Mrs W

DON’T BUY. Their cars are dangerous

Don’t waste your time or money. Having spent a lot of time researching vehicles, my husband and I saw a LO69 ZBC BMW 5-Series estate for sale with this “business”. We visited the “car show room” - basically a yard full of cars parked up. No posh show room as seen in the adverts. We were allowed to look around the car. Was allowed to have a test drive too. All seemed nice and fair. However the car was clearly being used by the staff for their own benefit. The car was listed with just over 20k mileage, but when we viewed it this had increased to just over 25k mileage. Agreed a price for part exchange for our car. Then into the scruffy office to sort some paperwork that had a strong smell of Cannabis in the air. We were asked for a deposit of £250.00. I said that was too high and “Ash” dropped it to £100.00. He agreed to have the car valeted and reset the engine management light. We requested an AA inspection to be completed. “Ash” said that was fine but also said we should go to an independent inspector as AA always say bad things. A week passed, paid for the inspection £182 including HPI checks, £80 on retention for number plate on our car, arranging our finance. AA inspection for attended and we received a 26 page report. We were recommended to stay clear of this vehicle. These are the bad parts of the report:  A diagnostic check was carried out on this vehicle and multiple diagnostic fault-codes were present; please see imagery for fault-codes and descriptions.  No road-test drive undertaken due to ‘Red’ items.  Sub-frame at front – impact damaged (dangerous).  No run-flat tyres on front.  Nearside-rear wheel stud missing (dangerous).  Nearside-front wheel stud loose (dangerous).  Coolant below minimum.  Turbo – intercooler damaged.  Inverter coolant level below minimum.  Tool/puncture/emergency kit – no pump. TOTAL LOSS CARS ---- Please note vehicle has been a total loss and repairs completed may be hiding issue which cannot be identified in the scope of this inspection, caution is advised, we cannot guarantee previous work completed.   This vehicle is a Category ‘N’ – body and paint repairs; some repairs not completed as some damage to trims still noted. The AA inspector could not test drive the vehicle because of the dangerous faults on the tyres. This is just part of the report. So we decided not to pursue with buying the car. I spoke with ‘Ash’ who said the inspector was ‘bulls**ting’ about the car. He said there was nothing wrong with the car and could sell it with no problem. I asked for my deposit back, ‘Ash’ said not it was non refundable. I explained that due to his information about the car it reassured us to place a deposit down in good faith. He then blamed us for wasting his time getting it valeted! His attitude on the phone was rude and unprofessional. Please do not buy a vehicle from these people. In my opinion they are not a professional business and selling dangerous vehicles to unsuspecting buyers. At least we had an inspection carried out to save us a lot of trouble and loss of money. In my opinion they are aware of the poor quality of vehicles hence they take a non refundable deposit just to make a bit of case. If the deal looks too good to be true…. It probably is.