Lookers Guildford - rough start - poor dealer experience

[Tomato]

I've been in there a couple of times..no one ever called or e mailed me back....tried to order handbook earlier this week but no answer on the phones from parts dept....IMHO Lookers are looking in very poor shape, it'll be rats leaving the ship with your salesman. The poorly run Dinosaur Plc dealer groups will struggle in the current climate.. Doomed by their massive borrowing even at low interest rates, lack of real assets, BS balance sheets, staff that don't care and manufacturers that wont be helping them. It was looking terrible pre Covid. I'm tempted to short sell Inchcape stock. A former employee works at Arnold Clark Group. They gave all their staff full pay during the lockdown, They paid their staff their bonuses based on last year's performance. They have solid values as a family owned company. They have no borrowing and own all their sites outright. They sold over 1000 cars online in May....

When years ago I ran dealerships we would fine the salesmen if they spent less than 30 minutes handing a vehicle over, we would train them to go through all the prevalent points. Most decisions on repeat business are made on the handover, most problems can be dealt with then. One of my favourite reports showed that a buyer of a new BMW was more likely to deal with the same company again if he had a problem and it was dealt with beautifully than if he had no problems at all...

 

[Nick&Sara]

I've been in there a couple of times..no one ever called or e mailed me back....tried to order handbook earlier this week but no answer on the phones from parts dept....IMHO Lookers are looking in very poor shape, it'll be rats leaving the ship with your salesman. The poorly run Dinosaur Plc dealer groups will struggle in the current climate.. Doomed by their massive borrowing even at low interest rates, lack of real assets, BS balance sheets, staff that don't care and manufacturers that wont be helping them. It was looking terrible pre Covid. I'm tempted to short sell Inchcape stock. A former employee works at Arnold Clark Group. They gave all their staff full pay during the lockdown, They paid their staff their bonuses based on last year's performance. They have solid values as a family owned company. They have no borrowing and own all their sites outright. They sold over 1000 cars online in May....

When years ago I ran dealerships we would fine the salesmen if they spent less than 30 minutes handing a vehicle over, we would train them to go through all the prevalent points. Most decisions on repeat business are made on the handover, most problems can be dealt with then. One of my favourite reports showed that a buyer of a new BMW was more likely to deal with the same company again if he had a problem and it was dealt with beautifully than if he had no problems at all...

Well written Sir

 

[Amonkeyhint]

I've been in there a couple of times..no one ever called or e mailed me back....tried to order handbook earlier this week but no answer on the phones from parts dept....IMHO Lookers are looking in very poor shape, it'll be rats leaving the ship with your salesman. The poorly run Dinosaur Plc dealer groups will struggle in the current climate.. Doomed by their massive borrowing even at low interest rates, lack of real assets, BS balance sheets, staff that don't care and manufacturers that wont be helping them. It was looking terrible pre Covid. I'm tempted to short sell Inchcape stock. A former employee works at Arnold Clark Group. They gave all their staff full pay during the lockdown, They paid their staff their bonuses based on last year's performance. They have solid values as a family owned company. They have no borrowing and own all their sites outright. They sold over 1000 cars online in May....

When years ago I ran dealerships we would fine the salesmen if they spent less than 30 minutes handing a vehicle over, we would train them to go through all the prevalent points. Most decisions on repeat business are made on the handover, most problems can be dealt with then. One of my favourite reports showed that a buyer of a new BMW was more likely to deal with the same company again if he had a problem and it was dealt with beautifully than if he had no problems at all...

Totally agree, and can relate with my experience of the evoque, had a couple of issues (diff, headlight replacement etc), my vehicle was always collected from my works car park and dropped off before I left the office for the day. Always offered a coffee, even if I was just popping in for an adblue refill. Fantastic service and would have bought another had we not decided to go down the California route.

Half the staff at lookers are still on furlough, so had similar challenges getting them to call me back to arrange my reimbursement and pay the bodyshop directly once it was in for the bodywork repair.

 

[BenPcaliman]

I thought I’d share a pretty terrible buying experience from a main dealer.

My search started back in January, I had an LDV maxus van that we converted ourselves and had for a few years and with some persuasion decided I wanted a T6 California. We spent a few weeks looking on the T6 forum and this forum making sure the base van was spec‘d appropriately for a budget of about £56k.

My options wish list included:
- T6 Ocean (19 plate minimum),
- 199 engine
- Grey
- LED Lights (front and rear)
- Heated windscreen
- ACC
- 4motion
- Alcantara seats

Turns out my spec was pretty much impossible to find, so I had to make sacrifices by removing 4motion, and the heated windscreen which doesn’t seem to be a common option - I use it in winter as my daily driver and found the heated windscreen on the RR to be fantastic.

