Why our car buying journey nearly failed

My daughter bought her first car this week and it was far from a smooth process.

She found a car she liked which was just under an hour away from us. She reserved it so it wouldn’t be sold and checked that we could drive up to see it on Friday.

All good so far.

The salesperson was great, a young guy who had just started, kept us updated and said that the car was just finishing having some minor bodywork done so wouldn’t be available to 4pm on Saturday.

Hmm, minor bodywork, not a good sign, but let’s see it any way.

Saturday rolled around and in the afternoon we received a message that it wouldn’t be ready until Sunday. We explained it had to be before 11am as we had a family commitment at 1pm. “Yes, no problem”.

As we are driving up we get a message that everything is ready.

We turn up and are told that the car is not ready and it is still being valeted. We get to see the car being cleaned, so we know it at least exists, but we then have to wait for about two hours. The time for our family commitment passes and we still haven’t test driven the car.

Finally we are told the car is being brought up. We go to have a look at it, only to be told they can’t now find the keys. We are left looking at the outside of the car and still not able to get in it.

It turns out the keys went on a test drive of another car with the salesperson who drove the car up to the front.

So, after nearly three hours we do the test drive.

Despite being fairly new, the car seemed a bit scuffed but drove okay. As we finished the drive I go to get out and the door wouldn’t open. We had earlier noticed there was a bit of plastic that was missing from that inner door panel and I now found out it was key to holding that panel in place as it completely came away in my hand.

We decided that it would at least need fixing so we would not be driving away on Sunday with the car.

Cue, sad daughter.

While going to see the car being cleaned earlier we saw there was a very similar car, slightly older, but less mileage so we decided we would come back on Monday evening and test drive that. That was much better and, cutting a long story short, we decided to buy that one.

Cue, happy daughter.

What was interesting about the experience was that I can’t fault the two sales people we dealt with. They communicated well, felt our pain, tried to alleviate it as much as possible but the processes they encountered meant that there was nothing they could do. Communication in the company was poor and the processes were flawed.

For example, the valet team would not release the car until it had been fully valeted - something they could have finished while we did the paperwork if we liked the car. The keys should never have gone on their own test drive. Simple processes, a focus on the customer and some flexibility would have solved this.

We were very patient and recognised it was out of their hands. I am sure they get the brunt of the complaints, even though in most cases it is not their fault.

Sometimes great customer service fails because it is constrained by the environment that it is enclosed in.

(And no, I won’t name where it was)