Thursday, May 31, 2007

Dear Alan Day Honda portsmouth you are completely useless

Dear all, I know its a bit of a niche but Alan Day Honda in porstmouth should be avoided at all cost.
Why? Well the work customer and service really does not seem to be part of their make up.
We have bought an FRV from them. A nice car. BUT..... Aside for the incompetent sales approach and the weeks of unreturned calls once the car was ordered, that required me to go the garage and get in their face, they then found the car and handed it over.
Well, hand over, yes right. The car did not start, so they had to hit the battery with a booster. Great.... Understandable. Then when Jan drove off the entire car has no power, engine and warning lights on. It takes us 20 mintues to negotiate back to the garage.
Sudddenly many Honda people turn up "oh this never happens" like I give a toss! it is happening and it is happening to us. The car is borked.
So they whisk it of, the less than competent salesman who we had dealt with just cant seem to cope. The bosses whisk the car out back. Then return to say, well it needs an ECu reset, you know cars and computers and modern stuff.
Anyway, they give us the demo car, we drive home. They say "we will call you in the morning". This was a good test as they seldom call back. Why? becuase they really do not give a stuff about customers and service. Anyway, no big surprise NO CALL.
So they have the money, we have the demo car, they have the new one.
At 5pm we phone to say, "hey". They make some crap excuse "oh we cant mess with it its a new car we cant mess with it without approval and ...THEY HAVE NOT CALLED US BACK" no sh1t! Their track record of never calling us back must pervade the company.
Anyway. we have no new car, they are the worst firm I have EVER come across. No excuses, this is not isloted, this is not one or two forgivable cockups.
This is Alan Day honda porstmouth being the most useless set of people for talking to customers. So the car is broken, TALK TO US !
I cannot imagine ignoring a customer, or someone that I say "I will call you" However its not just the main salesman we talked to, its the sales manager too.
I am at a loss as to what to do.
Oh and when picking up the car I ask "So the mp3 connector then?" reply "Oh I am not the expert on that you need to talk to parts". I go and see parts "No mate no idea".
Ok so its only a 3.5mm jack but for gods sake its a 18K car. You must know about the damn wire.
Incompetent Alan Day honda. I dont care what they do now, they need to not have any customers any more they dont deserve them.
We are of course going to complain on the more official channels, we have a complete record of how completely rubbish they are, but ..... Damn this is the worst customer service I have ever received and I am a brit !

*****Update
We seem to be getting some movement now on getting the thing fixed, and also in getting told what is going on. After a call just now I am reassured that this will be rectified, of course there is a long way to go to build our customer satisfaction back up, and its not fixed until we have the car and it all working.
Apparenly part of the standard engine management system is not behaving and the part needs to be swapped out, which means it has to be delivered first. Also a slight delay because "Honda Technical" were out on training all day yesterday and ignoring dealers. So lets see. where this goes and if I morph this post title over time.

******* yet more updates
So they ordered the ECU "it will be here tuesday". Tuesday comes and its "Oh, Honda did not send it it was out of stock". So today (wednesday) the demo car was taken back, the ECU was ripped from it and popped into the "new" car. Jan came home somewhat deflated. Its a new car, but still the experience is not yet done.
For a start they need to put the new new part in if it ever turns up, they also did not do the simple thing of putting any mats in the car, and finally sticking the ipod lead in (which they will do later) is not a big deal its just a start. But then given the salesman pretended he was throwing in the scotchguarded seats when we bought the car only to find its standard, I am not surprised.
So The complete log has not been sent to Alan Day, we have a car. The matter is not closed. If they work VERY VERY hard, and I am not talking a £10 cable or £20 set of mats then I may archive this post. However, for now, this post still stands and service like this, when spending this amount of money is not acceptable.

2 comments:

Raye said...

Wow - what a company no wonder you are annoyed. I wouldn't want the car now.
I would like to add thomsonfly.com to the incompetent list after recent experience and costly 0870 calls.
Ya Ya

Anonymous said...

Your story re: Alan Day is eerily similar to what I experienced today at Alan Day Enfield. I bought a car battery from them yesterday. Today, an AA guy took it out of its box and fitted it to my car. It didn't work despite several "boosters". The AA guy kindly accompanied me to Alan Day Enfield but we had no help at all, and we were asked to go from Parts to Reception, back to Parts and then to Reception again. The receptionist and manager was unbelievably rude. The AA guy kept repeating to them that their battery had a fault and they just asked us to pay £50 to check it!! Pure cheek! Anyway, they refused to give us a new battery until they checked the old one. In which case, we'd have to cough up £50 for their malfunctioning battery - it makes no sense! The AA guy and I were just so confused and irate at their appalling customer service.