I eventually found the right vechicle with most of the options I wanted, 19 plate, 199, grey, LED lights, ACC & Alcantara for the top end of the budget.

I had to travel around 200 miles to the dealer (who I’ll leave nameless) via multiple trains, and found my new van in the showroom. Handover was fairly rushed, but mostly because of some train disruption meant I was late and I had to leave fairly promptly to avoid the rush hour traffic.

I had a very quick look at the van, which looked ok apart from I noticed the gas stove looked a bit dirty, as I was in a rush, I didn’t mention anything. I couldn’t look at the outside of the vehicle really because it was inside the show room in a fairly tight space.

After about 15 minutes of setting off from the showroom, the tyre warning light came on. I pulled into the services for a quick look at the van and took some pictures, but I noticed on closer inspection of the kitchen area that it was filthy. The stove, cupboards, fridge had not been cleaned at all. The bin in the driver pocket was full of rubbish (wrappers, empty mars bar wrapper), I also noticed a load of women hair clips stashed in the phone cubby hole. Shortly afterwards, the dealer called me to ask me how my drive home was going so I complained about the issues (dirty kitchen, tyre warning). He explained that the tyre warning can come on if the tyres are cold and quickly expand if not used for a while but apologised and offered to sort a valet from my local VW centre and a free tank of diesel for my inconvenience.

View attachment 61124View attachment 61125View attachment 61126View attachment 61127View attachment 61128View attachment 61129

Once home, we found further issues:
- The fresh water and waste water tanks were half full of water - easy job to empty and run steriliser through but not what I expected
- Interior carpets were soaked, although I’ve not had it happen again after leaving the night heater on for a few days nor have I found the source yet
- I found a large scratch and dent along the lower side of the van - it looked like it had been filled in badly to mask the damage
View attachment 61130
- All 4 tyres were over inflated by 10psi (they were 55psi), and one of them had a bulge in the tire wall.

Luckily, I took photos throughout all of this, and eventually managed to convince the dealer to pay for the following:
- Full vehicle detail about £200
- 1 x new tyre £160
- Body repair and respray £900

Totally shocking service for a van costing nearly £60k, and for a van with less than 4000 miles on the clock. I’ve finally just had the damage repaired and money reimbursed for the valet and tyre so at least I can now start enjoying it!

I would agree Guildford are a terrible dealer but they are my obvious choice being so local, I have had many visits and they always seem ill prepared, I would also question the work that is done as they clearly did not replace my oil filter at the last service. I will be servicing from now on.

 

[rod_vw]

As others have said this needs to be escalated to Lookers MD but with him being made aware that the same escalation has been sent to VWCS at Milton Keynes and to VW in Germany all at the same time, each being asked to acknowledge receipt of the report.

There is absolutely no excuse for ant of the problems that the OP had, a vehicle should not be in the showroom in that condition. If the scratch had not been repaired the purchaser should have been made aware of it at the time of purchase and either an offer made against the price or promise made in writing to have it repaired at another van centre near the purchaser's home.

I've purchased five vans from dealers over the past sixteen years four have been from dealer's stock and one a new order all from different dealers and have never had such disgusting service.

 

[Tomato]

A logged complaint to VAG UK customer services should light the fuse that will head to senior management at Lookers, these were the “opportunities for improvement” we feared the most when I worked with dealers, messages to the factory sometimes also helped but not always. New car sales have more clout as Lookers get bonuses for new car CSI ie customer happiness

 

[Paul Karas]

We bought an ex demo Cali Ocean 68 plate from lookers in Guildford nearly 2 years ago. Support through the sale was great and the guy who specialised in Calis was excellent. But he wasn’t very well so maybe he’s not there now. We now use Breeze in Havant to service ours and they’re pretty good - had a couple of warranty fixes done and a service - apart from the usual windscreen washer fluid scam they’ve been fine. So maybe things aren’t all that bad with all dealers.

 

[HectorPascal]

Lookers, Guildford: Rented a Cali from them once for a few weeks. It was not very well cleaned but the main issue was the waste tank was half-full and utterly rancid. I drained it onto the drive and then had to was down the drive to get rid of the stink. Spent a good while sterilising it and the fresh tank instead of setting off.
They knocked off a day's rental. Awful.

 

[Amonkeyhint]

Lookers, Guildford: Rented a Cali from them once for a few weeks. It was not very well cleaned but the main issue was the waste tank was half-full and utterly rancid. I drained it onto the drive and then had to was down the drive to get rid of the stink. Spent a good while sterilising it and the fresh tank instead of setting off.
They knocked off a day's rental. Awful.

Seems they didn’t learn from not emptying the water tanks.