Carl Mills from Southern Car Sales in response to gary smith

Dear Gary, Whilst this review was some time ago, it still upsets me that it's not factually correct, has been copied and pasted onto several sights by yourself out of spite and was effectively also the result of blackmail. So, I have decided to publish our version of events so that readers can take a balanced view and come to their own conclusions. The niggly issue upon the day of purchase that you mention was the lower rear bumper trim having one loose clip. The same trim that we advised you about when we gave you a detailed walk around the car before you travelled, I still have the email transcripts to back this up. The car had been in stock for a while and was priced to sell (over £1000 below market price, hence your decision to drive 2 hours to come and buy it) So we advised you that we'd rather be honest that the price was fixed so don't have a wasted journey if you were hoping for money off. You agreed but then upon arrival tried to negotiate on the trim that we had already told you about, the car was 6 years old and this was just about the only blemish on it. Yes you did have a minor fault on the car after a couple of weeks. But no, your garage did not have to argue with me, in fact, they were incredibly nice people and we've called upon their services since. At the time of your purchase, we were using an outsource company to administer our warranty calls, i recall you did have an issue with not getting a call back from them ( we have since cancelled this service and taken it in-house, as you weren't alone in this ) But the moment contact was made direct with is, we sorted the minor repair out promptly and without fuss. You are right about one thing, however, the salesman was amateurish, he was a trainee. You then emailed me a good few thousand miles later 2 months after the warranty expired (not 2 weeks) - in full knowledge that the warranty had expired - to advise me that you have a possible EGR fault and wanted me to contact the garage to arrange payment. i advised you that you were 2 months out of warranty and our records showed that you chose not to extend with the AA warranty. I also recommended that you have the EGR cleaned initially as 80% of the time this solved the issue. Your response was "I knew you'd say that, the salesman was clear that if there was a major problem with the car that you wouldn't turn a blind eye to it. i thought you'd be a company of good intentions...." I replied with the following; " I can't comment on what our salesman may have said as A) it's your word against his B) he's no longer with the company. Neither do I know in what context it was said, for example did he mean during the warranty period? Did he mean if you're a couple of weeks out of warranty? Also, taking the words 'major problem' that you have quoted, I wouldn't deem a faulty EGR valve as major fault. It is not uncommon for egr valves to develop issues and they are not intended to last the life of the vehicle. Ultimately you have a warranty booklet that clearly states the terms and coverage of our warranty. Those terms are simple, fair and clear. They are the terms that the sale are agreed upon and the terms that we adhere to and honour. So to bring our 'good intentions' into question is arbitrary. We never quibble on repairs whilst the car is under warranty with us. In such circumstances, we always act diligently and with integrity. And generally, if a fault occurs just a couple of weeks out of warranty we look to assist in some way. But we deal with used vehicles that have used parts so must draw a line somewhere. Your car, for example, is 6 years old and cost less than 40% of what it did new. So it stands to reason that many of the parts are too 6 years old and may be prone to failure. This is why we offer our customers the option to extend their warranty cover with a reputable company to cover such eventualities. My course of advice would be to recommend getting the EGR valve cleaned before opting to replace as this is quite often all it takes." At this point you decided to write this review and spread it far and wide. If you feel my above views were unreasonable, then i can only apologise, as my views have not changed from this. As a footnote, I'd like to add the following. We're a nice company that loves to go the extra mile for nice people, Isaac Newton's third law dictates 'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction'. To translate this into the world of customer service "The undesired responses that we receive in life are often a direct result of our own approach to the matter" Regards Carl Mills Director