Car Giant www.cargiant.co.uk Review

Overall Rating

customer service
prices
pre sales
during sales
post sales

Some websites promote car giant ' s prices as being 3% under trade price " this figure needs to be viewed with caution as the car I bought was actually 9%+ over the trade price, as calculated by whatcar.co.uk (more of why I bought from cargiant later).

In their defence, the mechanical checks the company make are clearly comprehensive, and their website is well laid out (with comprehensive pictures) but unfortunately this is a drop in the ocean compared to what ' s wrong.

So what went wrong? Where would you like to begin?

I called cargiant in advance of my visit, stating that I had a part exchange. I stated that my car was over 10 years old (it was 12 yrs old), and that it had an lpg conversion. The call centre operator asked me to bring it in and told me the part exchange section would look at this. It was clear when I was on site (before anyone had even looked at my car) that a part exchange was scarcely an option, and if it was, the price I was going to be paid was well below the market value (the actual price offered was approx 40% of the market value, not including the lpg modification).

The car I bought from cargiant had outstanding finance showing on it (I found this out at the cargiant site when I made an RAC check). The finance company did clear the outstanding finance while I was on site, but I couldn ' t help thinking Cargiant should have made this call, and this shouldn ' t have been left to their customers.
Perhaps the worst part of the initial visit was the ' compulsory ' verbal questionnaire I was forced to participate in my first visit (I had to go to the site twice, excruciatingly). The two questions I ' had ' to answer were 1.Whether I had been to car giant before and 2. How I ' d heard about cargiant (eg web, word of mouth etc). I ' ll admit to being nonplussed as to why cargiant view this information as compulsory, when it ' s clearly free market research for them.

Doubtless the directors at cargiant think they created a clever business. All I can say from a customer ' s perspective is that it comes across as one of the most inefficient, unpleasant places to spend your hard earned money. You are passed from pillar to post, and the actual process of buying the car takes an appalling amount of time, irrespective of whether you are fast at decision making, or go at quiet times of the day.

It ' s quite like buying in Ikea (in that the buying process is hellish), but without the good value.

When I went to collect the car the measly £10 of petrol the sales person promised to me wasn ' t in the vehicle " in fact the car was so empty that I was anxious that I wouldn ' t get to the closest petrol station.

After buying the car I discovered the radio code was not supplied with the car documents. I called cargiant ' s post sales customer service. I got through to a voicemail not once, or twice, but three times in calls spaced over the period of the day (during standard working hours). It ' s interesting to note there were no such issues on the pre sales line.

I left a message asking for someone to call me back with the radio code. I later received a call from a representative with the following information:

' If we receive a radio code from the previous owner, we forward this on to the purchaser of the vehicle. If we do not, it is the new owner ' s responsibility to get this information from his local dealer. '

Or, to put it another way:

' If we fail to ask for the car code from the previous owner, that ' s your problem " find the radio code yourself, despite the fact we sold you the car. '

So why did I buy? I bought the car for the sole reason that the car I bought ticked all the boxes for my particular needs. Would I buy again? I think you probably know the answer to that.