Untrustworthy
Today, I drove for 3.5 hours to Penton's in Andover to purchase a Citroen Berlingo. Since I had not viewed the car previously, I had specifically asked the sales person to let me know of any external or internal defects. I was assured there were none and the car would be serviced and have a full MOT ready to go.
The first disappointment was the car had done over 30,500 miles when the advertisement stated it was 29,000. The sales person tried to pass this off as irrelevant and said when they put a mileage figure in adverts it is meant to be to the nearest thousand, so it had really only done 500 miles more than advertised.
On inspection I found a number of previously undisclosed faults - scuff marks inside the boot door; a 30mm tear at the back of a seat and a hole in the front of a seat that appeared to have been repaired badly.
However, the most astonishing was a 2cm gouge in the multi-function display. When mentioned to the sales person, she said it had only been noticed that morning and there was nothing they could do about it apart from putting a screen protector over the top of it.
This was a car that was supposed to have gone through a highly detailed inspection and I am to believe that nobody noticed the damage to the display screen? I noticed it within 10 seconds of sitting in the driver's seat. This is either gross incompetence, or deliberate deception.
Another sales person said nothing could be done about it because it would cost £1800 to repair the display. So they were willing to sell me a car with a defect that would cost £1800 to repair and they did not think that was worth mentioning?
I suspect they were hoping after a 3.5 hour drive I would not want to return home empty handed and would accept the defects on the car. They were wrong.
So I wasted an entire day and it cost me over a £100 for a wasted journey.
One of their sales people said I should expect some defects in a used car. Fair enough, but when I have specifically asked what those defects are, they have a duty to tell me about them.
If they had told me there was a significant gouge/scratch in the display, then I would not have made the journey.
Now I know not to trust them I shall not be including them in my future car searches.
One further point. They knew we had travelled a long distance, yet we were not offered any refreshments, or offered the toilet. One sales rep was pleasant enough, but the other was downright rude and barely lifted his gaze from his PC screen. His blunt attitude was 'take it or leave it'. Whatever happened to customer service?
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