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

M2K7

I recently purchased a car from autoquake (yesterday!) they seem ok to me answered the phone in reasonable time, arranged a viewing on a bank holiday with short notice. car did have missing recent service history (3 series bmw) i called BMW and found the car did have a full history it just wasn't stamped properly. apparently talking to the accountant where I work it is quite common for our staff to get a car serviced properly but not bother getting the book stamped (smaller business where people look after there own cars).

Car seems a good price and the service was good, no pressure from sales people on site at all (the only pressure was from the insurance company when taking up the 7 day free drive away insurance) the salesperson actually told me to insist upon only the seven day insurance and was very friendly.

I have no links to autoquake and cant confirm the car isnt a nail yet but it seems a good car at a good price so far. I will update if it breaks down!

i also took a friend who is a mechanic and would recommend anyone else to do the same whether buying through autoquake or privately.

Nigelp_3

Hmmm, I`m about to find out how they look after their new customers...

Bought a car from them today, it was exactly as advertised and I am happy with it. The buying process was incredibly painless, they left me with the car to have a proper look round it in my own time, a decent test drive and then I bought it.

On the way home, it appears a brake hose split, causing the loss of brake fluid, meaning the last mile of my journey was done in 2nd gear, at low speed, slowing with the handbrake. Not good. I am obviously concerned that if my wife was driving, she wouldn`t know how to stop.

I have spoken to Kevin at the leeds branch this evening and obviously, he was very apologetic.

A hose can split anytime, its one of those things, what concerns me greatly is that there is fresh brake fluid around the master cylinder, suggesting it has been topped up recently, I`m GUESSING because there was a slow `weep` from the hose before. The fact that wasn`t picked up before is what I`m not happy about.

How they fix this and address my concerns will be a good indication of how they look after their customers IMO.

I shall report back after I speak to them tomorrow.

oh, just to say, I have absolutely nothing to do with autoquake, I know there appears to be some doubt as to previous posters saying how wonderful autoquake is, even when they have issues with the car. If I`m not happy with how they deal with me, I WILL post that here.

sib321

Our purchase with Autoquake a few weeks ago went basically very well. A couple of little bumps – THE POST OFFICE IS NOT OPEN UNTIL 19:00 AUTOQUAKE!!! – but we have a great car at a great price.

Part of the problem is that Autoquake’s polished website has people expecting a high class experience. I think they would do better with an ‘EasyQuake’ image. No frills. If you’re looking for a car at rock bottom price these guys can’t afford to have a team of people polishing your hub caps for you as you drive away. Unfortunately I think they make a rod for their own backs in some ways, it’s all about ‘expectation management’.

Re £100 deposit to view etc, Autoquake is a different way to buy a car. It’s a process. Go with the process and you’ll likely do well, fight it and you’re fighting the very business model that allows them to offer low prices. Just know what you want from your buying experience, its horses for courses so go where you’ll be offered the approach that suits you.

Are they perfect? No. Would I use them again? Definitely!

-All IMHO of course

sib321

autoquake wrote: »

8 out of 10 customers state that they would be extremely likely to recommend us (based on e-mail survey sent to every car buyer two to three weeks after purchase).

Didn't recieve that email though, must have had enough good feedback already :rotfl:

pipper_3

recently had a golf delivered from autoquake, saved about 2k. I found staff friendly and helpful, there was a bit of confusion about delivery days but it was soon sorted out. Their website was a good buying guide - the car was as described and i did not test drive - i choose to try for 7 days - so far so good. I will post any problems that come up.

Nigelp_3

I`ve spoken to the Manager at Autoquake so have now had it confirmed.

They will be fitting (most as a gesture of goodwill) :
New Front Disks
New Front Pads
New Rear Disks
New Rear Pads
New rear Shoes (Handbrake)
New flexi lines (1 each side)
5 x solid lines from ABS to rest of car
New Brake Fluid

Its obviously costing them a lot !

Can`t knock them for after sales service. We discussed the failure at length and they have apologised to me and spoken to the technician who missed it.

As they understand the concern I now have with the brakes, they had agreed to get the work done listed above. Unfortunately, as some of the parts are not available until Tuesday, I may not get the car back until Wednesday, at which time they`ll offer me another 7 day period to return the car for my money back if I choose.

mistakes happen and I think they way they have addressed those mistakes has been spot on.

After the work was authorised, the new parts were fitted by the local garage (Nationwide auto centre not autoquake).

I rang Tuesday afternoon asking if the car was ready. They were still bleeding the brakes and said the car would NOT be ready until Wednesday morning. A week after I actually paid for the car !

Rang wednesday mid morning. Was told car was ready for collection.

As I was working, a colleague dropped me off and then left as he had to go elsewhere. Took key and climbed into car. Drove it 5 ft, pressed pedal, feel was awful, had to pump to get pressure :eek: tried again and it did the same.

I was absolutely FURIOUS :mad:

Stormed back inside and spoke to manager. Turns out they had been `trying to bleed it all morning`.. Asked them to drop me off at work as I had no other means of transport "sorry, we can`t do that !!!!"

i took the keys to the X5 and carefully drove back to work. I had no other option, I had to be back at work in 10 minutes, had no money, phone or other means of getting back. I was absolutely livid. Turns out the car hadn`t even been taken for a road test after replacing most of the braking system !

