I sourced my Exeo ST Sport Tech from buyacar.co.uk and had a very stressful experience. My parents bought a Leon FR from them at the same time and also had a poor experience.
To sum it up:-
- my car took months to arrive - over double the estimate, and nearly 6 months after placing the order. Not necessarily buyacar's fault, but I got pretty much zero communication and had to do all the chasing myself.
- both I, and my parents, are shown as the SECOND owners on our registration documents, despite being assured we would be the first, and indeed that being shown on the deal on the website when we purchased. Buyacar had done some dodgy deal where the cars were registered to a (fictitious?) health company in Scotland and then transferred into our name. Nothing could be done about this and buyacar were not prepared to compensate us for this.
- my car was delivered without its satnav DVD. It took almost 6 months of constant chasing buyacar, and eventually I was told to purchase it myself and they would refund me (which to be fair, they did) - but that only happened after I threatened court action if they didn't take my car back as I'd had enough. I was given various stories, but the final one was that the supplying
dealer's account with Navteq was on stop for non payment of invoices so they were unable to purchase it. Read into that what you will.
- my car was delivered without a
service book. Eventually I was sent a blank one (no PDI stamps or any info filled in) but that took 6 months of chasing and many phone calls.
- my car was delivered with 1 incorrect window glass. One of the rear windows did not have the dark tint on. My local
SEAT dealer replaced it under warranty, but how on earth did that get through the supplying
dealer's PDI?!
All told, I sent over 100 emails and made over 30 phone calls to try to get the mess sorted out. It took over 6 months to get the car how it should have been and I had to threaten the small claims court as the car was not "as described" before I got anywhere.
buyacar's response? 'we make such low margins on these cars we can't do anything for you' - translated, that means 'once we've taken your money we couldn't really care less'. They did eventually put a £250 credit on my account for the next time I buy a car from them. Hmmmm......
One thing I will say - it seemed that the supplying
dealership was part of the
problem and I believe after our experience they may have changed their supplier for SEAT cars. SEAT UK were also unhappy that buyacar/their
dealer were registering cars as 'business' sales, and then transferring them to 'private' sales apparently.
I would also add that my uncle used buyacar.co.uk to buy two Citroen's a few months before, and had a flawless experience, so maybe it was just a poor supplying
dealer (in my & my parents case, Pentagon Lincoln).
Would I use them again? Probably not, unless I got a written assurance that they have changed supplying
dealer and their deal is significantly better than somewhere like Drivethedeal!