drivethedeal or a local dealer pre registered Cali for a much higher price?

C

California Craig

Lifetime VIP Member
Messages
22
Location
Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex
Vehicle
T6.1 Ocean 204 4 motion
Im wondering if anyone has recently purchased a Cali through Drivethedeal?

I’m looking to buy at the moment, Drivethedeal have offered a great discount. My local dealers aren’t offering a penny off and rubbishing the offer from drivethedeal and talking about the huge number of cancellations of orders being experienced at the factory and I’ve been left wondering if I order from drivethedeal if I’ll just end up with a cancellation

any advice from anyone who’s purchased - ideally recently - would be much appreciated

thanks
 
Hundreds if not thousands of us have bought through DTD. The dealer is talking twaddle. DTD is just a broker to a dealer. After DTD everything is then managed through a franchise dealer.
 
The dealer isn’t going to want to endorse DTD as it almost certainly won’t be through their dealership so they won’t get the sale. I don’t think you’ll get a cancellation on DTD though, you’ll have to wait for your van but at the moment unless you order some highly customised that probably won’t be more than 4 months or so
 
Yep or if you don’t want to go via DTD just configure the spec on the DTD website and then send the quote details to Eurovans Crawley (who fulfil the DTD orders anyway I believe) and they’ll match it. Can send you the contact details of the Cali sales guy there if you need them, just let me know. Spoke to him earlier as mine’s about to go in to build and he said a price rise is imminent just FYI.
 
Jimmylondon07 said:
Yep or if you don’t want to go via DTD just configure the spec on the DTD website and then send the quote details to Eurovans Crawley (who fulfil the DTD orders anyway I believe) and they’ll match it. Can send you the contact details of the Cali sales guy there if you need them, just let me know. Spoke to him earlier as mine’s about to go in to build and he said a price rise is imminent just FYI.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply and info. Contact details for the Cali guy there would be great. Thanks
 
California Craig said:
Im wondering if anyone has recently purchased a Cali through Drivethedeal?

I’m looking to buy at the moment, Drivethedeal have offered a great discount. My local dealers aren’t offering a penny off and rubbishing the offer from drivethedeal and talking about the huge number of cancellations of orders being experienced at the factory and I’ve been left wondering if I order from drivethedeal if I’ll just end up with a cancellation

any advice from anyone who’s purchased - ideally recently - would be much appreciated

thanks
Click to expand...
I bought from DTD. Ordered start of August 2022.
Put in touch with Eurovans.
Great communications with Michael Wool at Eurovans. 10% discount.
Collected last day of Nov 22.
No issues. Non whatsoever. (Apart from not being able to change my order, 4 weeks after order, as it was being built!)
(Make sure you are 100% sure, what you want to order & options.)
Went down on train. £70 train ticket, and £8k saved.
Highly reccomended.
 
Jimmylondon07 said:
Yep or if you don’t want to go via DTD just configure the spec on the DTD website and then send the quote details to Eurovans Crawley (who fulfil the DTD orders anyway I believe) and they’ll match it. Can send you the contact details of the Cali sales guy there if you need them, just let me know. Spoke to him earlier as mine’s about to go in to build and he said a price rise is imminent just FYI.
Click to expand...
Slightly off topic; did he mention if the price rise would affect your order as we’re due to get ours very soon!
 
We had a similar experience to Californication69. Ordered through DTD and put in touch with Eurovans in Crawley. We were told a lead time of 3 to 6 months. We ordered at the end of Nov 22 and we are picking up our Cali Ocean next Monday so almost a 6 month wait. No problems with DTD or Eurovans except that we had to chase Eurovans for updates we didn’t hear anything from them. I’m not sure why some people get their Cali orders much quicker than others. Ours was a basic Ocean with only a couple of basic options.
 
I ordered through DTD and the order was placed with Eurovans. Zero communications from them so far and when I asked I was "politely reminded" that I was told 3-6 months delivery when I ordered (late March '23) and I should just wait and see. The customer service from Eurovans is appalling when you consider I'm dropping over 65k for a vehicle but I did save 8/9% vs the next best dealer price. I've seen in a thread from April that Breeze was able to provide a provisional build date to a different customer so not sure why Eurovans can't? Would I buy from DTD again? So far the whole DTD/VW experience sucks, but again... hard to argue with the price.
 
