L D

Very poor and dishonest

I recently purchased a car from Drive Direct Bristol North, sharing with them the intention of obtaining a car suitable for starting a family and accommodating our newborn baby. During the test drive, everything seemed fine. However, after running the air conditioning whist driving it home and a few trips in the car, we were hit with an overpowering stench of stale cigarettes. It became clear that all the seats reeked of smoke and cling onto all our belongings in the car, something that must have been very heavily masked with fragrances while the car was on the forecourt to hide this fault. Being 5 months pregnant, I found the smell unbearable. It gave me severe headaches and made me feel nauseous, rendering the car unusable for me. We reported the issue to the dealer well with 48 hours of owning the car, but they refused to offer a full refund or swap the car for another of the same value. Despite several deep cleans and a 5-6 hour ‘odour elimating’ fogging session, the smell very much persisted. What’s more frustrating is that the dealer knew we were purchasing the car for our baby and failed to highlight that the previous owner had smoked in it; a disclosure that many reputable and honest dealerships would make, especially when the odour would have been very obvious upon the car’s arrival to the garage. This is clearly not suitable for a newborn baby and dealer was not prepared to help at all, not even an exchange for a car of the same value but instead offering us a price which was £1,600 less than what we paid not even 3 days prior. To make matters worse, the sales manager had no empathy and clearly did not care about quality customer service.. He claimed to “understand” our situation but was not prepared to even try and resolve the issue for us. The Exec who sold us the car was much better, apologising and expressing his guilt for the situation he had left us in but unfortunately had no power over the outcome. Adding insult to injury, the car is now back up for sale at the same price we paid for it, proving they would have regained the full amount if they had issued a refund. This is a classic example of a car garage that doesn’t care once they’ve got your money. This experience has been extremely stressful and disappointing, especially during such an important time for our family. We do have another car which we are looking to swap, however I will most definitely not be returning. I would strongly advise against purchasing from Drive Retail Bristol North, if you value honesty and quality customer service.