John E

Profit before customer care

My father purchased a 2016 second hand car from Harwoods Ryde. Sales team were very good, friendly and efficient. Unfortunately my father, who is 86 became ill on the weekend of collection. He took delivery of the car but was unable to drive and three weeks later was told by the hospital he will not be able to dive again and should surrender his license. I contacted Harwoods on his behalf and enquired about selling the car back to them. He paid £6400 for it - bearing in mind they would no longer have to underwrite their own 12 month warranty, complete a service, MOT or valet it and that it had covered an additional 8 miles - he was offered by the Managing Director - £4300. That is a loss of £2100 in three and half weeks and the car hasn’t moved. Whilst we realised that there would be a loss selling again so quickly such a significant loss indicates either the car purchase price was vastly inflated or as I suspect Harwoods intended to profit from the initial sale and again for the subsequent sale on the back of my fathers medical misfortune. I find this very disturbing and immoral from a main dealer. Interestingly when speaking to other main dealers on the island most expressed surprise and indicated their policy in such circumstances would be to buy the car back less an administrative charge of about £500 and then offer it for sale at the original price. It is clear, based on this example, that Harwoods are driven by profit at any cost and have no moral or social conscience in their trading practices, they have no interest in customer care. As a family we are very surprised that on a small Island a franchised main dealer can behave in this way with no regard to their reputation which is contrary to their advertising. I phoned and emailed the dealership and did not receive a response until they read a review I had posted. The manager was shouting and angry I had posted it but no resolution was offered.