smiths garage reviews

We purchased a Vauxhall Zafira for £6,500 back in September 2012 from JPH Autos in Wootton Wawen. Sales staff were friendly, the showroom looked professional, as did the website, we felt we were making the right choice with the car we had just purchased. How we wished we had checked online reviews of this company, as we would certainly not gone near them! After 8 weeks of owning the car it broke down and couldn’t get it off the drive, as it was still under warrenty we rang JPH Autos for advice and was expecting them to sort it out. They were aukward and we got the feeling they didn’t want to be bothered, but after a heated discussion they sent someone over to look at the car. He repeatedly tried to start the car with a battery booster pack, which we now know was the wrong thing to do as the timing chain had slipped. So in fact every time the engine was turned over it was causing more damage. It was recovered the next day to a garage of their choice in Sheldon (Smiths garage), this was the start of a very painful and frustrating 4 weeks for us. Constant phone calls to JPH by us trying to find out what was happening and being fobbed off with every excuse in the book. They told us they didn’t know what was wrong, then awaiting parts, received wrong parts etc etc. It took us 3 weeks to find out where the car had been taken too and only then by talking to another salesman at JPH as Lee (the salesman who sold us the car) was off that day. We rang Smiths garage in Sheldon directly where the car had been taken too, only to be told that the car had not even been looked at! The next day Lee (from JPH) rang us to tell us we could now deal with Smiths garage ourselves, he wanted nothing more to do with us! A week later we collected the car and had to pay half the cost of the repair £500, which we were not happy about. To this day the car is not right and is leaking oil. Both parties now will not have anything further to do with us as we have reported JPH Autos to ‘Trading Standards’ and now also Smiths garage. In our opinion,the after-sales service from JPH Autos leaves a lot to be desired. After selling us the car they don’t want to know if anything goes wrong. We even had discussions with the owner ‘John’ who basically told us ‘if we were not satisfied to take him to court’, which really shows how much they care about us as customers! We feel very let down as you pay a premium buying a car from a auto-trader believing you have more protection if things go wrong. In reality in this case we would have been better off buying the car from an auction and taking pot luck. Then if anything were to go wrong we would have taken it to our usual garage who we know and trust. It has been very distressing and upsetting for us and has taught us a very valuable lesson, always check online reviews about any company before purchasing your goods. We hope this helps someone else and that you don’t repeat the same mistakes we have made.

mick hewlett - 24/01/2013 | report this review