Had the “Anti-skid service required” message appear on my Volvo C30 recently. It’s 4.5 years old and done 90,000 miles so it’s well out of warranty. I took it to a Volvo Specialist (not main dealer) and they diagnosed it as a faulty ABS control unit and advised it would cost over £1,000 to replace. I was not happy….

I decided to have a look online to see what others have said about this issue and discovered that this is unfortunately a common fault with Volvo’s. So I phoned Volvo UK customer services and told them I wanted them to fix it for free. They advised they couldn’t help without getting it diagnosed by a main dealer (at a cost of £80 + VAT). So I took it to Volvo Holdcroft Stoke to get the diagnosis, expecting to be £96 lighter at the end of the day, have the same information about the ECU and ready for an argument with Volvo UK about how big a “goodwill gesture” they will contribute towards fixing the problem. Good news is I arrived at the dealership, the lady handed me the keys saying they had performed the diagnosis and replaced the ECU, all for free. They briefly said it was covered by “extended warranty” but I think this was code for “Volvo admitted it was a manufacturing fault and covered it all”.

So the summary is if you get this this problem on your Volvo then give Volvo a ring, then take it to a dealership (Holdcroft Stoke maybe) for the diagnostic and hopefully it’ll be all sorted for free.