Nice enough car, very sloppy presentation......

[LeylandVCDS]

Bit of a long post, so bear with me.......About 6 weeks ago, I posted how I was swapping my trusty white Leon 1.6TDI to a Mystery Blue 2.0TDI ST.

It's been an interesting (??) few weeks - and the car was very nearly rejected and sent back to the dealer. Here's the story.......

Car was bought as a one private owner, full service history example. There were a couple of issues raised before sale, which the garage promised to rectify, but things didn't work out as they said.....I was in two minds whether to send it back, but they would not let me have my old car back, and I had already put my own reg plate on, which would have cost me to take off again. So I gave them the chance to sort things out. It wouldn't have been easy returning to the dealer for rectification as they were nearly 100 miles away from where I live.

1. The front seats needed a valet - not done on collection, but I was offered a refund of £100 to get the car valeted at my convenience. I wasn't really overly bothered about this, as I had a full FR interior to drop in anyway, but that's not the point.
2. There was a stone chip in the windscreen, in the area swept by the driver's side wiper, perfectly repairable, which they promised to sort out. This wasn't done. Again, told to get this done as soon as I could, but by the time I got home, the screen had started to crack - screen destoyed. Dealer ended up paying out for a new screen, now sorted
3. After a couple of days, the battery went flat. And was very reluctant to charge. So breakdown call out, and battery was condemned as being totally goosed. Replaced at dealer's expense
4. The dealer said they had done an oil change service, but couldn't tell me what type or grade of oil had been used.
5. After some investgation work, tracing the car back to where it was first supplied, I found out the car had been previously registered to Arval Hire.......not the private owner as stated. This has since been clarified that it had been on a PCH contract, with the car only being sourced out to one "outlet", so not a hire car as such.
6. Contacting Arval, I got the full history of the car, and found that they had done 1 minor service at 2 years. So another minor service before I collected it meant that it had not had a major service in its life. Back to the dealer again, and I told them that not only has it probably got the wrong oil in it now, it was overdue for a major service which I wasn't prepared to pay for. They told me to get it into a Seat main agent, where it has since had a full major service, with coolant and brake fluid change, all at the expense of where I had bought it from. And fair do to the Seat dealer, they activated Full Link too, at no cost to myself, and gave me a hire car for the time it was in.
7. The dealer MOT'd the car a few weeks before I bought it - and hadn't picked up 4 severely cracking tyres, and one tyre with a cut in the depths of the tread where the cords were exposed. The damage to the windscreen in zone A was also missed, neither of these picked up as even advisories. So I've had 4 new premium tyres fitted, again at the dealer's expense.
8. The catches for the roller blind in the boot space were broken both sides. These were sorted at Seat whilst in for its service, and again, all costs to the garage I bought it from.

The car has since had a further MOT, this time at Seat, at the dealer's expense, and has been given a clean bill of health, with no issues at all. All the problems have sorted, and it's got a new battery, 4 new decent quality tyres, new windscreen and a full dealer major service. I love the car, and I'm happy with it now, but why did it take the best part of a month to get issues sorted? Pay £15k for a car and you expect it to be presented spot on. I can't help feel this has been a very, very sloppy way of giving a car to a customer. It has cost them well over £1000 to get this car to my satisfaction, plus an extra £500 compensation returned to me personally.

On the up side, I have had chance of claying, polishing and ceramic coating it, and must admit it does look good. The FR interior has made all the difference in the world, and I'm finding the 2.0TDI DSG is as good, if not slightly better, on fuel than the remapped 1.6TDI manual I swapped it for.

Sorry about the bitching and moaning - it has been a pretty traumatic start to owning a new motor, and a start that I find both unacceptable and disturbing. Hopefully this one will prove as good as the previous one in the future months and years.

 

[Mr Mustard]

I've never understood this policy that most second hand car dealers have (in my experience) of leaving all the faults on the car for sale, and only agreeing to fix them once the customer has put down a deposit.
My son recently, ready to drop a large sum of money on a used Lotus was told he would have to give them £400 on top if he wanted them to fix a warped passenger airbag cover on the dashboard. Crazy.

I've walked away from cars that i would have otherwise bought if the dealership gave a damn about the product they're selling and presented them in the best possible condition.

 

[zeffania]

I'm glad you got it all sorted, but dealers don't help themselves by leaving so many issues for you to have to bring up and get them to sort


Sent from my Pixel 7 Pro using Tapatalk

 

[Walone]

I've never understood this policy that most second hand car dealers have (in my experience) of leaving all the faults on the car for sale, and only agreeing to fix them once the customer has put down a deposit.

I think one of the reasons for this is that if a car doesn't sell locally they often sell off to another trader, at least that's what used to happen years ago.

 

[oldglosracer]

Basically they hope no one will notice, so they can keep all their profit.
Who are they, you should dish the dirt, so we can avoid them?

 

[LeylandVCDS]

Basically they hope no one will notice, so they can keep all their profit.
Who are they, you should dish the dirt, so we can avoid them?

I can't - I made an agreement with them that once the car had been properly sorted out, I was not going to bad mouth them by name on any social media. In fairness, they have sorted the car out as they said they would, they've kept their side of the bargain, so I have no option but to keep to mine. Once thing I can say is that this particular outlet it is not a franchised Seat dealer, but is part of a very large national franchise which DOES have a SEAT franchise within the chain, which advertises on TV