I am writing this review for anyone thinking of purchasing a used car from Holdcroft Honda in Cobridge. I purchased an 18 month old Honda Civic from Holdcroft Honda, happy to pay that little bit more for a high level of support / excellent customer service in case I had any issues with the car. Here are two examples of the utter nightmare I encountered: Example 1: When I viewed the car, interior marks and scratches were agreed to be removed as part of the sales agreement. Upon collection of the vehicle, these works had not been carried out but I was assured a technician would either visit my home address or place of work. The technician then told me he was too busy and it took me several months of chasing Holdcroft, being ignored, a complaint to Honda and the start of legal action before these works were finally carried out. Example 2: On the day of purchase, when driving the car home, I experienced a clutch judder. I thought this may be a result of my driving and would improve when I became familiar with the car. The problem remained and so I contacted Holdcroft, who stated that the repair could be carried out at my local Honda franchise (where I demonstrated the fault to a technician). Holdcroft then continued in every way they could to substantiate their wish not to carry out / authorise these works, summed up by an email I received from them: Regarding the clutch, if the standard operation of the clutch is fine then either the customer or dealership would have to foot the bill, not “Honda”. If our technicians have found no problem and we are to strip down the car and no manufacturing defect is found then we would have to cover the full cost, which I’m sure you can appreciate is not something we would want to do as it’s a very costly job. I cannot explain how unpleasant and time consuming this was. I presume there will be some sort of smooth-talking response from Holdcroft but facts are facts and I can provide clear evidence of all the above. The Honda franchise closer to my home address was a huge contrast to Holdcroft in terms of their professionalism and customer service. Honda themselves were also extremely supportive and reaffirmed my faith in the brand. They stated a mark has been placed on their Holdcroft records and they monitor this type of situation to assess whether or not a franchise should continue to sell their products. However, I genuinely hope my experience was a one off - I would not wish what I had to endure on anyone.

Purchased an approved used Honda Accord EX-GT with 59K on the clock, FSH, and the pictures looked great on the website. Came to view the car and test drive it and noticed tyre treads were low, brakes had very little life left, rust in the boot channel, chip in the windscreen, steering pulled to one side, trim missing from the drivers door etc. Agreed to buy the car on the proviso all the work was remedied as that wasn't listed on the advert, yep no problem. Came to pick the car up and nothing had been done, I never saw any inspection paperwork either, so I had to book the car in multiple times over a 6 month period to get the majority of that work completed, which included: New passenger side switch pack - which they managed to have the car in for, give me the keys back saying it's done then when I said it still doesn't work told me oh yeah we haven't done the work as the part didn't arrive! Steering Geometry realignment as the dealership hadn't checked the work of who they sent it to, they hadn't chocked the steering wheel straight so the car only drove straight when the steering was on angle. DPF Regen - as it lasted a month or so before giving me the "!" warning to take it back to Holdcroft, note it had not shown the prior warning without the "!" which means it can't regen and therefore needs to be taken on the motorway and driven at a constant speed/rpm - it never did that during the entire time I had the car, it refused to regen at all, going straight to limp mode and needing to be taken back, Next was the DPF acid treatment after the forced regen did nothing to solve the problem, I think it lasted 4 days before needing the Acid treatment. The acid treatment failed too, and during the large volume of calls I had to keep making to the dealership I said put a new DPF in as I'm fed up of this by now, so they did - however refused to show me any invoices or paperwork for work carried out, indeed for anything on the car I was told you can't have any copies but we can show you a snippet on our computer screens...??? So any of the warranty work done whilst the car was in my possession couldn't be added to the service history as they refused to release it. Anyway, we also needed a new clutch master cylinder as that failed, causing clutch operation to sound like a T-Rex was roaring from the footwell, for anyone who's had this problem it's not a subtle noise...! DPF failed again later on in the year as yet again it refused to regen, never showing the warning light to indicate it can't regen and needs help, no it would skip that one and go straight for the "!" take me back to the dealership one, by this point, and along with issues with the 10th Gen Civic we brought brand new from them (see other review https://www.cardealerreviews.co.uk/dealership/holdcroft-stoke-sneyd-street-stoke-on-trent-staffordshire-england#review__54984) I'd visited the dealership quite a few times, and drove nigh on every courtesty car they had, including the service managers personal HR-V and some of the sales staff's cars, I was leaving work early every week to bring the car down to pick up a courtesy car then drop and swap the next night. It got beyond a joke, this was an approved used car, supposedly a car hand picked for being the best of the best, and I couldn't even keep it on the road and drive sensibly without it failing time and time again. With it being approved used it had 12 months warranty on it, and it'd been in and out of the dealership more times than I felt was necessary. The warranty should be there for peace of mind, not to fix everything the dealership either missed or didn't want to prior to putting it out for sale (believe me that's happened too, I'm aware of another complainant who's purchased a car with hidden faults that was rejected by a prior customer only days before, rather than fixing the car they put it back on the forecourt for someone else to enjoy repairing...) It also had a service done with them, after I purchased it on their 9.9% finance deal which meant that I got 2 free services, I received an email saying please book it in, so I rang and booked