Craig

Shocking service

One star is too much. Shocking experience from start to finish. My Daughter bought a Mitsubishi Outlander from Invicta Doves Gatwick in September 2023 who are part of Cambria Automobiles Ltd, a company who in 2021 turned over £563,000,000. We were confident that such a large group would offer the protection and peace of mind needed when making a large purchase such as a car. She picked this car as it had the dual fuel function and was large enough for her to put her equipment in that she needed to attend to elderly patients for the NHS where she works, including home visits. Shortly after buying the vehicle but past the 30 day allowance to return it, multiple faults arose. She contacted Invicta Doves Gatwick who, under the 6 month warranty, took it in for repair. They had the vehicle from 3rd January through to 16th January – plenty of time to have completed a thorough repair and test, you would have thought. Within 24 hours of the vehicle being returned, the faults came back including not charging when braking, not achieving maximum charge and an awful noise from the gearbox. The gearbox sounded like it could not change gear and at 50mph the noise was horrendous, and Invicta Doves Gatwick failed to address this or repair it. As they made no mention of the gearbox noise and failed to repair the faults, my daughter lost confidence in the vehicle and asked to return it for a refund. Invicta Doves Gatwick replied asking her for one last chance to repair the vehicle and said they would send it to a reputable garage for repair, which suggests they sent it to a less reputable garage the first time. She refused. Invicta Doves Gatwick agreed to take the vehicle back but insisted on £0.49p per mile for usage. She checked this with other garages including a Ford main dealer who said that, given the poor service and lack of repair, they would have just taken it back without penalty and in any event, £0.49p per mile was viewed as excessively high. We asked Invicta Doves Gatwick to review this and they revised their charge to £0.40p per mile. As a final insult, they offered to reduce the mileage down by the miles it took to get to the repair garage! My daughter has lost out financially due to this utterly horrible experience. She has had to borrow vehicles from other family members so she can maintain her valuable work at the NHS and Invicta Doves Gatwick were made fully aware of how important a reliable car is for her so she can attend the elderly, but all they were interested in getting as much money from her as possible. The experience of dealing with this company has been truly awful. The car they sold her was not fit for purpose. They allegedly made an attempt to fix it but failed, then hid behind consumer law to avoid fully compensating my daughter and simply giving her back the money she paid. She had never asked for more than she paid, but they wanted to refund as little as possible. In these difficult times, a little humanity and compassion would have been welcomed, especially as her car was so important to service elderly patients home visits for the NHS, but Invicta Doves Gatwick were only interested in how little they could refund her. Of course it goes without saying I would never, ever buy a car from this company or any other associated companies. Finally, if you buy this vehicle and they offer you additional “GardX” protection for both the interior and exterior of the vehicle, do not accept it or pay the £500 they took from my daughter, as she has already paid for it.