Car Giant Car Supermarket

I have just bought a car from CarGiant and found it an extremely stressful and unpleasant experience.


Buying a car from Car Giant is not something I would recommend that anyone does.


At one stage the “customer service” people were being so unreasonable when I made a request of them that I vowed that I would share how bad my experience had been with the widest possible audience unless they at least considered ...
...that anyone who buys from Car Giant does so with their eyes wide open. I’m posting this review in as many places as possible in the hope that everyone who needs to see it will see it and avoid the error that I made. I had read a few poor reviews of Car Giant before I bought, but not enough to dissuade me. I hope that this adds to the information out there to allow people to make an informed choice.


My basic advice would probably ... more

I have just bought a car from CarGiant and found it an extremely stressful and unpleasant experience.

Buying a car from Car Giant is not something I would recommend that anyone does.

At one stage the “customer service” people were being so unreasonable when I made a request of them that I vowed that I would share how bad my experience had been with the widest possible audience unless they at least considered my request for some sort of refund for their poor service. They just didn’t care!

I’m now making good on that promise as I felt very badly treated and I want to make sure that anyone who buys from Car Giant does so with their eyes wide open. I’m posting this review in as many places as possible in the hope that everyone who needs to see it will see it and avoid the error that I made. I had read a few poor reviews of Car Giant before I bought, but not enough to dissuade me. I hope that this adds to the information out there to allow people to make an informed choice.

My basic advice would probably be – don’t.

My experience was that although I got my car at a fairly good price, once the additional expenditure and huge aggravation were taken into account it simply wasn’t worth it.

If you are interested, let me tell you why in detail (this is quite long, but you may really find that reading this now saves you going through what I went through):

I bought a 2005 Audi A4 automatic from them and put a deposit down in September this year (2009).

Notwithstanding their famous 114 point checks having read some slightly worrying things on the internet I decided that I’d have the car checked out by the RAC.

When I’d test driven the car the engine didn’t sound perfect at low revs, but the salesman drew my attention to how sweet it sounded at higher speeds, so I ignored this experience and put down a deposit. [Note: always pay very good attention to your own observations]. I’d also noted that the brakes were softer than on other A4s I’d tested.

The first RAC inspection revealed that:

1. The engine was misfiring especially at lower speeds
2. The spare wheel did not match the other wheels
3. The windscreen washer jets were not working properly
4. The bonnet catch was stuck

Additionally:

5. The brake discs and pads were very worn and would need replacement very soon
6. 2 of the tires were extremely worn (they probably wouldn’t have failed an MOT but were pretty damned close).

Additionally:

7. Some of the trim was detached
8. One of the speaker grilles was damaged
9. The cigarette lighter didn’t work
10. Some of the paintwork touch-ups were very poor (I’d viewed it in poor light and it was not so clean so this had not been quite as clear to me as it later appeared).
11. The cupholder was stuck/broken.

This was all despite their 114 point check!
In my view they should not sell a car with any of these things wrong.

(In fact Car Giant say that points 5 to 10 are not their responsibility – provided that a car is roadworthy and would pass an MOT they will sell it, notwithstanding the fact that the tires or brake pads are very low as these things are not bad enough to fail it. That may be true as a matter of contract law, but good customer service it ain’t, at least in my view).

Conclusion 1: If you must buy from Car Giant get an RAC check. Though bear in mind it will cost you about £200, so factor this into the price.

However this is not the end of the story.

After about a week they told me that all the problems had been fixed and the car was ready for collection. They told me that they had fixed problems 1 to 4 and as a “goodwill gesture” had put on new pads, discs and tyres and fixed the cigarette lighter.

I was disappointed that they were not prepared to fix everything that was wrong, but were reassured that they were fixing most of the most important stuff.

But by now I didn’t trust them (given how thorough their 114 point check had been!).

I decided to send the RAC in to reinspect the car to make sure that Car Giant had fixed everything they claimed to have fixed.

This cost another £127.

