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JonR
15-12-2002, 00:56
Hullo,

Thought I'd take this opportunity to describe the recent expericence I've had with my MY03 Leon Cupra. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I was very pleased with my new car (less than 2 months old), until on the 1st of December the brakes locked on, stranding me in the middle of a traffic lane. I quickly left the car (as it was too close to the flow of traffic for comfort and could not be moved, 180 horses or no) and called the AA. The AA took both me and the car to Bryan Brothers in Bristol.

This is where my problems really started. Due to me only having the plastic portion of my driving licence and not the paper part (so why introduce the plastic bit !?!?) the AA could not provide me with a hire car. At this point I asked the resident sales representative if he could help with sourcing a demonstrator, courtesy car etc, until 9 AM the following morning. His first question in response to this was to ask if the car had been purchased from Bryan Brothers. When I replied otherwise, due to the car being a company vehicle and centrally sourced, the individual showed no interest in me being stranded 260 miles from home without a car and said nothing could be done. If this was a genuine comment then fair enough, but the way this was handled showed no sense of decent aftersales service or even sympathy for my plight. The individual in question was not remotely interested in helping or advising me.

Fortunately a colleague of mine was able to come to pick me up, and I spent the night at his house. The car then resided until the 10th of December (8 days) ay Bryan Brothers having the problem sorted. During this time I found it very difficult to get through to the service department to make enquiries as to progress. On the tenth of December I contacted Seat UK to voice my concerns. Part of the long repair time was due to the wrong replacement rear brake caliper being delivered. Despite earlier being told the vehicle would not be ready until the eleventh at the earliest,I was invited to collect the car late on the tenth of December

I left work early, and went to collect the car. At this point I noticed the car was dirty due to spending a week in the yard, and the wheel which was removed to allow the brake caliper swap was particularly covered in oil/grease/dirt. I wasn't particularly impressed by this, but delighted to have my car back. This delight was short lived.

The brakes again locked on, while I was navigating a roundabout. Having had prior experience of this sort of scary event I managed to get the car to the side of the road. I then contacted the AA again, who once again recovered the car, and contacted Seat UK once more to express my displeasure. The AA also managed to source a hire car for me, due to me contacting the DVLA personally to sort the driving licence issue.

The following morning at 8 AM I arrived to inform Bryan Brothers of the issues. The individual in the service department seemed neither sympathetic or apologetic towards the issues I had experienced.

On the 12th of December I received a call from Richard at Bryan Brothers, who questioned the fact that the brakes and handbrake did not work, as they seemed to be working fine. I informed Richard that the brakes were working all too effectively. I was conerned about this as they did not seem to have any awareness of the fault the car had spent 8 days on the premises for.

I finally received a call on Friday 13th to say my car was ready. I will be picking it up on Monday. I contacted Seat UK late on the 13th, having spoken to them twice on the 10th, to ask why they had not been in touch after my earlier concerns.

I await their response. I will not be taking my car to Bryan Brothers for servicing in future.

Cupramax
15-12-2002, 22:06
Jon,

Sorry to here about your problems,...I'm surprised you weren't given a courtesy car by the dealer in the first place. Your first 2 years of warranty are with SEAT UK so it should be irrelavent which dealer its taken to to fix it. I had a major mechanical failure on my Leon Cupra R the first week I had it and the first thing customer services @ SEAT UK asked me was had the dealer given me a decent courtesy car.

Admittedly I had to throw my toys around a bit but the car was fixed within 3 days (not at Bryan Brother I hasten to add) which considering mine was one of the first batch in the UK, and the part that had failed, wasn't too bad (not saying to much here ;) )

Paul S
17-12-2002, 14:57
I have also had nothing both bad experiences fron Bryan brothers in Bristol. I bought a brand new Ibiza Cupra from them a while ago, what should have been a pleasurable experience turned out to be a total nightmare. When they finally bothered to tell me my car was ready for collection it was in a pretty sorry state. The paintwork was scratched through to the metal, the passenger seat was stained, they tried to clean it when i complained and made it worse, the intermittent wash-wipe didn't work (even though it had been ticked as working on the delivery sheet), the dash rattled etc etc...

The scratched paint was poorly fixed and had a obvious buff-mark, i booked the car in to have the wash-wipe fixed, when i turned up they had no idea who i was and said that they could not fix the problem as it would take all day, Holders in Congresbury fixed the problem in 10 minutes flat under warranty.

I never took my Cupra there for servicing as i had zero faith in the dealership, holders got my servicing business instead. When i came to buy my 2003 Leon Cupra i drove all the way to Newcastle (N.E. SEAT)as autobytel got me a good part-ex deal. Anything other than Bryan Brothers. I know I'm not alone in having real problems with this dealership.

andyb
17-12-2002, 15:11
have a search in this part of the forum and you'll find that Bryans arent too hot! My dad had similar problems years ago when they were a Ford Franchise

StevoWarby
19-12-2002, 18:45
Four simple words (From experience)

** Bryan Brothers are shite. **

Stevo.

Paul S
20-12-2002, 08:31
Originally posted by StevoWarby
Four simple words (From experience)

** Bryan Brothers are shite. **

Stevo.

this is being kind.

JonR
31-12-2002, 11:02
Just a quick update on this. Finally got my car back, and it's been fine since, though it still hadn't been cleaned when I picked it up.

I'm more concerned that I've had no response from Seat UK customer services about my complaints. They promised a number of times to get back to me and never did.

Ah well. Great car, rubbish aftersales support.

Syphon
31-12-2002, 11:49
Jon,

Sorry to hear about all the trouble you had.

I live near Bristol but fortunately my local dealer is Holders of Congresbury. Excellent bunch.

Although this is no consolation to you, it seems that (from other threads on the forum) that Bryan Brothers will not be holding a Seat Franchise after today. Whether they chose this themselves or weather Seat UK have taken it away from them remains to be seen.

Hope you have no further trouble with the car.

Cheers,

Scott

JonR
05-01-2003, 20:01
Thanks to everyone for the sympathy ! The car's been running fine for a while now, so it feels like it wasn't that bad after all !

Fortunately I've just moved to North Somerset, quite near to Holders, so things should be better in future. I'm still disappointed in Seat UK customer service though, and the car's developed some faults;

Rear seats squeaking
Water leaking in through rear door onto the back seat
CD player pausing when cornering hard

Ah well, can't win 'em all. :jog: