Autobase Ltd - Rainham, Essex

I bought a third generation Toyota Estima from Autobase on Saturday 1st March plus I part exchanged my old Toyota Previa. The Estima was a Japanese import and there are a very few dealers that sell them . Autobase seemed to have the largest selection of them with different specs which at least gave us a choice of vehicles all in one place, bearing in mind the third generation Estima is a rear car in the UK made the shopping trip to Autobase a no brainier. When you arrive at the show room the place is crammed with all kinds of MPV's and really is no frills showroom, I called ahead the day before and arranged to meet Hafeez who was incredibly friendly and informative. We where allowed to roam around the cars and finally made a decision on the one we wanted which was a G edition. The car had not been registered yet and so after putting down a holding deposit of 10% I was told that it should be ready to be picked in a weeks time. I had a call from Hafeez on Thursday saying the car was ready, I picked it up on Saturday and handed my old one into them, my old Previa had a private plate on it and do when I arrived on the Saturday to hand it over I did not have the V5 but Haffez was again accommodating enough to say that I could post it to him when arrived back from the DVLA. I drove the new car back home and on Saturday night I discovered that the headlights had a fault, I texted Hafeez on Sunday and he said I should come back and they would look into the problem. I returned to the showroom on Wednesday their on sight mechanic Amjad got to work straight to diagnosis the problem after a few hours the problem was diagnosed and solved . This no frills showroom have been true to there word and I am a very proud owner of a G edition third generation Estima. I would recommend Autobase however you should do your homework on the spec you want before you get there as the choices can be overwhelming

I purchased a Toyota Previa Japanese import from these guys and it's been nothing but a headache!! They fooled me into thinking they were doing me a favour as I was getting a decent trade in with my vehicle but it looks like it's going to cost me loads in return!

Firstly when we viewed it there wasn't a stereo in it, we paid the required extra £150 to have one installed which we thought was reasonable as it was a double din hole so thought it would cost more to fit one ourselves but when we got home we re- looked at the original advert which clearly stated it had one already installed! When we queried this we were told they would take it off the final balance due when the car would be ready for collection, problem solved so we thought, they said they would MOT the car and stick 6 mths tax on it, how reasonable we thought. When we went to collect it we were told they hadn't taken the £150 off the balance but instead had done a number of repairs required for the MOT including some that were only recommendations and they had also put in a stereo that marketed as £300. We gave them the benefit of the doubt as it was getting late, we had a long drive home including a trip along a very busy M25 and had already been kept waiting 3 extra days for the car to be ready so we just wanted to get going. On the way home we couldn't tune into any radio channels except radio 2, I'm sure anyone reading this who has a knowledge of Jap imports can now see where this is going! I researched it overnight and found they had fitted an original Jap stereo which doesn't work with our radio frequencies BBC 2 being the only one it can pick up, we also discovered the offside passenger door would only open from the inside! I telephoned them and after leaving many messages finally got hold of the salesman who dealt with us, we were told to come back on my next day off for them to re-fit a different radio which wouldn't be as good, I agreed as long as they then refunded some of the cost, his tune then changed when I said that and he started going on about the extra work he had done I pointed out most of that was his duty to put it through the MOT. I also said I wanted the door fixed which he agreed to. At the end of the week he phoned me to say he had a better idea and that he had ordered a band expander from eBay, I'd already seen these and had doubts about their use but he said that was all he was willing to do, he asked that I phoned him before I came over on my day off. The day arrived but was told it hadn't arrived yet and to ring later in the day, it got later and still no word so kept ringing but was told to wait til the next day, I couldn't get anymore time off so long story short he agreed to send it to me, in the meantime I purchased some spray grease and worked on the door myself and managed to fix it. Two days later I went to go out for an appointment and the battery was dead! The AA arrived and confirmed the battery was a total dud! Another £70 later and a lot of stressing as it's not your usual run of the mill battery it's a hard one to match! I thought at last this should be it but no a trip to my dads tyre fitting company confirmed that all 4 tyres were illegal including the one he said he had changed to get through the MOT! Another large bill (thankfully footed by my dad!) and it was off to replace the wiper blade that constantly juddered in the rain, surprise surprise another bodge job discovered! The wrong blade had been fitted and had ruined the fitment so I now need to replace the whole arm! Who knows how much this will be!

To top it all off I arrived home to a letter from my insurance company asking me to ring them, I had arranged the policy online but when it was looked into it was discovered that the car had been registered without the correct model listed and therefore was not on any of their databases! They were cancelling the policy with immediate effect and I was to lose the weeks worth of policy! I rang round loads of companies and found I have to pay even more to insure it and have now got the hassle of re-registering the car with DVLA!! But not before paying Toyota to supply me with a Certificate of Conformity! What a complete head f##k and you guessed it I cannot get hold of the cowboys at the dealership that have caused this mess! I lost count as to how much this has all cost me so far not to mention the higher premium I've had to pay to get an insurance company to touch it!

As the other reviewer said STEER WELL CLEAR!! and make sure you pass this on! By the way the band expander seems ok but cost me a bomb to find someone to fit it for me!!

These guys charged me £1400 to change a clutch, fix my brakes and change brake servo, what they done was: they charged me £350 for an exceddy clutch kit for my subaru impreza wrx, but what I got was a standard clutch for a non turbo subaru, they also changed the brake servo but it was still leaking, they also stole my UK spec Exhaust systme and put it onto a new imported subaru they had at there garage, they also stole my gear box for there subaru and put there rubbish one back onto my car, I got in touch with trading standards but there were to many grey areas therefor I didnt have a case. Honestly speaking I left with a bigger problom than I started with and got charged a fortune for the privilage, dont go anywhere near these guys here is the link so you can get familiar with these cowboys... http://www.autobaseltd.com/index.asp ... and also here is the link to pictures from google maps.... http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl ... take my word for it these peopele will give you the best price imagineable but its a way of getting your car onto the lift, and when its on there lift they can play around and break anything they like and then you you it needs extra work........... STAY CLEAR!!!!