Grant B

granted

Bought a Mazda 5 2.0L Diesel MPV from ASL last April under Noel Quail's recommendation, after telling him we needed a big family car for local (school) runs and the very occasional long haul trip from SE England to Scotland or Wales, to visit family. Only 1 key supplied with the car on delivery. Maiden voyage to Wales and the DPF light came on almost immediately. Knackered suspension bushes, causing metal-on-metal creaking. Severe wheel balance issues (horrendous steering wheel wobble at speed), nail in a tyre, and missing sat nav and cruise control as they'd explicitly advertised. Later on: flashing DPF (return to Mazda) light came on permanently, despite the long Wales run. While waiting to take it back we did more digging and discovered the DPF setup in these earlier DPF Mazdas are notoriously bad for regular short journey use, with related, wider industry DPF problems well-spread in the media. Shocked at all the issues after being assured it had just had a 'full, multi-point safety check', service and MOT, and after they'd delayed a few days, and about a week following purchase, we returned it and asked for a refund. So, instead of refunding, as is clearly our right for their various breaches of contract, ASL decided, without our permission, that they'd repair some of the issues we'd reported instead of refunding, and that would be the end of it. The car's been with them ever since as it will never match the advertised spec and give us no end of expense with DPF related problems and extra servicing, possibly lessened by doubling our mileage with pointless long trips up and down the hopefully non-congested motorway for no other reason. And… they've tried to coax us to re-accepting the car, partly by putting it in storage and saying we owe them £18/day + VAT. That was almost a year ago now. I'll let you guess the maths… ASL throw Checkatrade at you from start to finish… I've clearly lost any faith there now too. I really am a reasonable guy, who's simply looking out for safety and fair finances for my family. We've also since, discovered a number of other locals that claim to have suffered at their hands too. If it's unreasonable to be able to promptly return and get your money back on something you buy which is unsafe, unsuitable and doesn't match the description then we don't know where we got the law so wrong. It's been our experience that ASL don't care for the law one bit, even when it's spelled out to them. As ASL have offered no other option and appear to have no ADR process, or be registered with any common industry regulatory bodies (e.g. Motorcodes) like most reputable traders, we've been forced to seek legal advice and are now on the Small Claims track, awaiting a court hearing.