it in, oh yeah that will be £150 sir, [Holdcroft] no I've got two free services, [Me] No that only covers two minor services didn't you know? [Holdcroft] Cancel it then [Me] I called up the service manager at the dealership who confirmed the advisor was wrong and it's which ever service is next, i.e. one major and one minor, so I had the major service done and somehow the car went in working, came out needing a headlight bulb (despite being fine earlier in the day), and needed two new tyres as they were approaching the legal limits. HANG ON - didn't I raise this during the purchase? Low tread on the tyres and the rubber cracking, which is symptomatic of the car being sat for a while as the waxing agent in the tyres hasn't been able to move about and keep the rubber in good health?? I took the car to an independent tyre fitter and asked him to check the tyres all the way round and in as many places as he could to verify their results, he couldn't - the response from the independent was that no where on any tyre could he find the results Holdcroft had, so the tyres that were approaching the legal limit suddenly now had between 3-5mm of tread on, no where near the 1.6mm limit. I later found that they had been measuring on the outer edge of the tyre, not where the tread depth markers are - and I had this checked by a number of driving instructors, the area Holdcroft were measuring the tyre was completely wrong. So they were trying to mislead me into two tyres I didn't need... Called the dealership to query this, the response? "Oh the technician who did your service no longer works for us" ...WHAT? Funnily enough when I raised a complaint about the dealership for both the Civic and Accord purchases, I asked about the approved used check done on the vehicle, which should have highlighted the problems I saw on the test drive in addition to the well disguised stonechips all over the front end of the bonnet and roof, service manager confirmed that the technician who did the approved used check was sacked for not being very good in his role - so that's twice I queried problems with the Accord and twice someone seemed to leave their job when I raised the issues... After leaving them a negative review online (majority regarding the Civic as it was left in an unsafe condition and I had to unpick multiple 'stories' of who installed what and who said what) their tone soured and somehow now they didn't want to deal with either vehicle anymore and refused to fix the Accord despite it being in limp mode and stuck on my drive in an unusable condition for the majority of its life. I rang the AA and had the car escorted to site whereby the staff refused to accept my keys, I said if thats the case put it into writing, so I followed staff to their desk and mid way through writing the email the chap gets a call, DO NOT GIVE HIM ANYTHING IN WRITING he's told. That was the email cancelled, so now they refused to accept the keys or work on the car, but wouldn't make it official - alarm bells anyone? I made sure the AA engineer who came with me was aware they were refusing the vehicle as an independent witness, 10 minutes later the same staff member comes out and says he's been told to inform me they will "look" at the Accord if i remove all of my negative reviews online (I may be wrong but doesn't that fit the definition of extortion or being a throffer?) I said I won't be bullied by a dealership that wan'ts to hide negative experiences, had I known about other's negative experiences and how the dealership actively hides negative press it would have directly influenced my transactional decision and I would have avoided Holdcroft as a result, I brought from them because of the so called customer promise, which sets out their guidelines to maintain as a business to you, the customer - which they managed to fail every point on with me and refuse to admit it, trust is a huge word for them which means so much according to their website, except where it counts. The car returned home and I called the 5th next local Honda garage (as Holdcroft own 4 of the closest) to see if they could look at the vehicle, they wanted to look into the history of the car and get back to me, they did and said because of the complaint I had with Holdcroft they refused to look over the car also (little odd..), eventually the dealership backed down and purchased both cars back from us but also put a ban on us having any more business dealings with them via any of their branches in the UK - which is a lot within the local area, which we think sums up Holdcroft perfectly. Have a problem and speak out - instantly banned. Case in point, I'm banned from their social media, couldn't even leave a review about my experience on their site because of the ban, my wife left a review on their social media site, instant ban again - I complained to Honda UK, they quite literally couldn't care less, citing they're a franchise and unless they get lots of complaints we can't do anything. I gave Holdcroft multiple repair attempts on the vehicle despite only getting 1 in consumer rights law, and I was more than reasonable with the multiple trips I was taking in and out of the dealership with multiple courtesy cars, even leaving the car there on weekends. I spent hours chasing for progress and then booking the car back in for failed repairs or more repairs they hadn't noticed. This isn't my first purchase from a dealership, we dealt with Pinkstones Toyota for years and had no issues on the sales side, had a few issues with Service but the service manager in question has left the company so we're likely to go back to them at some point. Every dealership I've spoken to about our situation with Holdcroft have said their attitude to customers is disgusting and I've remained happy to speak to anyone who would like to know more about what we've faced in the 6 months or so we were Holdcroft customers. I've since found I'm not the only person who's been bullied by Holdcroft, and there's a long list stretching back quite far - yes they may have a number of positive reviews, however most are on judge service, a service they pay to use and can choose which reviews are displayed, in addition it only gives statistics for the past three months, if you look on social media you'll notice there's never any negative feedback on their site, because you're instantly blocked if you critique or complain about the way they treated you as a customer, the motor ombudsman scores for this dealership were 29% (I've still got it saved), when I made this public, it seemingly changed overnight