Ianvonlux2023 said:
I ordered through DTD and the order was placed with Eurovans. Zero communications from them so far and when I asked I was "politely reminded" that I was told 3-6 months delivery when I ordered (late March '23) and I should just wait and see. The customer service from Eurovans is appalling when you consider I'm dropping over 65k for a vehicle but I did save 8/9% vs the next best dealer price. I've seen in a thread from April that Breeze was able to provide a provisional build date to a different customer so not sure why Eurovans can't? Would I buy from DTD again? So far the whole DTD/VW experience sucks, but again... hard to argue with the price.
Click to expand...

From what I gather, Eurovans has a high-turnover, no-frills business model. They are somewhat curt, although I'd not go so far as to say rude. Breeze *appear* to get their vehicles slightly quicker too, although I've no idea how that works as I was under the impression (complex options aside) it's just the order they are ordered in.

The way I look at it is the dealer has zero influence over the speed of delivery. Once the vehicle gets into the UK, there are KPIs around it, but I'm sure they contact you by then at least. As a consumer, we obviously are excited about the prospect of a new vehicle and want to know what's going on, but in reality other than finding out that it's "still on order" or "still stuck in the port" or whatever arbitrary status they label it with, it's a bit of a moot point. What really should be done is VW should provide a simple tracking tool, but I suspect they would worry that might prompt even more questions ("why is it at status 10 again when it was at status 20? Why has it taken so long to get from this to that?" etc. etc.).

I'm with ya - ordered a similar time, hold tight, exciting times are coming! :cool:
 
Once the shine of the new vehicle has disappeared.
And you never speak with the dealer again.
I’m still smiling I got exactly what I wanted
for £79k and not £87k
Love my California.
And the next 15 years of travel and fun times that will be had in it :)
 
RockinNRollin said:
From what I gather, Eurovans has a high-turnover, no-frills business model. They are somewhat curt, although I'd not go so far as to say rude. Breeze *appear* to get their vehicles slightly quicker too, although I've no idea how that works as I was under the impression (complex options aside) it's just the order they are ordered in.

The way I look at it is the dealer has zero influence over the speed of delivery. Once the vehicle gets into the UK, there are KPIs around it, but I'm sure they contact you by then at least. As a consumer, we obviously are excited about the prospect of a new vehicle and want to know what's going on, but in reality other than finding out that it's "still on order" or "still stuck in the port" or whatever arbitrary status they label it with, it's a bit of a moot point. What really should be done is VW should provide a simple tracking tool, but I suspect they would worry that might prompt even more questions ("why is it at status 10 again when it was at status 20? Why has it taken so long to get from this to that?" etc. etc.).

I'm with ya - ordered a similar time, hold tight, exciting times are coming! :cool:
Click to expand...
We had zero issues with Eurovans. Got our discount, they dealt with us as a usual customer and gave full updates when asked. Handover was great and our salesperson (Dave) was spot on.

Any difference in speed is imaginary. As you say - "the dealer has zero influence over the speed of delivery".

Once the order hits the factory, it is their hands.

This part is 100% right:

Once the vehicle gets into the UK, there are KPIs around it, but I'm sure they contact you by then at least. As a consumer, we obviously are excited about the prospect of a new vehicle and want to know what's going on, but in reality other than finding out that it's "still on order" or "still stuck in the port" or whatever arbitrary status they label it with, it's a bit of a moot point. What really should be done is VW should provide a simple tracking tool, but I suspect they would worry that might prompt even more questions ("why is it at status 10 again when it was at status 20? Why has it taken so long to get from this to that?" etc. etc.).
Click to expand...
 
dspuk said:
Same.
Click to expand...
Although I was specifically told there was no price protection on the California when I ordered - maybe something has changed? Hopefully I’ll get it before a price rise and in any case, I’m pretty sure it’s built now and I’d gladly argue the cost once it’s built as the materials and labour have already been expended.
 
Although drive the deal may be the cheapest place to order today, if you have an older cali to part exchange or sell, you would get a better price for that now than you would at the end of summer when hopefully your new van arrives. The extra value in the old van could wipe out any saving gained by ordering V taking a new van from stock.
 
andyinluton said:
Although drive the deal may be the cheapest place to order today, if you have an older cali to part exchange or sell, you would get a better price for that now than you would at the end of summer when hopefully your new van arrives. The extra value in the old van could wipe out any saving gained by ordering V taking a new van from stock.
Click to expand...
Not sure if the OP has a PX?
 
Just to put in a shout for autoebid (same process as DTD) - easy buying process and saved ourselves a few grand, and the dealer (Listers in Droitwich) were local so it all worked out well. Would recommend having a look at them for new orders.


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