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

redseven85

I have found this place on google after searching for a review on quake cars. This will be my second car purchase after 7 years and one of the biggest purchases I would have made so far. After spending hours on review center website (yes I read through ALL of them) I was still skeptical and price being the biggest factor for me but still undecided on whether to go through with it.
This place was like the 3rd or 4th result the top 3 being review center anyway, so I thought I would take the plunge and pay the deposit and take a look at the vehicle (I live in London by the way, so fortunate to go see the car before buying).
I will keep updating this through my whole process and hopefully it will also help others like myself in the same position. So for my first post in my experience wuth this company:

Deposit Paid, waiting for contact.

moo313

I hope no one is excusing me for anything.

I was nervous of buying from Autoquake at first. I saw this thread I kinda put me off but I thought I'll pay the £100 deposit and see the car. I even done a HPI check on the car. It came up with outstanding finance but the HPI company explained to me I need to get a letter from Autoquake to confirm the finance will be removed after I purchased the car. (Apparently the type finance on it is used by car dealers to stock up on cars). When I mentioned this to Autoquake the sales agent explained what the outstanding car finance on the car was and I will get a letter explaining this will be removed after I purchased the car. Which I got with me.

My earlier posts to describe my experience to other people considering buying from them and what is expected.

My advice to anyone buying from them is to get the car checked out after purchase and raise any issues with them. They seem to be good at sorting these things out when things go wrong. In my case they replaced the worn out brake pads and discs (which where at the minimum thinkness 20.9mm) The extended warranty for me seems to be good. They dealt with my claim for a replacement heated windscreen without any fuss. Since then my 2006 1.6 tdci Fiesta has been running fine.

I hope my buying and after sales experience of Autoquake help in your decision in purchasing from them. Redseven85 can you keep us updated how your experience of Autoquake went?

matth42

I bought a Citroen C4 1.6 VTR+ about 2 years ago from them after seeing it advertised at a bargain price. The car had less than 10k on for a 3 year old car and at first I was sceptical that it was a genuine offer. However, I paid the £100 deposit and arranged to go down a few days later to test drive. The car was described accurately and I decided to go ahead and buy the car. I did feel a little rushed through the buying process and I was kept waiting a while but that would be my only complaint. The car had no problems during the time which I had it and then I sold it to my girlfriend who drove it for another year, adding 20k in total to the mileage from when I got it. It never had a single problem and was serviced when required. The only reason for selling it was due to rising fuel costs and her needing to switch to a diesel. My Mum has since bought a Fiesta 1.6 TdCi his year and had it delivered without seeing it. Bit of an issue with the delivery as we were promised it on a certain day and it never arrived, despite promises that it ould. Also, when it did come, there was only 1 key which was a manual key, not a central locking key. We rang Autoquake and they told us to go to the nearest Ford garage and order one. They asked for the bill and promptly refunded the cost of having a key made up.
I wouldn't hesitate to look here again for my next car. The prices are always fantastic compared to elsewhere and the descriptions are pretty accurate. My only real issue is the admin fee of £150 which I would prefer to see included in the cost of the car. Overall a great company.

montypython69

After a delay of over three weeks since I visited to inspect a car I had put a deposit on I have still not been able to get anyone at Autoquake to confirm the car is ready. Issues so far:

1) Mechanical fault with car (no idea why the 141 point did not pick this up!)
2) Abnormal wear omitted from the description.
3) Truely appalling customer service from the London depot - at least the customer call centre in Birmingham have the decency to return calls
4) Three weeks later still claiming that they are waiting for a part. (Strongly suspect that someone is hoping I give up and the faulty car will go to some other buyer without them having to fork out to repair the car)

Overall - caution essential and don't expect anything that could be described as customer service. Will keep you posted on the outcome!:mad:

iggsy_2

Hi, i visited Autoquake Leeds this week to view a car. To keep this short i looked over the car and was pleased with it. Saw the "sales" person and asked for a test drive. I was told this was not possible because of the weather and i would get snarled up in traffic. I asked if i could drive it on their site and was told i needed to do the paperwork first. I thought ok the car looks good and they test drive and inspect everything as it say`s on the web site. So i bought the car. i was then kept waiting for quite a long time until the "sales" person turns up with the key to my car. I asked again for a test drive before i tackled the long drive home and was told the car drives fine and anyway you have got 7 days test drive. Driving away i struggled to get the car in gear so moved the seat forward. It was dark by now and i was tired and just wanted to get home.I thought maybe the mat had got caught under the clutch pedal. No such look. I drove to the motorway straight into a 3 hour tailback. I eventually got home 4 hours later, took the car to a main agent the next morning and they confirmed my suspicions. It needs a new clutch. Autoquake told me to take the car to a nationwide garage and they also said NEW CLUTCH. I am furious they duped me into buying this car, refused me a test drive and sold a car that they knew was faulty. The "sales" person knew i had a long drive ahead but just wanted to sell me warranty and get shut of a faulty car. They have now said they will replace the clutch but this has now left me without transport and without a proper explanation how this was allowed to happen. I will never buy a car from Autoqake again.

