Hayley G

Absolutely awful

I bought a used car from here 6 weeks ago and I have had nothing but problems since. I initially thought the members of staff I dealt with in the dealership (Clarke and Kaya) were good decent people, this opinion has since changed, they are good salespeople who will say anything for a sale and a bit of commission. They also put an insane amount of pressure on you to leave them a 5 star review with VW, at points during the sale this seemed like the most important thing to them, particularly Kaya who laid it on very thick about how important it was to get 5 stars and went on to tell a story of how she had been hauled into the office to explain herself when she had recently received 4/5 from another customer and how she would get into trouble if you gave her anything but a 5! Several features I was told the car had by Clarke - auto wipers and tilting mirrors when reversing do not work, and never have since I have had the vehicle. After 2.5 weeks and when I was 75 miles from home I got into the car after a long shift to return home to find 2 warning lights had come on, I might have been accepting of this issue a year or so after purchase but experiencing any issues after 2.5 weeks of ownership is completely unacceptable to me. I did not know what was wrong with the car and had to drive home absolutely terrified. When raising this with the dealership the next day and commenting on how unlucky I felt, imagine my surprise when Phil said to me that I wasn’t unlucky and that this kind of thing happened all the time, going on to tell me it happened to one of their engineers on the same model brand new after just 50 miles! Not exactly the ringing endorsement I was expecting from an employee and then when I said ‘so this is a common know fault then?’, he got rather shirty with me claiming i was putting words into his mouth. I’m not sure how else I could have taken his previous comments. Their 30 day money back guarantee is also worthless, this is supposed to cover you losing confidence in the vehicle for any reason, however when I have tried to use this I have been told I cannot get my money back, I can only exchange for another vehicle they have in stock at that specific dealership. And guess what, they have nothing similar to what I originally purchased, only cars significantly more expensive where you then have to pick up the difference as well as losing money on the vehicle you originally purchased despite it having had issues. No customer in their right mind is going to use this guarantee and I feel that Clarke really mis-sold this at point of sale. Over the last week I have tried to deal with Peter Nottingham (head of business) at this branch which has gone no better than dealing with his colleagues. I had already left the branch a Google review as requested by him in an email, yet one of the first things he said to me on the phone was that if I did not remove my review he would not be helping me at all!!! I do not like being threatened in this way, and I think this goes to prove that they only want to receive good reviews not honest ones. I found his tone patronising throughout, he contradicted himself several times and became very sarcastic when challenged. I raised 2 issues with him and am still waiting for him to address the second which was that my dash cam was tampered with whilst the vehicle was in their care and is no longer working, I guess that’s another £200 I am out of pocket as this branch seems to take no personal responsibility for any wrongdoing and customer care after point of sale is completely non existent. I would not recommend this branch to anyone and can only hope something is done to address their many shortcomings so that more people do not have to go through the shocking experience I did.