AutoQuake 2nd hand car sale - any one brought from?

markollyh

Yes the people posting positives are likely to be new users as they are trying to help people who are thinking of buying.
It appears that as a newly registered poster I must have some sinister reason for posting. My writing style is apparantly also similar to other posts. Guess what it's coincidence. The writing styles follow the Autoquake buying procedure so no real shock Sherlock.
I bought a Mazda 6 Estate from Autoquake just over a week ago and thought I'd post to help others gain a balanced view.

To be honest I don't really care whether people use Autoquake as I'm happy but I'm also honest.

If you look on ebay there is a 2005 black astra for sale in Heysham Lancs. Guess what it's my wife's old car which I am selling as Autoquake don't accept trade ins.

Get a life sceptics!

ceeahbee

markollyh wrote: »

Get a life sceptics!

Its not a terrible thing to point out such a bizarre phenomenen on this thread, not all the shiny reviews are fake but obviosuly some of them are namely where the authors are so defensive!! It wouldn't take much for a company of this size to employ a few poeple to water down the truthful but appalling reviews with some well written tactical shiny reviews. You'll see they started out so blatently 'I love autoquake' and then turned into 'we had a few problems but it was all great in the end' pretty poor really, people just aren't that dumb.
It will be of no help in the end anyway because if this company is as bad as it sounds then they won't be in business next year or will have a new 'brand name'
They're just another car dealer at the end of the day. No more than that.

Inactive

ceeahbee wrote: »

They're just another car dealer at the end of the day. No more than that.

Indeed, and not a very good one at that.

1). They insist on a holding deposit.

2). They do not take part exchange.

3). They do not rectify faults before passing vehicles to their customers.

Rizzywiz

Just joined today and feel like i should spent at least 10 years posting on this site before i even think about posting on this subject?

I am in the process of buying a car from Autoquake and would just like to add my 10 pence. 107 posts tells me that either Autoquake actually have a good product or no one knows how to get revenge on Consumer revenge website!

If i feel i have been seen off then you will be hearing from me again to get my revenge.

markollyh

Rizzywiz wrote: »

Just joined today and feel like i should spent at least 10 years posting on this site before i even think about posting on this subject?

I am in the process of buying a car from Autoquake and would just like to add my 10 pence. 107 posts tells me that either Autoquake actually have a good product or no one knows how to get revenge on Consumer revenge website!

If i feel i have been seen off then you will be hearing from me again to get my revenge.

My advice is don't bother posting a review as the 'experts' will only slate you.

HigherIQ

This is a follow up to my post here: (or just above on this page)
h t t p://forums.moneysavingexpert.c o m/showpost.html?p=24295865&postcount=105 (edit spaces to view)

We drove to Autoquake in Leeds yesterday to collect the Ford Fiesta we'd put a deposit on.

We got there dead on the agreed time, and were met within a couple of minutes by a salesman by the name of "Chris". He immediately took us to the car, which was very evidently very recently cleaned - still dripping water in places. Nevertheless, nice to see the effort. He offered to give us 10 minutes alone to check the car out. This gave us the opportunity to look for scratches and damage on the car itself. Other than minor scuffs anyone would expect on a 3.5 year car it was as expected. As a non-mechanic the only thing I could notice was very minor bit of rust on the exhaust - perfectly normal in my opinion if it's not been replaced since the car was new. After reading my Which car guide to buying used cars, followed my check list of things to check visually, to which everything passed my tests.

Anyway, as has also been brought up in this thread, they don't like you don't long test drives, and only wanted us to drive around their 1/4 mile long car park. For us this is all we wanted: we've test drove fiesta diesel cars before, and as long as it drove OK we were going to buy. After all we've travelled 80 miles (160mile round trip) to buy this car! The cars' last service as we already were aware was a year ago, and the engine certainly felt more "groggy" than other cars we've test drove. However my non-expert opinion was this was just because of 2 reasons:
1) The car hadn't really been drove for 3-4 months other than a few miles (paperwork shows mileage at previous ages)
2) The engine was requiring just a general servicing (which if read my previous post you know I was going to do anyway).

So we agree to buy the car, back into the portacabin to sign paperwork. We were left for 10 minutes this time whilst the sales guy sorted out the paperwork. During this time we realised we forgot something: to do a HPI check. However, having read their website previously, we decided to do this after buying the car once back home. (I mention this for later in the post).

The sales guy reappeared with paperwork, sat down and almost immediately mentioned "Do we have a warranty sorted on the car", to which I replied "Yes, I have a contract with my local garage" and that was that. After a couple of minutes reading the paperwork and re-calculating the final price to pay to ensure it was what we expected, the GAP insurance was mentioned; "Have you considered GAP insurance?", again to which I replied "It's a waste of money on a cheaper car". Shockingly (or perhaps not), the sales guy agreed with me and dropped the subject.

Paperwork signed, money paid, directions to the post office for the tax disc given and a handshake and we were away. Total time was less than 1 hour in-and-out.