minda32

hi can anyone give me an advise

seven weeks ago bougt a toyota avensis t 180 dcat from autoquake, took their extended waranty for a year.
after a few drives i noticed its smokes ocasionaly,smokes heavily.


i contacted waranty , explained situation. they told me to take the car to some nationwide garage for chek, i phoned them and been told they can book me in only for next wednesday, seven days later:mad:, another of their recomended garages wasnt dealing with diesels at all.
after all i took my car to local toyota loockers in romford, after the check been caried out folowing was found : cat convertor gone (£950just a part), some walve and leaky water pump, been qouted £1740 parts and labour all together.

on my waranty every claim is max £1000, but number of claims is unlimited,
i contacted waranty again, they agre pay only a grand, the rest must be paid by me acording to them.and toyota want me to pay all and claim my monies myself from waranty

but i thought if number of claims is unlimited why i can not claim cat cnv and water pump separatly,well two claims insted of one
can someone explain to me how i supose to deal with waranty comp to make them pay full amount

thanks

gck303

vikingaero wrote: »

I think everyone should take any "141 point checks" from any dealer with a huge pinch of salt. You should always assume that dealers are lying if they say they have a xxx point check because as we all know with all the complaints the xxx point check is bull.

They check the car and say "I checked and the battery is flat and the tires are nearly bald".

Check done.

GJ_WRX

I wouldn’t but one from them again!

I bought one years ago which was not a fleet car (was about 6 years old). After buying the car I experienced a few major problems which I contacted them about to try and rectify. Long and short of it - they refused to help, I had to fork out almost £1k on parts and labour (at a reduced rate) on an engine rebuild, after a lot of calling they offered me just £30 as a good will gesture!! Shocking, I would steer well clear of them.

morg_monster

We’ve just bought a car from Autoquake, and I read this thread through as well as reviews in other places beforehand. So I thought I’d come and write about our experience. First to set the scene: we have a P reg Astra which has served us faithfully since I bought it off my mum in 2003. It was fairly reliable – in all the years I’ve had it, it had never caused ANY problems between services, until this year when it passed its MOT in Feb but then we had a problem with the fuel pump which took a while to sort out, then the car overheated so we needed a new radiator, plus which it was time for a cambelt change. So we decided to bite the bullet and get a new car before the next MOT or the cambelt broke! Unfortunately neither of us are at all knowledgeable about cars, and have no mechanic friends or family to guide us, so we were really dreading it all. Did a bit of research and decided to go for either another Astra or a Ford Focus purely because they are reliable and every mechanic sees a ton of them! With our budget (£3-4000) we were looking at something 5 or 6 years old to get a decent mileage and condition.
While looking at car supermarkets I discovered we could up our budget by about £1000 and get something just 3-4 years old. We visited Trade sales in Slough and then found Autoquake. After a few aborted attempts to reserve a car & book an appointment (due to our wish to do it at the weekend when they are booked up more than a week in advance), we finally resigned ourselves that with some long Christmas journeys approaching (which we wanted the new car for) we would need to man up and take a day off work to go see the cars. We reserved an 07 plate diesel focus which was £5099, and when I rang to book on a Friday we were amazed to be offered an cancellation appt at 9:30 the next morning, which obviously we grabbed.

On turning up to the Southall site the next morning a bit early, we were taken to the waiting room and our customer service guy came to say hello, show us where the coffee machine was and tell us he would be back in 5 as they were just finishing valeting the car. The waiting room was quite pleasant, with nice sofas and a big telly to watch, and a free coffee machine (all the people on these threads saying you only get a coffee at a dealership – not true ;-). 5 mins later we were taken out to the car and the guy gave us the keys and just stood back while we had a look. We did all the easy things – checked the tyres (not too well, as you’ll see…), under the bonnet (all we could really do there with our skills was check that there was indeed an engine, and that it had some oil in it…), all the electronics on the dash area (which all worked), and the body condition. We were not expecting pristine bodywork as the photos on the website had highlighted a few scratches; having said that there were more than had been photographed including a couple of chips on the back bumper which had gone right through to the white undercoat. The customer service guy was able to answer some basic questions for us, but it's clear they are not car experts (and to be fair they don't try to be - he looked up what a flywheel was on wikipedia when we got back to the office!). Next we went back to the office where the guy photocopied our driving licences, and he also showed us the service history & log book. We took a short test drive; the car seemed fine, no funny noises etc. (but as I said before, we were not experts!). It was also a chance for us to try out the Ford as we’d never driven one before, luckily we both liked it.