to 94%, coincidence? The google reviews score dropped to 4.1, when made public, lots of 5 star reviews suddenly came flooding in - coincidence? Reevoo scores for the dealership are 100% despite my review being added, it's a 12 month score, so how can it remain at 100% when my negative experience is there, it stands to reason it's not been added to the website to avoid damaging that score. I don't doubt that there are positive experiences on site, as there are good staff within the company which will allow for positive experiences, the issue is when something goes wrong and you're unhappy with the way you've been dealt with, it's the management, senior management and company owners who quite clearly don't care because you're one blip on a wall of good statistics and if you're banned and blocked then you can't influence their positive records anymore, and anything past three months and you're off their scores anyway. I raised these issues on one of the large Honda forums, Honda Karma, which has close affiliations with Holdcroft I later found, when I posted my experiences on there, the site owner sent me a message saying he'd had legal threats from Holdcroft and took the post down, I sent a message back saying OK what can we do to tone it down and more so why are they controlling what you post? Banned from there too as a result... Honda Karma refuses to discuss anything about Holdcroft in a negative way. Holdcroft refuse to discuss anything negative about your experiences when it puts them into a bad light, if you want a resolution don't expect them to move mountains, especially in the senior management team - now this isn't to say they have all bad staff, the service team there are great, I think the service manager Christian is quite literally holding the after-sales and service side together despite the best efforts of the rest of the company to mislead and screw over new and existing customers! The sales chap who sold me the Accord was great (he'd only been there two days so none of the faults on the car I can attribute to him as he was still being acclimatised to the brand!), but above that, the lower level management staff and then the senior management staff - they're useless. I had conversations with lower management who'd reply with statements of our staff wouldn't say that, or we don't believe that happened, I'd find evidence to the contrary every time to prove them wrong, and their viewpoint wouldn't change even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they're in the wrong. The amount of conversations I've had with the dealer principal who prides himself on being the "head of the holdcroft honda business", where he refuses to admit anythings ever gone wrong, that Holdcroft have ever done anything wrong, it's always insinuated you're the one raising a complaint for complaints sake, you're in effect lying - but for what? There's been no financial gain here on either vehicle, we've lost money as a result! The only reason the dealership brought the cars back is because I proposed it to the managing director directly via email as he refuses to meet with me to discuss the failings in his business, as someone that runs their own business I'd jump at the chance to receive feedback and discuss how things could improve as a result - with Holdcroft? Nope not bothered, for a company who says customers are at the heart of everything they do, that only seems to be the case when things are going well. If anything goes wrong, you're on your own... NOTE: We did try getting the finance company to intervene, but they wanted an assessment done, I said that's fine but I already know the response won't help you, as an inspection won't diagnose the root cause fault with the engine and DPF system, they will road test it and look over it and say yep it's in limp mode and has a DPF fault but we don't know why, I contacted a number of assessors who said exactly that, the finance company then said try another Honda garage, so I did, which was the one who wouldn't intervene because of the complaint with Holdcroft, they then said use a normal garage - I said I can't as it has 12 months warranty on plus the new DPF has a 12 months parts warranty which would be voided if any non-Honda garage starts pulling bits off the car. We even investigated getting the car part exchanged at a local KIA dealership, who marked the car down for the front end being "COVERED IN STONE CHIPS" << from their mark up sheet, so my 9K car was now being valued at almost half that at best, meaning I'd need to make up the short fall. OH. THE CREM DE LA CREM - turns out that when I took the Accord back to the dealership when they were buying it back from me, I couldn't find the V5, I stupidly thought I'd lost it, so I called up DVLA who said you're not the registered keeper of the car sir, HANG ON - WHAT??? Well who is? Is it with the dealership or a prior customer, you don't have to tell me any names etc. just is there ANYONE listed? No, there's NO registered keeper listed for this vehicle at all. I had to check it with two separate DVLA advisors, but no, I wasn't the registered keeper and there hadn't been one at all, so the dealership failed to register the car in my name and thus left my insurance between Feb-Oct 2018 completely void as a result as I had no insurable interest in the car as I wasn't even the keeper! This is despite them taxing the vehicle in my name during the purchase...so even the simple things they can't get right! As with my other review I'm happy to discuss any part of this with anyone who has concerns, and I'll expect the same spam posts as on my other review too, as some people will read this and think wow complainer much? But put that into context into paying 9K for the Accord and 24K for the Civic, would you want two functional cars? I'm pretty sure you would, would you be happy if either broke down? No but you'd get it sorted with the dealership, now how would you feel if you had to keep taking dealership trips to get more and more things remedied with the cars? Would that make you lose faith in the dealership, especially when they can't measure tyre treads, can't inspect a car before putting it out for sale properly, can't fix issues despite being a main dealer, and when you say this isn't fair I shouldn't have to deal with this, these cars should work - you're blacklisted from every dealership they own and they leave you with two broken cars and no way to fix them?

Wonderful experience having at this garage. Reasonable prices with good honest advice. Holdcroft Honda is A dealership you can trust.