Result - nice people to do business with

[Andy665 0]

Been pitching for a deal with Inchcape on some consultancy for the rest of the year.

 

I asked for a car and they said there was no chance but they would pay IR fuel allowances - I was happy with that.

 

They have just come back to me and advised that they will be supplying me with a Golf 2.0TDi and 80 gallons of fuel per month - it will be classed as a courtesy car so no tax impact on me (already checked with my accountant). When it reaches a need for a service it will simply be replaced. Not the most exciting car in the world but its free

 

Quite happy with that :D

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Inchcape VW in Colchester are bloody awful with the paying public, but sounds like they treat you guys better, what ever it is you do, LOL!

[Andy665 0]

Kev - worked with a lot of dealer groups and have to say that overall Inchcape are comfortably the best, as with everything though you don't have to look too hard to find poor people. I deal with customer facing staff and I'm constantly amazed at how poor peoples basic people skills are - its not rocket science to treat people with courtesy and in a professional way but so many people just don't get it

[KIPVW 0]

Sounds like a good deal Andy :clap: Agree with the common courtesy too you wouldn't believe some of the stories i've collected over the years :lol:

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Yep, that's precisely what annoys me. The missus and I walked into Inchcape's showroom ready to buy a car from them, but the sales staff suddenly had better things to do and walked off, or just looked away from us and pretended to have some important paper work to do.

 

Naturally I don't like pushy sales staff either, but to blatantly blank us like we are beneath them and not even acknowledge our existence is inexcusable arrogance / laziness.

It's the easiest thing in the world to welcome people, even if they're not intending on buying a car. The fact they are there and not in Ford's showroom deserves some recognition, surely? It doesn't take a genius to work out that undecided people can EASILY be pursuaded into a sale with the right level of approachability and honest friendliness. People that look down at me NEVER get my business.

 

Anyway, we immediately walked out again, and bought a car from Ipswich Wolsey instead, who have MUCH nicer sales and service staff imo.

 

Oh and Inchcape Colchester stick the parts staff in a portacabin in the far corner, which gets unmanned and locked up every lunch hour - the only time I get to fetch parts in!!

 

If you have some influence over these kind of people, some words in their ears about how to treat customers wouldn't go amiss! :D

[Supercharged 2]

Kev - worked with a lot of dealer groups and have to say that overall Inchcape are comfortably the best, as with everything though you don't have to look too hard to find poor people. I deal with customer facing staff and I'm constantly amazed at how poor peoples basic people skills are - its not rocket science to treat people with courtesy and in a professional way but so many people just don't get it

 

Andy, Colchester VW and Wolsey in Ipswich are well known in East Anglia for offering some of the worst customer service going...

 

I know several people who happily travel up to Stowmarket or Northgate in Bury to buy cars or just for servicing becuase of such bad experiences with local dealers. This is something I think lets the whole VW brand down - I appreciate dealerships need to be franchised for financial reasons but they really need to spend more time training and keeping an eye on the service these dealers provide.

[Andy665 0]

I'm banned from Wolsey in Ipswich because I gave them a no holds barred report on their business. Seems like many businesses don't like the truth - I'm paid to be honest and I don't mind being banned if they take exception to what I believe to be true. I try to look at everything through the eyes of the customer rather than as a consultant

[Supercharged 2]

I'm banned from Wolsey in Ipswich because I gave them a no holds barred report on their business. Seems like many businesses don't like the truth - I'm paid to be honest and I don't mind being banned if they take exception to what I believe to be true. I try to look at everything through the eyes of the customer rather than as a consultant

 

lol - doesn't suprise me... they really are useless that place but then you have TPS next door who offer some of the best service going, absolutly superb and most garages don't even bother with the likes of GSF or Euro now. Ipswich Audi too, also owned by the same group who have a great reputation for service - just a shame the VW brand is being let down by bad dealers.

[corradophil 3]

Inchape VW in Chelmsford are hopeless too. Their parts dept is somewhere else on site, and they have a desk in the corner of the showroom with a doorbell to ring to get a member of staff. This can sometimes be a lengthy process, involving lots of doorbell ringing.