When we got back and parked up the sales guy suggested we go back, sit in the waiting room and have a chat, and then come find him in the office when we were done. We fairly quickly decided that we would buy it, but would try and see if he would knock any £ off for the additional scratches that hadn’t been on the description. He wouldn’t budge an inch on the price, but he sent the car back to the body shop to touch up the chips on the bumper, which was done immediately (obviously not an immaculate undetectable job, but you’d have to look hard to find them and it isn’t as if a few scratches are important to us anyway). Next came the sales pitches – firstly GAP insurance, then warranties, neither of which we were interested in, so that was it, no hard sell. We started going through the paperwork and I called Aviva to activate the free 7 day insurance we’d applied for the day before through autoquake. We paid by debit card and then took the MOT certificate, Aviva insurance printout and new keeper paperwork to the post office to buy the road tax. It’s about a 15 minute walk away. When we got back to the office, we briefly argued about who would drive the new car home (DH won that one), and off we both went (DH stopping to fill the tank up as it was pretty much empty).

The next day we went to go shopping and found that a rear tyre was flat! Took it to a petrol station, pumped all the tyres up, and they did seem to lose a bit of pressure immediately (just a couple of psi). Not impressed so when we got home we called Autoquake and told them the problem. The girl on the phone was most unhelpful saying things like “you could have punctured the tyre on the way home… it’s wear and tear” etc. She said someone would call us the next day about it; they did not. 2 days later I went to pump the tyres up again and found that the airpump we’d previously used was out of order and the one at the next garage showed all pressures were fine... The RAC inspection went pretty well (cost £199). The inspector identified a few “essential” problems to be looked at: A dim side light bulb, some oil in the turbo which could indicate a leak, bush debonding in the rear suspension, one rear tyre with a nail in and the other rear tyre had uneven wear (a strip about 1.5” across around the whole tyre with zero tread – how we didn’t notice this at autoquake I do NOT know). There were also some “desirable” items, mostly scratched bodywork and trim, slightly loose numberplate and the gear stick gaiter was loose – which we had discovered and is really annoying! I called Autoquake that afternoon and spoke to a much more helpful lady on the phone, who asked me to email the inspection report across and said she’d go and talk to one of the customer service people immediately, and someone would call me the next day (it was 4.55 by that point). And they did! A really helpful guy, Pavinder – who’s already been namechecked on this thread as the best customer service guy. He took all the details and searched the nationwide / Halfords auto centre website to find the closest branches to us. I made an appointment and let him know the details. Pav assured me that since I’d flagged the issues within the 7 day window, it didn’t matter whether the appointment was in that window or not, it could even be after Christmas.

Anyway the appointment was yesterday – so we crept 8 miles in the ice, freaking out at our first experience with ABS!! We thought the car had broken, haha. When DH went to pick it up, they had replaced the dim bulb and also agreed to fix the gearstick gaiter for free – although they didn’t have the part so we will have to take it back for that. They had found no leak or other problem with the turbo which would have caused the oil to be there. Unfortunately they found that the tyres would have passed an MOT so this was not fixed, however the mechanic said he was optimistic that the nail hole could be repaired but that they did not have puncture repair facilities so he didn’t want to risk pulling it out. We hope to get it repaired, or buy a new set of tyres which since I have discovered blackcircles.com through this site should not be too expensive.

All in all we’re pretty pleased with how this turned out for us, though I can see that it could easily been quite a different experience. In our general lives we don’t mind paying good money for things if they are worth it, but resent paying for extra frills which don’t add value; we’re also highly suspicious of salesmen, so the way autoquake worked really appealed to us. We were never going to buy from a franchised dealer, and were just as wary of buying from a non-franchised dealer as from a car supermarket. In total the car cost £5248 (including the £149 admin fee) (I don’t include the RAC inspection as we would have done that on any car). On Autotrader if I search for a 5 dr hatchback 1.6 diesel Focus with no more than 60,000 miles (ours has 52,000) on the clock there are 880 cars nationally, of which 2 cost less than we paid! We’re very pleased with the money we’ve saved and are now pretty happy that it wasn’t a false economy.

I would buy from Autoquake again, I think, because I think we’ll always want to save money this way. In a few years we’ll probably be in the market for a family estate or something and we’ll definitely look there. Next time, however, I would NOT buy it before having the inspection done. Although I think we still would have bought the car, I think there’s a reasonable chance that Autoquake would have changed the back 2 tyres for us for free if it had still been in their possession. The other thing I would do differently is try not to feel so rushed – although this is hard when you feel you have a deadline – and be happier to take time off work! Basically their method of reserving & making appointments means you can only see one car at a time, and so you just have to accept that the process could take a little while if the first car you see isn’t right. But this is the tradeoff you have to make if you want to save that much money on the car. It all depends on what is important to you. I do agree that this way of buying a car is NOT for everyone!

Anyway, that is our experience. Feel free to mangle me if you wish!! Merry Christmas everyone xxx

morg_monster

Oh my god that post was really long. Sorry peeps!