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“Mixed Feelings”

written by Nobleoc329 on 15/01/2015

I caught my Clio GT on a wall at the beginning of December. Having been referred to Nationwide (Hull branch) by my insurance company, the car was called in for an estimate two days later. I was warned in advance that courtesy cars were few and far between, but a week later was booked in for 18th Dec (approx 2 weeks after the incident). The damage to my car was purely cosmetic so the wait didn't affect my day to day runnings.

The hire car was delivered earlier than estimated on the 18th but was a nice little 64 plate corsa. I was adivsed that the company would ring me every 3 days to update me on progress but in general the work is completed between 10-14 days (both the collection driver and the people at the estimate meeting said this too me).

This is where things started to go downhill. It was around 4 days before anyone contacted me, asking for the allen key for my alloy wheel. My car never had one on purchase, but for a garage to ring up asking for a simple piece of equipment, it was a little off putting. It was a while again before anyone else rang, but this time to tell me the car had suffered more damage than first thought so it would in for around another week. No detail on this extra damage was given.

I then felt i was chasing them for information, they said they'd ring me on a certain day but then never did. When I did speak to someone, it was like I was bothering them (huffing and puffing, like they had something better to do or didn't want to be there at all). There are some gentlemen there who are very cheerful but one in particular could possibly benifit from customer care training.

3 weeks into the job, I rang on the Weds, was told they were behind schedule, but they advised me that the car SHOULD be ready for the Fri, if not there would be a completion date. Rang on Fri to be told the door still needed to be fitted so it would be another week. Finally on Wed 14th I was rang to be told that the car was ready and would be dropped off that evening.

When it did arrive the standard of work could not be faulted, they had replaced parts that hadn't been damaged but would have looked out of place, however the valet was below par. I know this isn't the main reason for sending your car to these places, but the car was covered in dust on the inside, there were broken bits of Spiderman (?!) in the cup holder and the outside looked like a rushed job. It seemed that the car needed to be done for a specific time and they did what they could in the time allowed.
It effectively ruined the hard work they had done. Its little things like this that matter to customers and a half job is worse than no job done at all.

Overall my feelings are mixed. Initial estimate and work done was excellent, but this has been over shadowed by poor customer relations, poor finishing touches and the time it took to complete the job (one day short of 4 weeks).