman first contacting Linn Motors in July 2024, and the fault not being diagnosed until May this year.
“I … find that all avenues for excessive water accumulation should have been checked initially, including the adhesives within the inner door cards,” Euden said.
“I also find that it should not have taken more than a year to identify the butyl adhesive as the likely cause of the fault.”
The woman told NZME that she had been refunded the money and, despite having owned three Isuzus, she would not buy from the company again.
“It wouldn’t have got to this stage if they’d just repaired it properly in the first place.
“They could have actually sorted this quite quickly within a few months. They wouldn’t have had to refund me either.”
Isuzu New Zealand did not respond to specific questions about whether it had received other reports of similar faults in this model of car.
Instead, its New Zealand manager, Ross Sommerville, said in a statement that he considered the tribunal matter resolved.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū, covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.