 

They are nearly always unavailable if you ring them. :censored:

 

I've complained to the parts manager, but she said it is company policy, and whilst she understands it is poor, they are stuck with it.

 

I have rang TPS and their staff went to get the VW parts guy to ring me.

 

GSF in Chelmsford are the opposite - really helpful, carry a reasonable ammount of stock, and you get served quickly.

[sprinterVR6 0]

I'm banned from Wolsey in Ipswich because I gave them a no holds barred report on their business. Seems like many businesses don't like the truth - I'm paid to be honest and I don't mind being banned if they take exception to what I believe to be true. I try to look at everything through the eyes of the customer rather than as a consultant

[*]

 

Doesn't forum member 'Pat McCrotch' work in Audi/VW Ipswish branch :lol:

 

He was great with me when it came to buying my Storm. So there, one good seed in every rotten apple eh :wink:

[Supercharged 2]

I'm banned from Wolsey in Ipswich because I gave them a no holds barred report on their business. Seems like many businesses don't like the truth - I'm paid to be honest and I don't mind being banned if they take exception to what I believe to be true. I try to look at everything through the eyes of the customer rather than as a consultant

[*]

 

Doesn't forum member 'Pat McCrotch' work in Audi/VW Ipswish branch :lol:

 

He was great with me when it came to buying my Storm. So there, one good seed in every rotten apple eh :wink:

 

Neil works for Ipswich Audi - who deliver great service and customer care.... he's bought several new cars from VW Wolsey and has had issues with them himself despite being an employee of the same group.

[WreckedGecko 0]

Bit O/T but the VW garage in the City of London, is horrible too. Walked in there because they had a new Roc R in the window and was met with "err.. yes, can we help you?" in a very condesending tone. When I asked if that was the new R in the corner, I was told to "go and speak to a sales person, I really dont know." At which point she went back to her paperwork totally ignoring me. Needless to say I didn't bother. It was also what made me decide to definatly spend the money on an R32 conversion (saving a shed load!) rather then buying something new. Silly really, but there you go.

[Kevin Bacon 5]

At which point she went back to her paperwork totally ignoring me.

 

That is my gripe exactly. Why dealers think they are a superior race of human being is beyond me. FFS it's just a mass produced German hatchback, not a Bugatti. That level of snobbery over a £30 K car is laughable and without our business, they are nothing, so it should be the customer being condascending, arrogant and rude to the f'kin sales staff, not the other way round.

 

Sorry but arrogant f'cks who think they're too good for their jobs REALLY annoy me and I tell them so these days....

[pupkin10 0]

I have had similar poor experiences from Inchape in Southend, been servicing my V5 Golf there for about 7 years. In that time the service I received was never really great, always just about ok or below average. I always went back there because the car is low mileage mint example and I stupidly thought keeping up the full vw service history would be a good idea (misguided i know). However, after my last service I will never use them again and I told them I will never go back, did they give a toss ? of course they didnt !!!!!

 

I took the car in for just a interim service in December. When dropping the car off I took the precaution of resetting the trip computer to zero miles. (I had heard stories from a mate who was a mechanic at another local garage (not VW) that some of his colleagues would regularly take customers cars out for a bit of a thrash) so I thought I would reset the milage to zero just to see if my car would go on any little outings.

 

At about 5 in the afternoon I got a call to say the car was done and in the process of being cleaned. When I got there just before closing, the place was chaos, there were alot of other customer moaning about being kept waiting. It was well after the normal closing time when I was finally served.

 

In any event, I paid and eventually found the car in the corner of the car park, the first thing that cheesed me off slightly was they had lied about the car being cleaned, it hadnt. However, I wasnt overly p@ssed off with this as, firstly, it was friday and I just happy to have finished work, and secondly, they would have probably used some old dirty sponge that had already cleaned about 50 other cars and this wouldnt have been great for the paint work I care for so deeply.

 

Upon starting the car and driving off i had completely forgotten about the fact I had reset my trip computer to zero when dropping it off that morning. I only remembered when I got about half a mile down the road and to my dismay the trip computer was now showing 3.8 miles. So clearly my car had been taken out on about a 3 mile joyride by someone at Inchape.

