Brad P

Miserable 6 months with court action thr

I bought a car from ASM back in October 2024, immediately I noticed how rude Amo was on phone calls. He comes across as confrontational and acts like you’re wasting his time, on top of this every other word out of his mouth is “pal” and “mate”, of which I am neither, have some professionalism. I’ve had multiple problems over a 6 month period which resulted in me threatening court action, which I was genuinely in the process of doing until we reached a settlement (in my mind this absolutely proves he knew he was in the wrong, otherwise why wouldn’t he let me file the court paperwork at my own expense and lose to him?). Firstly, I had to call the guy multiple times, he’d then told me the car was sold then said the woman who was buying it couldn’t get the money together fast enough so If I was still interested, I could look. The car hadn’t been valeted when I arrived, however he assured me this would be done upon collection. On the phone Amo stated the car was in immaculate condition when I asked about scratches and chips, the car absolutely wasn’t in immaculate condition and had multiple areas of bodywork chips and scratch, however I still wanted to buy the car, I just didn’t appreciate his lies on the phone. I test drove the car and was happy with it so told him I could pay him within a few days, and I’d let him know later via a phone call. When I rang later, he once again reiterated that he would have the car valeted before I collected, I also asked him if he could fill the tank as the petrol light was red. I didn’t barter on the price, so I thought this was a reasonable request, he responded in complete shock, like I’d just killed his dog, but agreed he would fill the tank. Again, have some professionalism, either asked the offer or don’t but don’t act like I’m trying to get one over on you. When I collected the car several days later it was dirty, despite me arriving around mid-day and giving him several days’ notice. I’d even held off collecting sooner as he said the guy who valets his car would be out before I collected. He offered me a £20 discount to get the car valeted myself. I appreciate the gesture although a decent valet is more than £20 and again, it felt like he’d misled me by insisting several times that the car would be cleaned before I collected only to tell me on arrival that he hadn’t done it. When I got home, I used the boot twice to transfer stuff from my old car to the new one, on the 3rd time of using the boot the lock had seized shut. I was completely unable to open the boot. I rang Amo and he suggested a few things, but the boot would not open at all. He suggested I take the car back to him for his mechanic to look at, so I had to make the half hour journey with two cars (so I could get back home) and leave the car with him for a few days. His mechanic “fixed” the boot and I went back to collect, the fix being a new lock fitted. Once I’d arrived home, I noticed the boot would now open and close but only by hand, the electronic close would only go part way down before failing to engage. And here’s where the nightmare started. Amo insisted that he would happily fix the issue and to save me further inconvenience he offered to send his mechanic to my house (I didn’t ask, this was his offer). He took several weeks to arrange a mechanic to come out so during this time the boot didn’t work correctly, first world problems I realise but when you have an electronic boot, they take a lot longer to open and close than a manual boot. I’d have to stand next to the boot, wait for it to almost close then force it the last 30cm by hand. His mechanic came out several weeks later and couldn’t fix the issue, he said it was the struts and would order some new ones. The waiting period now started, after a week or so I asked for an update, to which Amo stated he was having trouble finding struts. Week on week I’d give him a curtesy call to check on progress, 90% of the time he doesn’t answer his phone, instead he would text or voice memo back, presumably because he was fed up of me asking him the same question once a week. Eventually he started saying “pal, I will fix it, you don’t need to worry but it’s low priority, it’s not stopping you using the car”. True, but when I’ve saved and spent £15k on a nice car I expect it to work and I expect decent aftersales care, not be repeatedly told for months on end that his other customers needs outweigh mine. Just to let you know Amo, I don’t care about your other customers, I care that my £15k car isn’t doing what it should be doing, and I shouldn’t have to be inconvenienced due to your more important customers. This back and forth went on for many months. On several occasions Aamo would simply come up with new excuses from “my mechanic is ill” to “my mechanic is on holiday” to “pal, I’m away this weekend, I can’t do anything about it”. Excuse after