Having had recent experience of very poorly prepared cars that seem to fly entirely in the face of the seven point LR Approved Used customer promise, I wonder what others think about this and, indeed, whether there's anyone on here that might have inside knowledge of such things.

My suspicion is that the default position for most dealers may well be to just give it a wash and stick it on the forecourt. Obviously, they'd have to sort any obvious damage, but the 165 point mechanical, electrical and safety checks???? At the end of the day, I reckon they hope the customer doesn't pick them up on too many issues and they'll then do as much as they have to.

Maybe I'm being unfair, but having seen some recent examples, I can only conclude that they either haven't performed all (or any?) of the promised checks, or their highly "Land Rover trained technicians" are totally incompetent! 2014 3.0 SDV6 Sport HSE Corris Grey with Ebony/Cirrus
GONE - 2012 TdV8 Westminster Orkney/Ivory
GONE - 2012 3.0 SDV6 Sport HSE Luxury Orkney Grey/Ivory
GONE - 2006 3.0 Td6 Vogue SE Buckingham Blue/Parchment

Profit first IMO.

Bare minimum, regardless of age or mileage.

If you were a cynical, profit drive sales person, would you *not* proactively seek out everything that people might pick up on but wait and see if people object?

"If they clock it, we might, if they don't, we won't!"

car dealers are car dealers, no matter what it says on their sign.

There are good ones and bad ones, back street, independent specialist or franchised dealer.

Some will just do the minimum prep they can get away with and stick it on the forecourt. Others will pay more attention to detail.

Some will sell them with faults and just let the extended warranty catch them, some will rectify them before they sell the car (as they're supposed to).

If you find a badly prepared one, report it to Land-Rover customer services. Manufacturers do check on their dealers and re-educate them if they need to.

The bottom line is buying from anywhere give the car a good look over yourself, most car dealers will haggle. What approved used gives you is a little more come back should you buy the car and find it's not as good as you thought, whereas from some where else you might find a small fault and the dealer just tells you that it's what you'd expect with say a 5 year old car, with approved used the dealer can't really say that. If the car is badly prepped, tell the dealer and LR customer services that and walk away. There are plenty of good ones out there.

If you're buying one, you'll look it over carefully, test everything and get a mechanical inspection. So it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to paid extra for someone else to do that, especially when the standard to which it's done can vary so much. I love the IDEA of AU, but the practice seems to fall short.

Agree with all the comments. I'm sure there are some good, as well as bad, ones and it's up to us to check the cars we're buying very carefully. I certainly wouldn't rely on the AU promise, but it still amazes me the extent to which some dealers don't seem to have checked and prep'd their cars at all. I also think the 2-yr LR warranty might make some of them even lazier.

One AB that I went to see a few weeks back was absolutely awful. It probably needed a couple of grand spent on if before it would be of an acceptable standard - let alone LR's claimed 'immaculate.' If that dealer was working within the spirit of the AU pre-checks promise I'd be very surprised indeed!

As everyone says, the bottom line is to check everything and believe nothing. When you do find a car you want, stick to your guns on anything you want done before you agree to buy. I'm sure there are some excellent dealerships out there, but you usually have to go with the one that's got the car you want. It seems to me that most of them are simply there as an obstacle for you to overcome and you have to try to buy the car in spite of them! 2014 3.0 SDV6 Sport HSE Corris Grey with Ebony/Cirrus
GONE - 2012 TdV8 Westminster Orkney/Ivory
GONE - 2012 3.0 SDV6 Sport HSE Luxury Orkney Grey/Ivory
GONE - 2006 3.0 Td6 Vogue SE Buckingham Blue/Parchment

I had a similar experience with a LR AUC

Many, many faults and the most disappointing of all - it wasn't even clean. Food residue and detritus.

Broken heating phases on windscreen
Sagging roof lining.
Missing headphones and remote
New door handles not painted
Flat battery 24 hours after delivery
Missing mats in front
Parcel shelf wrong colour and badly worn / damaged.
Bluetooth u/s
Advisories on MOT for brake pad wear
Broken rear tray hinges
Missing cover over rear heating controls

It spend a total of 4 weeks with dealer to get fixed.

Now the front o/s windscreen pillar cover is loose and the headlining is coming down again.