Rachel

Terrible

We part exchanged our car for a Ford Kuga to tow our caravan. The salesman told my husband and I that the engine had previously been replaced as it had “popped” after 25,000 miles. My husband then asked if it had been replaced properly by Ford, to which the salesman assured us it had, and said as a result the engine had done 25,000 miles less than what the car was showing, because of the “brand new” engine that had been put into the car previously. In the two weeks of having the Kuga, it went back twice because it seemed to somehow be using too much fuel. On the first occasion, the fuel consumption improved for a few days after having it back from the garage, but then went back to using too much. On the second occasion, we found out that the engine hadn’t been replaced through the correct channels with Ford as promised, the garage had in fact put a reconditioned engine in themselves which had 50,000 miles on it. When we brought this up, we were told that we had misunderstood what was said. My husband and I remember the conversation clearly as personally, we would never had wanted a car with a reconditioned engine. The salesman told me it was acceptable for the car to use 55 miles of fuel for a 12-13 mile run, as the car was heavier than our previous car, it was ‘around town driving’ and because the car was a 4 wheel drive. When we contested this, the salesman was very rude on the phone to my husband, so much so, my husband put the phone down on him. We have handed the kuga back and had our old car back. We can no longer go on our caravan holiday on Monday, we’ve lost over £200 in deposits as we had booked the kuga in for a towbar fitting, we had number plates made up for the caravan and we lost our deposit for the campsite, not to mention the fuel we had put in the Kuga and wasted over the two weeks, between it losing fuel, the trips back and forth to the garage (38 mile round trip) and with them taking it on a long test drive). We have had to tell our children that their caravan holiday is cancelled due to not being able to tow. The garage told us that this “wasn’t their problem” and because of the work done on our previous car, we should be grateful. They did ask if we wanted another car from them within our budget but we feel we wouldn’t trust them.