Castle Prestige from Castle Prestige Ltd in response to Would not recommend

Thank you Mr Howard for taking the time to leave your feedback on four different platforms. I would like to kindly ask all potential customers to read our response, as well as Mr Howard’s review. Firstly, I would like to state that I personally am prepared to accept criticism. We are a small business that is run by only a few people and at times things don’t go perfectly. What I am not prepared to do though, is accept false accusations and libel. So I would like to give you the opportunity, Mr Howard, to amend your review so it is factual. Below, I’d like to explain the correct version of events. Mr Howard purchased a 2010 Honda from us on 21st September 2024 and viewed the vehicle in person. It was delivered to him on 3rd October 2024. Five days later, Mr Howard sent us a video of the front bumper ‘hanging low’. It was evident that it had just had a light bump on the front end which had clearly broken some clips. Despite the fact we are not responsible for customers’ accidents after purchase, we still assisted him and said that we will pay his chosen garage to refit the bumper, as a gesture of goodwill as he had only had the vehicle for a short period of time. Unfortunately, a few days after this, Mr Howard’s vehicle did develop a fault. The fault was described to us as follows; ‘the heaters don’t get warm so we have had to wear hats, scarves and coats in the car’. Which of course, nobody wants to happen! We wanted to get this resolved as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, Mr Howard wanted to use a garage closer to him to repair. Unfortunately, the garage in question spent three months trying to resolve it. Instead of diagnosing the fault, they proceeded to change a lot of components without any thought or consideration. In February 2025, we were finally given our green light to collect the vehicle. Mr Howard’s distance from us is 155 miles. We collected the vehicle free of charge. So I am sure you can imagine my shock when his review stated, ‘It's all smiles during the sales process but most unhelpful when there are issues identified with the vehicle afterwards.’ Upon arrival with us, we immediately found that Mr Howard’s garage had put the two heater rods on the wrong way round. Once we changed them round, we then sent Mr Howard this video: https://bit.ly/3YhkcAR As you can see from the video, it now was resolved. A few days went by and Mr Howard then stated that after 20/30 minutes of driving the car, the car began to cool down despite the heater fans being on full. To which he also stated; ‘Just to be clear, the heater characteristics were like this from the start’. We were only ever told that the heaters would not get hot and that coats were required inside the vehicle. Not at any point were we made aware of the fact that the blowers have an intermittent heating issue. We cannot repair something that we didn’t know was faulty. Although the fault was to do with the same area, there are many different components that can cause different issues. When we were made aware of this, we had the vehicle collected 155 miles for the second time. Free of charge to Mr Howard. We found the problem the following day, and we were prepared to re-deliver the vehicle to Mr Howard. He refused and simply requested a refund. We obliged to his wishes and we agreed a buyback price, based on the usage for the vehicle. We were not obligated to buy the vehicle back, but we did so to assist Mr Howard. Mr Howard claims that we were responsible for notifying the DVLA. This is an extract directly from the DVLA website: ‘You must tell DVLA you’ve sold the vehicle and give them the full name and address of the buyer. If you do not do this, any vehicle tax refund you’re owed might be affected.’ We did not agree to any request to do this and Mr Howard failed to do this himself, subsequently his tax owed was affected. Mr Howard needs to contact the DVLA to request back the £57.50 he is claiming. Please also note that we sent the following correspondence to Mr Howard after purchase, which further indicates that we weren’t ‘most unhelpful when there are issues identified with the vehicle afterwards’. Mr Howard was not ignored, despite his accusations. These do not include the times he contacted us. Telephone Calls: 4 WhatsApp Messages: 44 Emails: 9 Letters: 8 I must also state I am really disappointed that it got to this and I think it’s a shame that Mr Howard didn’t give the vehicle a chance once we had the opportunity to repair it. It has since gone to a lovely family who are enjoying the vehicle to its full potential. Thank you for reading. Tom. Castle Prestige.