AVOID - DREADFUL PLACE
Went to Carshop Cardiff looking for a family car, spotted a Mercedes we liked. We noticed there was overspray on the front alloy, a massive diagonal scratch across front emblem and bad fogging/blurred xenon headlight. Car also had slow to retract rear seatbelt and a very tough/stiff clutch. Mentioned this to the used car sales manager Sam, he immediately muttered 'It's going to be one of those days'. He begrudgingly agreed to fix the overspray and driver’s headlight but said the scratch and other issues would be too expensive to fix. He said the clutch being tough is 'just how these models are'.
We gave them nearly a week to fix the issues, and on collection spent roughly 40mins attempted to be sold an extended warranty for the vehicle at a cost of an extra £1000. We politely declined this, and went to the collections desk. I queried if the car had been valeted and the girl said 'I don't know, I think so' which didn't give either of us much confidence.
I was then handed 3 sheets of badly photocopied A4 paper as the entire service history. I asked where the manual was and was told 'there wasn't one'.
The car was driven to the exit and my wife said I should check the agreed work on the front had been done. I could see to my horror literally nothing had been touched. The wheels didn’t even have basic tyre dust caps on them and their handover checklist was completely blank too.
We were asked 'What do you want to do'?. We were told all the managers had gone home for the day and there was nobody to speak to. We decided we didn't want to take the car and were shocked as we explained that previously Sam had said the car was currently in the workshop with the issues being worked upon which clearly was a lie.
We ended up coming home extremely stressed, with a new keeper slip, over £10k out of pocket and without a new car.
What followed was further visits to undo the tax, return the 2nd key and wait very patiently for our money to be returned. Numerous other phonecalls were made to the used car manager who was continually extremely rude and unhelpful on the phone.
He decided they now wouldn't fix the headlight as previously agreed as clearly it was too expensive and tried to say the alloy could be fixed at an undetermined later date, excuse for the work not being done was a 'family emergency in the workshop' even though the car was left with them for 4 days.
We were going to argue that the agreed work was actually written in black and white on the sales order but in the end myself and my wife agreed that this was no longer about the car, it was about customer service. We had to call them, nobody contacted us, and the only person that eventually apologised was the business manager Les.
Instead of communicating with us that the issues couldn't be fixed, they just told us everything was ready and hoped that we wouldn't notice.
I'm sure some people will go to Carshop and have a straightforward sale with no issues, but judging by the lack of care and honesty, quality and customer service we can both solidly say that Carshop Cardiff has an extremely long way to come before it becomes a place anyone should go to purchase a car.
We are particularly disappointed that Sam's lack of customer care and attitude wasted our time and also the time he wasted of the dealership's business manager Les who despite the longwinded warranty pitch was actually a very pleasant and helpful individual to deal with. We were also assured a call back from the regional sales manager due to our appalling experience, it's September 6th and all of this happened on July 16th, so nearly a 2 month wait with no phonecall. Go figure.
We have since bought a new family car the same model in immaculate condition with 20k less mileage on the clock, with full Mercedes main dealer service history and mountains of paperwork with a leather bound manual, and a clutch that is buttery smooth for £500 less with double the free warranty through an independent local dealer.
Do yourself a favour, give them a miss!
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