What do people think regarding Approved Used LR standards as to what is and is not good presentation?

Tbh, The preparation of our recent acquisition is nowhere near good enough, which is one thing but to hear the sales people going on as to how they went overboard with the prep is an insult. Working hard now to get the car in the pristine order that it should be in and am half way there but to the O to th M to the F to the G, who do they think they are kidding!

Nope, generally they wash it and hoover it then chuck it out here.

Stark contrast to the Mrs 500x which I got from arnold Clarke. That car, even though it was an extra rental from Avis, was spotless, couldn't find a mark anywhere. There is nothing that can't be fixed with a hammer😜😜
FFRR 4.4 SDV8 Autobiography Santorini Black.
Fiat 500x 1.4 multiair Lounge 2015
2010 LR D4 Commercial 2.7 TDV6

I paid the thick end of £80,000 for an 12 month old AB that wasn't even hoovered. There were enough crumbs in the creases of the seats to feed a hungry fiver year old. There were oily marks on the leather, stains on the parcel shelf, the wrong cheaper car mats out of a standard vogue were in the car, the wooden interior capping (piano black) looked as though they'd been used for target practice with coins and keys......oh yes and there was a hole in the leather on the drivers seat the size of a fifty pence piece. And the sales Manager told me the car was immaculate.

And to put this into context. My wife likes VW's and we've always been treated very well by the local dealership. As our eldest is finally moving out she decided to give him her 12 month old, three thousand mile golf in exchange for his five year old 85,000 mile Jetta. The idea was that she will keep the Jetta until her new car arrives I three month time. However, it needed a service, a cam belt and water pump change and a DSG oil and filter change, so we booked into our local one man band and he completed everything bar the DSG oil change. He didn't do this because he would have to buy in specialist equipment he'd never get to use again. So in it went to the VW dealer for the princely sum of £184.00, which I bartered down to £165.00. They came and collected the car, did a great job on it and when it was returned they'd carried out a thorough wash and hoover. All this on a car that had travelled over 80,000 mile and was probably worth 5% of what the AB cost me.

Mine was really good - I bought from Matford in Exeter, sight unseen, drove a long way to collect it and couldn't fault it

The salesman's appraisal of the car before the long trip to view was good/ honest.

The majority of what they said they would do before collection was not honoured and not good enough.

Lovely car, however efforts to maximise a profit were obvious to the point of being distasteful... Right up to the point of trying to charge me £100 for the privilege of using my debit card to pay the final balance in the showroom (debit as opposed to credit card)... There then followed a 20 minute period of absence whilst numbers were crunched etc... Insulting and spoiled the experience.

Really pleased with the car though

£100 to pay by debit card another case of Foxtrot Oscar..... There is nothing that can't be fixed with a hammer😜😜
FFRR 4.4 SDV8 Autobiography Santorini Black.
Fiat 500x 1.4 multiair Lounge 2015
2010 LR D4 Commercial 2.7 TDV6

Isn't payment of a balance by debit card the usual way of doing things? What were they expecting?

I recently went to Guy Salmon Stratford on Avon to test drive a Vogue SE.

Three big chips on the tailgate down to the metal, scratches on the drivers door and filthy inside - crumbs, pen marks on Ivory leather and the sun visors and headlining covered in dirty fingerprints, plus one new tyre and three that looked right on the border of the minimum approved used tread requirements...

To cap it off there was no fuel - 0 miles - and the first part of the drive was going to Tesco's to fill up!

The sales guy said they'd had it for sale for a while and no interest! He wasn't surprised when I said I wasn't going to buy it either....

@redmerle it does seem outrageous to charge that much for a debit card transfer. But having bought 3 new vehicles this year, from 3 different places, they all wanted to charge for debit card payment and preferred electronic bank transfer - which is what I did...albeit I had to make some of the payments over a number of days due to a limit on daily electronic transfer my bank imposes. To get the bank to do it, they wanted me to go in to my branch and then pay for them to do it!

Trouble is my branch is in the Leeds, which is very expensive to park, normally ends up with lunch out and a shopping trip for Swmbo. So the true cost of "popping into the branch" can be eye-watering

@ HossBog - I had exactly the same experience with a local dealer here.

Once they'd explained that their very high used prices were fully justified by their "very high standards of preparation" and that their prices "shouldn't be compared with other dealer's" and that they wouldn't budge on price, I pointed out the damage on their £75,000 used car (one dent and several substantial gouges that had been painted over with a brush and would never have passed an end of contract inspection) and asked what they would do about that? Their answer was "it is what it is" - i.e.: lump it, or like it

For that and other reasons, I shall never return there

PS: I see the car is still for sale (over a month later), but for £2,000 less

Last edited by Red Merle on 8th Aug 2017 10:01am. Edited 1 time in total

Wolfe:

Thanks for the advance warning of that problem - I'll need to plan ahead for my purchase day.

John.