Drove the car 80 miles home, playing with things like the air con, windows, mirrors, radio, computer and found that they all still worked fine. For the most part the engine sounded good, but I still maintain it needs a good service.

We finally got around to doing a HPI check last night with RAC online, and to our shock found it claimed there was lease finance on the car still! :eek: Phoned up the finance company last night, but it happened to be out of hours, and the guy of the phone couldn't help. So we go to bed not sure what's what!

Woke up this morning first thing and took the car down to the local garage as I had always intended to get it thoroughly checked out. The car is still in the garage, so I'll have to do a 3rd post to follow this up later today/tomorrow. Lets hope the car itself is fine.

Moving onto the HPI check that caused concern, we phoned the finance company this morning and had it confirmed that the finance was still outstanding on the car! A real headache and black cloud was forming in our lounge at this point. Anyway, my wife phoned Autoquake this morning, and after a brief chat Autoquake assured her that the lease finance was being sorted by them and that it's just a delay in paperwork that has the finance outstanding still. They also promise to send us paperwork to confirm this.

So here we are to date - definitely not finished with this story yet! I wonder if Autoquake use the cash they receive from the sale to pay off the finance in retrospect. If so, this is very concerning as it was never mentioned beforehand. However, if the finance is paid off, we're OK and no harm is done. Well not much - does extra, un-required stress count as harm?

As for the condition of the car, we'll find out in a few hours time when my mechanic phones.

Inactive

So they sold you a car with;

1). No proper test drive.

2). No road fund licence, so therefore illegal on the road.

3). An engine that doesn't sound 100%.

4). Minor scuffs that had not been repaired.

5). Outstanding finance.

All from the luxury of a portakabin.

The mind boggles.. :eek::rolleyes:

HigherIQ

Inactive wrote: »

So they sold you a car with;

1). No proper test drive.

2). No road fund licence, so therefore illegal on the road.

3). An engine that doesn't sound 100%.

4). Minor scuffs that had not been repaired.

5). Outstanding finance.

All from the luxury of a portakabin.

The mind boggles.. :eek::rolleyes:

Well lets be fair and honest on this, you are correct, but don't make an impartial view;
1A) Their 7-day, 500 mile money-back guarantee to me I consider is a very thorough test-drive.
2A) The car was described as having no tax, and it's perfectly legal to drive directly to a taxing office with no tax. 3/4 of a mile away.
3A) Ok, this is a bigger issue - but then I was always going to service it to get it checked over.
4A) Minor scuffs - hmm, I'm not sure how you view minor scuffs, but unless there was a brand new body paint all over no-one would of considered it damage or concern!
5A) Another major concern - in fact the most major. I've not got an answer here.

I agree with another poster in this page of the thread, people need to stop being so one-sided against Autoquake. The entire reason for my quite lengthy posts is to give a fair reflection from a first-hand source.

A note that I forgot to mention in the previous post was the lady in the post office when buying the tax. Whilst chatting to her while doing the paperwork for tax, she started talking about Autoquake, and saying she's had hundreds of people taxing cars from Autoquake and everyone has a very satisfied opinion of them. Ok, I'll admit, anyone who's got to the stage of taxing has to have purchased the car, and therefore had a good experience, it goes to show that (in my eyes anyway), hundreds of people who don't post here could have good experiences, walked away from Autoquake very happy.

I suddenly find myself being very defensive for Autoquake, even though this was never my intention. People who have no reason to give adequate feedback in this thread, i.e. people who haven't tried them, have no reason to give an opinion. Of course other people are going to start sounding pro-Autoquake when they feel that they were happy with the service, and that this thread is otherwise very biased without good reason. This isn't directed at one single person, but at a general few comments made on the last couple of pages of the thread.

Inactive

HigherIQ wrote: »

2A) The car was described as having no tax, and it's perfectly legal to drive directly to a taxing office with no tax. 3/4 of a mile away.


.[/i]

Not sure who told you that, but they are wrong, you cannot drive an untaxed car on the road.

The only exception is with trade plates.

Most self respecting dealers will arrange to tax a car for you, or at least take their customer to the nearest Post Office in a taxed car.

HigherIQ

Follow up on the car itself - had my mechanic give the car a thorough service. He said the car was in good condition. He changed the fuel filter (£25) on the car as the old one was only a couple of thousand miles from being completely worn.

So all in all, the car itself is everything we wanted, and at an eventual great price, including adding the cost of tax, extra key and the service I had already priced into my budget.

As for the finance outstanding, I'm going to give Autoquake chance to fix this and whether people here agree or not, I'll give them some benefit of the doubt.

Mr Sceptical above should be ignored if you are considering buying a car from Autoquake. It's certainly not as straightforward as buying from a traditional car dealership, I'll grant that, but as long as you're willing to sacrifice some time, effort and cope with additional stress the saving does seem to be significant.

And at the end of the day, that's the entire point of this forum, isn't it?