(That’s £327 to add to the purchase price that I’ll never see again, but I suppose that one might need to pay that buying from many people unless there is some sort of warrantee.).

If that inspection had revealed that everything was now OK (at least the stuff they had been prepared to fix) I wouldn’t now be writing this very long review.

It wasn’t OK!

Yes. They had replaced the spare tyre, and put some slightly less worn tyres on the front of the car. Yes they had changed the brake pads and discs and fixed the bonnet catch.

But…

*The cigarette lighter was now hazourdous in that it shot out into the car when it got hot

*The windscreen washer jets still were not working properly and most importantly

*The engine was still misfiring!

They hadn’t sorted this on their 114 point check, but more amazingly even though they told me the engine was now fixed and knew that I was sending the RAC in to reinspect the engine was still misfiring!

I told them that would give them another chance to fix it but I wanted them to pay for the further RAC reinspection that would be required (£127).

They told me that as a “goodwill gesture” (I had precious little goodwill remaining) they would pay only half of this, namely £64. I was pretty livid. If they had done their job I wouldn’t have needed to pay anything further. In fact if their 114 check could have been trusted I would be £327 better off.

I decided to let them have one last go at fixing the engine, though by now my patience was running thin.

They emailed me the next week to say that the car had now been fixed and had been given an “extensive road test” by their engineers who were satisfied that the engine problem had been remedied and it was ready for collection/re-re-inspection.

I booked the RAC who told me and CarGiant that they would inspect the coming Wednesday. (In fact RAC then emailed CarGiant and told them they would come a day earlier, namely the following Tuesday. This should not have mattered as CarGiant were telling me the car was ready and fixed).

In fact RAC did turn up on the Wednesday only to find that the car could not be inspected as they were busy repairing it (despite having told me that it had been fixed)!

As a result of this I lost that reinspection and became liable to the RAC for another reinspection fee. The RAC elected to only charge me half price, but this was another £64 I had to pay.

On enquiry with CarGiant they told me that when RAC had not come on the Tuesday they had had another look at the car and discovered that the engine was still misfiring and had decided to have another try at repairing it on the Wednesday when the engineer arrived, making it unavailable for inspection. They refused to pay the £64 or any part of it because the RAC had come on Wednesday instead of the Tuesday in their email. The tone of the emails that I received from CarGiant was extremely unhelpful and bordering on rude. I was furious.

I rebooked the RAC and paid the further £64.

This time it turned out that the car had been fixed and the engine was now (at the third time of asking) running OK.

I managed to persuade the RAC to pick up half the £32 as their email had given the wrong date.

When I went to pay for the car I asked CarGiant to pick up the other £32 as a goodwill gesture on account of the additional unnecessary expense and aggravation I’d suffered. In fact I felt that they should have picked up all the expenses after my initial inspection (i.e. £127+£127+£32 = £286) instead of the paltry £64 they’d so far agreed to.

They absolutely flat refused.

In fact the customer services manager told me that I’d been very fortunate to receive the £64 refund, and that it was the only time in the past 3 years that CarGiant had been prepared to refund such a sum.

I told them that I was extremely unhappy and asked them to reconsider and they became pretty obnoxious with me. “The customer is always right” is clearly not a maxim that applies at CarGiant. It was a horrible way to be treated. There was no real apology for the aggravation I’d suffered and no willingness to even make this token gesture in respect of inspection number 4.

At this point I did lose my temper and told them that if they couldn’t even refund me that £32 I would write something long and detailed on the internet explaining how infuriating my experience had been and advising people not to buy from them. I thought that this might have some effect on them. It had none at all, if anything their attitude hardened and they became even ruder.

I paid for my car and left, vowing never to buy from them again and to keep my promise to tell everyone else why.

Apparently CarGiant pride themselves on something they call “excellent customer service”. That was not my experience. Not by a long shot.

This has been a very long review/comment, but if you do choose to buy from them I have only two words for you. Good luck!
 

...less