 

There was no possible reason for them to take the car out on a roadtest, it had only gone in for an interim oil change service and there was no faults to diagnose via any roadtest. I can only summise that someone fancied taking it out for a bit of a thrash. It is not your normal example of a V5 and has been remapped, has 18 inch r32 alloys and skirts and colour codes Anniversary spoilers etc so it generally looks the part, (still no where near as quick as my vr though)

 

You can imagine my annoyance at the thought of some little scrote thrashing the sh@te out of it and wasting my petrol. I couldnt go back and do my nut that evening as by the time i noticed inchape had shut. I complained via the online survey thing that VW emai you asking for your feedback and I requested a call back. I also complained to another bloke who then subsequently telephoned me to ask what I thought of the service. I never did get a call back with an explanation and as my mum was battling cancer at the time i never really chased up my complaint as it wasnt particalary high on my list of priorites. As you can imagine I will never go back and my advice to anyone is always make a note of your mileage when taking you car in for anywork, especially , if as a last resort, your thinking of using Inchape Southend !!!!

[Danny B 0]

Sorry Pupkin 10, I say this in the most unargumentitive way but is 3.8 miles on the clock really that bad :scratch: ........I thought you was going to say something like 50 odd miles - this is what I found on my Alfa after a service :mad2: .......count yourself lucky you dont have to go to Alfa dealerships mate :lol: !!

[Henny 0]

I caught a local garage taking my car out for a LONG fast drive when it was in for an MOT... My on-board GPS tracker sent me a text message to let me know it was more than 3 miles away from the garage I'd left it at, and that it had just exceeded 70mph... there isn't any roads with more than a 60 limit within 15 miles of the garage, so I phoned them and played merry hell and told them that I had half a mind to remotely disable the engine via the tracker... funnily enough, I didn't pay for that MOT, and haven't been back to that garage since...

 

anyway, my wife bought her Audi A3 Cabrio from Inchscape in Macclesfield (Macc Audi) and the service we've had from them has been excellent... no complaints at all about their service, the only gripe is about the car's software which has more bugs than a Insectarium... :?

[Andy665 0]

Like Autocars long term test Merc SL63 - dealer staff did not know it was a M-B owned car and when he collected it they had done 180+ miles in it and when pushed admitted that they had borrowed it to demo to a customer.

 

Conversely when the 4Mo went in to have the broken clutch pedal linkage replaced they stated that they had given it a test drive but the trip meter showed it had done 0.1 mile.

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Mixed reviews on Inchcape then.

 

I forgot to mention that Wolsey of Ipswich delivered our Polo back to us - after a £750 service - with the geometry off and the steering wheel pointing to the left. I mean, the VW technician driving it surely must have noticed as it was pulling hard to the nearside? Or maybe they hoped we wouldn't?

 

Either way, they were swiftly instructed to come and get it again and do the job properly, which they duly did and gave us some petrol money for the hassle, which is fair enough I guess.

 

Money seems to mean nothing to these people :?

[pupkin10 0]

Sorry Pupkin 10, I say this in the most unargumentitive way but is 3.8 miles on the clock really that bad :scratch: ........I thought you was going to say something like 50 odd miles - this is what I found on my Alfa after a service :mad2: .......count yourself lucky you dont have to go to Alfa dealerships mate :lol: !!

 

 

:lol: :lol: Yeah but all I keep seeing in my head is that scene from Ferris Buellers day off when they parked Camerons dads ferrari at that garage and those blokes go flying off with the star wars theme music going. My poor V5 Just think what the could have done in those 3.2 miles !!!!!!!!! :lol:

[Danny B 0]

.........My poor V5 Just think what the could have done in those 3.2 miles !!!!!!!!! :lol:

 

.....a couple of 1/4 mile standing starts and blasts :ignore: ......sorry couldn't resist :) !!

 

when my Alfa came back with 72 miles on the clock I went chicken oriental :bad-words:

[Pat_McCrotch 0]

Unfortunately due to my work situation I'm not allowed to say anything about Wolsey VW. Read of that what you will.

 

Northgate VW staff are very good but Barnards of Stowmarket are just insanely good at Customer Service and how they run things. I have a friend who drives his R32 all the way from Chelmsford to have it serviced there as well. I'd highly recommend them to anyone in Suffolk or Essex