excuse after excuse, I’ll add that during these months I remained completely calm and polite with him, only contacting him every 1-2 weeks with a simple “hi, do you think your mechanic can come out soon”. His mechanic was also convinced the problem was 100% “lazy struts”, which 2 garages (which we’ll get on to) confirmed the struts were completely fine and nothing to do with the boot issue. Eventually by around February the boot failed during a school run, however this time it would not close at all. By this point, after 4 months of his excuses I rang him in quite a bad mood as I was already out at the kids school with a boot that was now open, meaning the reverse camera wouldn’t work, the car alarm keep beeping to tell me a door was open and I couldn’t safely drive anymore due to the boot moving around and opening while the car was moving. By this point I demanded him get a mechanic out the same day to fix the issue, “pal, calm down” was his response. I told him that he's now taking advantage after 4 months of excuses and I need it fixing immediately because it’s now undrivable, he said it was “due to the frosty morning” and the lock would work again when it was warm. Eventually after I’d ranted about him fixing the boot immediately, he said, “fix it yourself” and hung up. From this point on I’d started legal action, seeking legal advice and looking at small claims court action. I sent Amo a letter confirming this and I’d taken my car to a local garage to fix the issue, of which I intended to bill the clown. Legal advice informed me that he had one fair chance to fix the issue within “a reasonable amount of time”, which I’d given him. The garage informed me the new lock Amo had fitted had broken and wasn’t official, they mentioned it had broken because the root cause hadn’t been fixed, which was related to the pulley system putting strain on the lock. They stated that no matter how many times you replace the lock it would continue to fail unless the pully was fixed. They’d also found the internal components in the boot related to the lock had been removed from their housing and not replaced correctly, wires had been left messily hanging down. They also found another issue and that was that the boot was misaligned, which is why it was not closing flush and locking by itself. The garage is not a bodywork specialist so told me I would need to get this separate (but related) issue fixed at a specialist. My next visit was at an official Mercedes dealership to investigate the misaligned boot, they also carried out a full health check and reported around £3k worth of work that needed doing, including brake discs, because the pads had been replaced but not the pads, broken suspension and worn suspension to name a few. I’ll mention at this point that I work from home full time and hardly use the car at all so for so much wear and tear, including a snapped suspension all within 4-6 months seems unreasonable to me. Mercedes fixed the misaligned boot, and I went away with another bill. I’d been in contact with Amo multiple times during this period and informed him that I would be taking him to court unless he paid for the repairs. Amo started to get very agitated with me, sending me multiple voice memos literally using the words “pure extortion” in relation to me asking him to pay the repair bills. He stated his business was going into liquidation and I could do whatever I wanted in terms of legal action because he wasn’t going to pay me anything as he was wrapping up business. I was now fully intent on taking the clown to court out of principle alone, regardless of his business going into liquidation (which I thought was a lie anyway). When he knew I was completely serious after sending him a final letter with a deadline to pay me he started negotiations. Amo eventually offered me the full amount for the lock and pully fix at the first garage and a “contribution” of £100 +vat towards the ~£300 Mercedes had charged for the boot realignment. His reasoning was that Mercedes fees were an unreasonable amount and no “decent” garage would charge more than £100 to realign a boot, I didn’t mention this too him because I’d had enough of this mess dragging out but I’d also got quotes from local bodywork specialists and I can confirm no specialist would realign the boot for £100, so once again, Amo is a liar. Around 3 weeks later I receive a payment from Amo for just under £600 and the nightmare is over, some 6 months after the purchase and after numerous legal phone calls, signed for letters in the post and massive expense and mental stress to myself. Please, please, do not do business with this dishonest dealer, you’ll regret it. If he does decide to respond to any of this calling me a liar or arguing back, ask yourself this, why did he eventually pay me off? Why wasn’t he prepared to go to court? What possible excuse could he have for taking 6 months to fix my boot?