An utter nightmare experience.

I bought a car here a few years ago and it was possibly one of the worst decisions of my life. Please heed my advice.

The moment I walked through the door I was met by a 'polite chap' who began to assist me in looking for the particular car I was after at the appropriate price. Initially, I was told that they didn't have this model at that particular price and would I consider something else. It was then I had a chance to browse their showroom, 30 minutes after I'd arrived.
After deciding to move on I was ambushed at the exit to suddenly be informed that the car I was looking for was available and it just so happened that it was at the top of my budget. I was assured it had only just come in and hadn't been cleaned blah blah... I was apprehensive at first, but against my better judgement I returned.
I was taken to the car where I was surprised to see it was in reasonably good condition, even though it had quite a disproportionate amount of miles for it only being 2 and half years old. I took it for a test drive with this 'polite chap' and all seemed OK, as much as you could wish for on any short test drive. I told them I would take a day or two to think it over, at which point I was pushed for a deposit to which I flatly refused.
I was finally allowed to leave the showroom and return home, where over the next 48 hours I was bombarded with phone calls from this 'polite chap' who had morphed into 'pushy chap' asking repeatedly if I'd made up my mind. I know these are car salesman but this did become borderline ridiculous. I was inundated with calls from 3 different people all posing as the ‘pushy chap’.

I returned their call when I had made up my own mind and told them I was going to go ahead with the purchase, at which point they wanted the deposit immediately, in case they sold the car before I’d managed to travel the lengthy 8 miles to the showroom. Whilst still possible, yet unlikely, I was not about to part with any money until I’d seen the revamped product on the showroom floor. It was agreed the vehicle would come with full service history, an MOT valid for 6 months as well as a 3 month warranty. I asked if I could have the car checked over first to which they assured me their HPI and 114-point check was of exceptional standard. I thought great!
When I arrived to inspect the vehicle and make the payment I was no longer sure which ‘pushy chap’ I was now dealing with. It was at this point I was introduced to the insufferable ‘Mr Irritant’ who was a whole new breed of a ‘pushy chap’. He proceeded to try and sell various extra covers and guarantees for the car, to the point where he was practically making the decisions for me by repeating ‘’yeah? Yeah? Let’s do that, let’s do that’’. He might as well have been taking my wallet out of my pocket for me, such was his aggressive approach. He also ‘advised’ that I could put the extras on my credit card and pay that off. Now losing patience, which I usually have in abundance, I made it very clear that I would only be paying the full amount for car with no additional covers/guarantees.
Once I’d paid for the car and ‘Mr Irritant’ was off my case, I was then taken to another room where I was introduced to ‘the apprentice’, where he was clearly only in the early stages of becoming ‘pushy chap’ status. ‘The apprentice’ then proceeded to try and sell to me various protective paintworks for my car. At this point I just told him I didn’t want anything else, I just wanted to complete the handover of the vehicle and I was tired of all these sales pitches.

Finally, I was introduced to ‘Mr Feeble’ as to better describe him. By this point I’d already paid for the vehicle and was now due to sign the relevant documents for the handover. It was at this time ‘Mr Feeble’ dropped the bombshell that the car did not in fact have full or even part service history. Additionally, the car had an MOT valid for only 5 months; ‘Mr Feeble’ had explained that this was their error (an obvious oversight caused by their sole interest of getting me to part with my money with the expense of any customer care), but there was no recompense. I was then told I’d have to bring the car back the following week so they could conduct the MOT, causing great inconvenience without so much as an apology. They were happy to take all of my money and even try and sell extras before supplying me with any of this information!! By this point I’d just had enough and stupidly signed the dotted line to which Mr Feeble told his joke that I’m sure many, many customers have heard before and since - ‘you’re signing your life away’. He wasn’t quite right but he wasn’t too far from the mark either due to the amount of aggro, stress and inconvenience this vehicle would cause me until I was finally rid of it.

I then went into the Carshop showroom on that fateful Saturday to finally take ownership of the most fault ridden car you could possible imagine. I sat in the car for the first time since the test drive and I thought it had been cleaned immaculately, but then I started to notice there were bits of tissue stuck to various parts of the interior and inside the air vents. It was a slap dash job considering the amount of money I’d parted with. The real insult to injury was when the car ran out of petrol when I was driving to the filling station which was 400 meters away. I called Carshop but there was NO help from them once I was out of the door and my money was in their pocket. After I’d walked to the petrol station to buy a jerry can and put fuel in the car, I eventually got the vehicle home and discovered that I was totally drenched. Carshop hadn’t even bothered to ‘air’ the car once they’d cleaned the fabric interior and so it was still extremely damp.

After leaving the car to dry for a couple of hours I found a mobile phone I did not recognise wedged in the seat. I set about trying to find out who it belonged to until a series of explicit messages came through from somebody’s boyfriend detailing their escapades from the night before. After vomiting into my mouth and swallowing it again a call came through on the mystery phone asking for a ‘Mr Feeble’. I returned the phone at my earliest convenience, without as much as a ‘thank you’ from ‘Mr Feeble’. But I was set upon again by ‘Mr Irritant’ asking if I’d thought about purchasing the extra cover. At this point I felt like giving him a thunderous right hook to the jaw, but being the gentleman that I am, I kept my composure and left.

After dealing with this absolute circus of a company, for the first 4 months I was happy with my purchase and it seemed I’d made the right decision. Wrong. After around the 5th month (conveniently out of warranty) the cylinders started to miss fire to the point it became too dangerous to drive, it was consuming oil at an unusually rapid rate, the exhaust needed replacing and the electrics were faulty to the point I was replacing various sensors on a regular basis. Considering that the car had been predominantly used for a short commute on a day to day basis with no long journeys taken in this time whatsoever, this seemed absurd. The first time I took it into a dealership garage they discovered the car needed a new timing chain, spark plugs, coil packs and countless other components. My first bill was nearly a grand! By the time I managed to get rid of the car 11 months later I’d almost bought it again with the amount of money I’d spent on repairs to keep it on the road. The garage informed me that the car was in one hell of a state and looked liked it had been for some time. It turns out the information I was fed about the HPI and 114 point check by the ‘pushy chaps’ was either total BS or I was lied to. They sold me a duff vehicle AND they knew it.

I will NEVER deal with this company again, the deal driven nature and commission hungry culture this company has formed means that customer care has gone completely out of the window. A typical car salesman’s reputation is no secret, but these ‘pushy chaps’ take it to a whole new level. They were clearly very sly and were in the knowledge that they were selling me something that was only fit for the scrap yard. Once these greedy imbeciles had my money there was no such thing as aftercare and the whole process from start to finish was a complete nightmare. I inform anyone looking for a new car to give Carshop a wide birth

Please heed my advice and STAY AWAY from these underhand scumbags.