Great until it goes wrong.
We purchased a used Ford Ranger from Vospers on behalf of our business with an extended three year Ford warranty that itself cost £1200.
We drove the vehicle home and the engine management light came on during the trip. Initially we weren't hugely concerned by this, we understand things can happen, we are reasonable people. We rang the Plymouth branch first thing the next morning. I spoke to a receptionist who advised that only a "master technician" could see the vehicle, and that the soonest they would be able to look at it would be in almost two months. The receptionist could not see any issue with this and yet refused to give me her name in order that we could complain to a manager.
We then rang the Exeter branch who advised that the soonest they could see the vehicle would be in around six weeks time, and that should the vehicle be driven before it had been looked at it would void the warranty. I then requested to speak to a manager who hung up on me several times and was disinterested in helping.
The only way I was able to make any progress was to tell them that I would bring the vehicle back for a full refund and stand in their car park and advise other customers of how they will be treated once they have paid for the vehicle. At this point, surprisingly, they arranged for me to speak to a mechanic. The mechanic himself was very helpful and managed to book the vehicle in to be seen 2 days later, which we found much more reasonable.
We drove the vehicle over 60 miles back to Vospers in Exeter where another mechanic told my partner that the vehicle had a gearbox fault. They did provide a courtesy van, however as we had purchased the Ranger for its towing ability and 5 seats it was neither use nor ornament.
We later received a phone call advising that the vehicle had a turbo fault and that it would take 3 weeks minimum to fix this. Having looked at schedule of works and spoken to mechanics we know, this is a job allocated as being 6 hours in duration.
Had we waited for this to be resolved we would have given up our 2 week right to return period, and so we advised Vospers that we would be returning the vehicle.
The salesmen we dealt with (Stuart and Raff) were very helpful and offered us another vehicle which was the same price, however lacked some of the features that we wanted that were on the first vehicle. We did accept this swap as we were in need of a towing vehicle for our company. We were assured that Vospers would liaise with our finance brokers to organise this.
We were then left waiting for over a week whilst Vospers and our finance brokers blamed each other for delays in getting the vehicle. However, fortunately it appears that we were accidentally sent a copy of the full email trail showing that Vospers accounts department were the delay, and had had not bothered to send over the correct paperwork despite several prompts from our brokers and Vospers own sales team, and multiple messages from us chasing up the status of the vehicle. Strangely enough Vospers accounts did mange to send the invoice for payment to the finance broker within a matter of minutes, but seemed incapable of changing this paperwork to the replacement vehicle, or indeed answering emails from their own sales team.
As a result of a final chase up email going unanswered for two days we have notified Vospers that we have cancelled the purchase. Again, as seems to be the Vospers mode of operation, we instantly received an email telling us the vehicle was now ready.
Our confidence with Vospers, and importantly our trust in their integrity and customer service is irrevocably broken and we cannot trust them with our business.
I would strongly urge anyone to avoid using this company, there are clearly issues at a management level. Despite staff failures, staff refusal to provide names and hanging up on customers, there has been absolutely no effort made to hold these staff to account by management. We are now out of pocket for thousands of pounds, having had to pay out quite considerable costs to our business, having equipment delivered that we otherwise would have towed, insurance, and fees that we will now be charged for leaving a finance agreement as Vospers have managed to string us along past the two week cooling off period, perhaps another sales method?