Rang Autoquake and told them what had happened. They spoke to garage and arranged for car to be collected Thursday morning from work (its about 2 miles from the garage). Left X5 at work and went home in my wifes car.

Thursday morning, rang garage and said car was ready to collect from my work for them to work on.. "we can`t collect it today, it will be Friday :mad:"

Hung up and rang autoquake. They spoke to someone high up and within 30 minutes the car was collected and on the ramps..

master cylinder was diagnosed as being faulty due to the brakes being pressed with no fluid when the pipe split.

New MC ordered, arrived Thursday afternoon. They spent 2 hours trying to bleed the brakes.

This morning (Friday) and they were trying to bleed the brakes until lunchtime !

I started phoning managers at Autoquake who made calls to the garage. The garage called in a BMW mobile mechanic who according to them, plugged in a `unit` to cycle the ABS whilst pressure bleeding the brakes. Whatever he did, the brakes were bled within 15 minutes of him arriving.

The car was delivered by the garage and the guy who delivered it was the one who picked up my car from work. He said the car should not have been released to me without a road test and with the pedal so soft.

The brakes are fine now, we`ve actually been for a drive in it ! Obviously the pads are still bedding in, but fingers crossed its sorted now.

Overall, the car has lost the `new car excitement` for me with all the issues I`ve had. Autoquake missed a potentially dangerous fault and have taken steps to address that. From that point on, they have done whatever necessary to get the car fixed and back to me in working order. At times, they are hard to contact and i`ve lost track of the number of answerphone messages I`ve left. They have offered to reset the `7 day money back period` from today.

I`ve ended up with a car that has had the vast majority of the braking system renewed, so I can`t complain at that, but good grief, car buying isn`t half stressful at times....

Pssst

Are AQ asking customers to post their experiences on here? Only ask as there seems to be a lot of newbies

Nigelp_3

I was searching the net to find reports of Autoquake when looking to buy this car. i`d not heard any reports of them and this thread kept appearing in the search engines.

I thought it fair to post my report (which initially was negative as I suppered a brake failure on my way home from collecting the car, not something AQ would probably want posting on a forum as ` PR stunt ??). The idea was to try and get some balanced feedback, some of the earlier ones seems almost too good to be true.

AQ haven`t mentioned this site, or indeed any others in my discussions about my issues.

I`m a member on another site where I have a post count of 11,300 and i`ve posted exactly the same there.

sib321

Nigelp wrote: »

I was searching the net to find reports of Autoquake when looking to buy this car. i`d not heard any reports of them and this thread kept appearing in the search engines.

AQ haven`t mentioned this site.

same here for me

Warhilt

I feel that I must speak out both for, and against Autoquake at the same time.

In January this year I bought an 07 Focus Titanium 2ltr TDCi from them after a 21 month driving ban due to epilepsy. I'm very observant when it comes to 'problems' with new cars, but all I found on this one was the usual plethora of micro-scratches, a large chip in the windscreen (which was repaired excellently by AutoGlass free-of-charge), and a touched-up scratch on the rear offside wheel arch near the sill.

I was a bit concerned to be told that the vehicle was being sold without the user handbooks, and without any service history. I was told that this was because the vehicle hadn't had it's first service yet, but it was already 6 months overdue in terms of time (not mileage). Thankfully a quick call to Ford confirmed that they would honour the warranty as it was time as opposed to mileage that had been exceeded.

2 months after purchasing the car I found out that the spare key for my car wasn't for my car as all! I should have noticed because Ford told me that all Titanium models come with 2 plip-remotes, but this was a plain key. This also meant that the radio code was lost too! Contacted Autoquake and initially they were reluctant to do anything about it - especially when they heard that it would cost about £180 for a new key, radio decode, and immobiliser reprogram to kill off the missing key. Eventually after quoting Sale Of Goods act and proving that the person handing over the vehicle hadn't tried to start the car with both keys, they agreed to pay for the replacement key and work in full - good on you Autoquake - THAT's customer service albeit reluctantly in my view.

However I'm now 4 months down the line and to my horror, I've now got rust appearing above my rear offside wheel arch. Ultrasound scanning and visual inspection from a Ford bodyshop has proven that the vehicle has had a complete rear quarter panel replacement at some point in it's short 2 year life! The HPI check from Autoquake showed no insurance claims on the vehicle, no write-offs, no nothing. :eek:

I'm now contacting Autoquake again to see where I stand on this, and I'm also in touch with the Consumer Forums. There's something in the Sale Of Goods act that covers eventualities like this for up to 6 months, but I need more information first.

To be honest Autoquake's service is pretty good. The staff are friendly and helpful - when they decide to pick the phone up. However I think there are still problems that need to be worked on with regards to inspecting their vehicles before selling them on. The guy from Ford said that simply removing the rear wheel and using a torch to inspect the insider of the rear wheel arch would have revealed the problem a lot sooner, but surely a check like this should be in every reseller's arsenal.