In October 2010 I bought a new car. I wanted something with 7 seats as we have 3 kids that are too young to be left at home on their own, so picking other people up was always a problem with a regular 5 seat car. Unfortunately a decent vehicle of this size is expensive, so we decided to buy from Carcraft as they pretty much guarantee to get you finance and without much of a credit rating I was unlikely to get one anywhere else.
We knew from the very beginning that buying from Carcraft would be more expensive. It meant paying for a car on finance that was already over priced. However we were also led to believe that all of their cars were given a 100+ point check before they left the showroom, and were covered on a 2 year mechanical warranty, so you’d think the additional expense ensured you left with a reliable vehicle, right?
I should have probably twigged that something wasn’t quite right when I took my chosen car, a Ford S-Max, on a test drive that consisted only of right turns. I thought nothing of it though and decided to buy this one. A whopping £17,000 finance agreement later, plus the trade in value of my old car, and I was driving a new toy home.
On the way home we stopped off at Pizza Hut. It had gotten late after the hours of paperwork and the kids needed feeding. When we returned to the car there was a warning on the dashboard that the alarm had been triggered. My immediate assumption was that somebody had tried to break in. The car was obviously undamaged though so again, we thought nothing of it.
On the way home my left indicator kept turning itself on. Not fun on a motorway! Now things were starting to seem a little odd. Closer to home it started to rain and at this point I realised the wipers didn’t work. How could a 100+ point check have missed such a basic road worthiness issue?! It’s not even legal to sell a car with faulty wipers!
This is where the saga began. After many many calls and visits to Carcraft, many rude customer service reps including one guy who put us on hold for 20 minutes before eventually hanging up on us, many electrical faults including the alarm randomly setting itself off, and a total of over a month in a courtesy car, (for the record, we were paying for a 7 seat 2 litre turbo Ford S-Max, and they were providing us with a 1.2 litre 5 seat Vauxhall Corsa which hardly moved once we’d all got in), they finally replaced almost all of the electrics.
Unfortunately, in replacing the electrics, they had managed to put a massive scratch down the side of the car, and pop one of the driver airbag covers out. It went back in again for a full body spray and a replacement airbag. They also ended up replacing the lid of the storage box between the front seats and all of the fan units in the dashboard before we’d finished dealing with them.
To be fair, we did receive a considerable sum of compensation as a result of all of this, plus a free valet and the full body respray.
Everything seemed fine with the car after this, until August when we had to replace all of the tyres as they were barely legal any more. These tyres weren’t great when we bought the car and really I should have asked for replacements before signing the finance agreement. I wasn’t really bothered though, you have to expect to replace things like tyres every so often.
My MOT and service date came in October and I was told the exhaust needed to be replaced. This should have been covered by the warranty but as I couldn’t pick up my car again before it was replaced, I needed to just get it sorted so this came out of my own pocket. Again, you wouldn’t expect the exhaust to need replacing on a car just a year after leaving the showroom.
Now, in December, my clutch has suddenly died. Hearing quotes in the range of £300 – £800, I’m not prepared to pay for this one out of my own pocket when we have a 2 year mechanical warranty on a car that should have never been sold with so many faults. Back on the phone to Carcraft, they first claimed to not provide a 2 year warranty, and then admitted that cars bought over a year ago do come with this but that they don’t allow you to take the car to a garage of your choice, which completely contradicts what we were told a year ago. Given the last time Carcraft did the work themselves we had to take it back in to repair the damage caused, this doesn’t sound like a good option. We’ve also now been told that actually Carcraft warranties are provided by another company, and the company that provided ours no longer exists so whether we’ll even have a warranty any more is questionable.
I’m crossing all my fingers and toes that this time we’ll be given good service and that my car will be sorted for Christmas, but I’m not getting my hopes up…