Miles S

Must do better...

Jeff, Ben and Alex are all nice guys, but mega painful to deal with on comms and will try and manoeuvre out of any taking any responsibility for aftersales. Literally every trick in the book will be employed if it means they can gain leverage over you. You have been warned. When we were discussing prices in the office relating to the part ex of our previous car and Elite Auto knocking money off for a supposed issue I touch on later on in the review. Alex used a trader's guide to prove to me that the car we wanted to trade in was genuinely only worth the paltry amount he was offering even at retail, to which I replied 'But Alex, this is a trader's guide, not a retail guide. Put the Kuga in and see what it says, I bet it's a lot less than the £6k you're asking for it' Alex then turned his computer screen out of view, tapped away at his keyboard furiously, before presenting me with the Auto Trader website and saying 'Look, it says £6k is a fair price' Needless to say I pointed out I wasn't that stupid and he was using two different websites, to which he embarrassingly pointed out 'you'd be great in the trade' alluding to the fact that I was switched on enough to be dishonest and mug people off. I have to say, it was cringeworthy. Anyway, we bought the 2011 Ford Kuga 2.0 TDCI from them, which after taking home, I decided to book in for a multi point check with my local mechanics after smelling fumes in the cabin. The long and short of it was a faulty injector seal and cracked fuel filter housing. Ironic as they knocked £300 off the agreed price of the car we part exed with them, because the cabin smelt of fumes. After a little more digging around and realising that one of the front tyres was worn excessively, despite being fitted as a pair with the other front tyre, I decided to have that investigated too. That turned out to be a seized and worn track rod end, which is an MOT failure, although Elite Auto's trusted MOT tester had passed it only a few weeks earlier. On top of that, the tyre that needed replacing was on or below the legal limit (1.6mm) when they sold it to me, as after a 120 mile drive home, it was only 1.3mm. Then we come to the issue of the cambelt, which should have been replaced at 100k miles (the car was at 99k miles) or 10 years from the date of manufacture (which was 2 months before we purchased it) Elite Auto's response was unequivocal 'We are not willing to cover or contribute to the cost of the cambelt, as you should have done due diligence when purchasing the car' Since then and within the 3 month warranty period, there have been other issues too, such as the car going into limp mode due to a faulty fuel vaporiser on the DPF, which they desperately tried to avoid covering under warranty, before, in the end, with no warning, sending an aftermarket part from ECP of all places to my mechanics. They didn't warn me, nor did they mention anything about, they just randomly sent it, despite all the evidence and advice online and from my mechanics, that a genuine Ford part was the only way to go in this instance in order to avoid a repeat of the issue in a less than satisfactory time frame. I've been made to wait weeks at a time for return calls and payments relating to the warranty, speaking to up to 3 people at various times over the same issue. The last of which is the £180 they finally agreed to pay for the DPF fuel vaporiser, that was agreed 3 weeks ago. 2 weeks ago they said 'we need proof that you've paid the invoice before we can authorise payment' that proof was sent to them the afternoon they requested it, but shock horror, I'm still waiting for that money to arrive in my account. If I'm honest, they've been fair at times, but most of the time painful to deal with and unless you're savvy, you will get exposed by these boys.