Evans Halshaw Ford, Edinburgh

[sparticus5]

I received a letter today from Evans Halshaw Ford Edinburgh informing me that 'the man from Ford' will be visiting their garage on 17th Sept who has been given authority to offer fantastic factory price deals. Of course this offer is for special customers only, it's not being advertised to the general public. The letter also says if I recommend their garage to someone and they buy a car, I'll receive £100.

We're all aware 'the man from Ford' doesn't exist (nor does his special offers) but informing me two weeks after the event has taken place! it's hardly professional. Anyway I thought I'd get my own back on Evans Halshaw by sharing my experience with their sales staff to help you decide whether or not you wish to purchase a car from them. And if you do, you can keep that £100 ;)

Saw a Zetec S advertised at their Edinburgh branch at the end of July.

http://www.evanshalshaw.com/vehiclesearch/used/ford-used-car-sn10bns.html

The car was a 10 plate, had covered 350 miles, was registered beginning of July and was advertised at £11300. Spoke to the salesman, said it was his car and he was keen to do great deal as they needed to sell cars to meet his end of the month sales figures. Arranged a test drive next day. The car was exactly as described in their sales advert. As soon as the test drive ended and we returned to the garage, the salesman turns to me and said I couldn't take delivery for at least another two months as they had to run the themselves car for 3 months before they could sell it. This came as a bit of a surprise as he failed to mention that when I enquired about the car and there was no mention of this on their advert. But he had a couple of other Zetec S's for sale which were exactly the same. Yeh right... after investigation it turns out these 'exact same' cars had 6000 miles on them and were registered four months earlier.

We talked figures on a brand new car and to cut a very long story short he offered me £1500 BELOW trade value on my part-ex. Put it another way, webuyanycar.com who offer the bottom price for your car offered me £1000 more than Evans Halshaw. (I received £2000 more from the dealer I eventually bought my Zetec S from!).

I left the salesman in little doubt what I thought of his offer and never heard anything else until I received their letter this morning. It reminded me of the car I test drove so out of curiosity I checked to see if SN10BNS was still for sale. Remember it was advertised at £11300 two months ago. It has now covered an extra 2k miles, but look at that price, they're asking £1700 more!!! :o I guess the only reason that car was advertised for sale was to get mugs like myself in to their garage.

They cost me time and money travelling over to Edinburgh so as their letter says, I'm only too happy to pass on my experience of this lying bunch of clowns to others. Evans Halshaw - no better than Arthur Daley car sales IMO. If that's how they treat potential new customers, the mind boggles what their aftersales service is like. Has anyone else had experience with Evans Halshaw Ford?

[aph1101]

Yes! Evans Halshaw in milton keynes have been nothing other than fantastic! They gave us £2k off the list price of the fiesta, and also gave us £1500 more than anybody else (£6500) for our 05 plate Volvo S40 1.8 part ex. Their after sales has been top notch as well :) Definitely impressed us!

It's a shame you've had a bad experience of them. I would unconditionally reccommend them

[iNath]

Yes! Evans Halshaw in milton keynes have been nothing other than fantastic! They gave us £2k off the list price of the fiesta, and also gave us £1500 more than anybody else (£6500) for our 05 plate Volvo S40 1.8 part ex. Their after sales has been top notch as well :) Definitely impressed us!

It's a shame you've had a bad experience of them. I would unconditionally reccommend them

Yet when I rang the Milton Keynes branch they tried to transfer me to a saleman, got cut off, I rang back, they took my number and I never heard anything back!

Evans Halshaw in Leicester left me a nice 4 minute voicemail as they obviously didn't hang up properly. Heard salesman, his manager and someone else talking about what they would say to me, what to offer part-ex, find out what I'd already been offered then claim the managers in a meeting etc... (transcript and mp3 available on request)

Overall I'd steer well clear (pun intended!)

[aph1101]

We must have been the lucky ones

[Mark M.K]

Evans Halsaw milton keynes gave me a huge £4,000 off a brand new factory order Titanium. Can't fault their service at all. Also gave me a good price on the part ex :)

[Focus_ST-3]

Sorry to hear about your experience, I only got offered £7000 trade-in from Evans Halshaw for my Fiesta with all the options and 19000 miles on the clock not happy!

[Amie07]

Yet when I rang the Milton Keynes branch they tried to transfer me to a saleman, got cut off, I rang back, they took my number and I never heard anything back!

Evans Halshaw in Leicester left me a nice 4 minute voicemail as they obviously didn't hang up properly. Heard salesman, his manager and someone else talking about what they would say to me, what to offer part-ex, find out what I'd already been offered then claim the managers in a meeting etc... (transcript and mp3 available on request)

Overall I'd steer well clear (pun intended!)

i want to hear more about this voicemail! Did you speak to them about it?! U might've been able to use it to get yourself a good deal... dont think the big managers would've been 2 happy with the unprofessionalism (is that a word?) lol

[Early-1800]

This is hardly earth shattering news that car saleman tell porkies, alot, all day, every day. Many would sell their granny into the slave trade to get a sale. Thats what they do for a living. They have to, otherwise how would they sell a mid range Fester with a list price pushing £15K.

What jacks me off is the wasted hour an half at every dealer whilst they go thru all the finance, GAP, special interior/paint treatments etc etc. Just tell be the bottom line and if it's better than your competitors you get the sale.

[sparticus5]

Very true, it isn't earth shattering news and we all know what some car dealers can be like, but in the 25 odd years I've been buying cars I have NEVER seen a car advertised for sale that once it's two months older, has an extra 2k miles on the clock costs £1700 more! Inflation perhaps? I'm also pretty angry that the salesman knew I was travelling some distance - it cost me time and money to get over to Edinburgh only to find the car couldn't be sold. I'm sure they must have broken some sales of goods act clause with that.

Must admit I'm amazed someone had a good experience of these guys because when I was looking for a car I visited their Motherwell branch who didn't have a car in stock and said they couldn't source one, Coatbridge who said Evans Halshaw didn't have any demo / pre-reg Zetec S's on their system at the present time so I'd need to buy a new car, (what's going on here, Evans Halshaw had about 30 cars in stock as advertised on their website), Glasgow who to be fair did have a car but we just couldn't agree a change over figure, East Kilbride who were so disinterested in selling a car it wasn't true and Kirkintilloch who's car when I visited them turned out to be £1000 more than was advertised. Normally a chain of dealerships will search around other branches for stock, but with Evans Halshaw it appears they all work independently.

I know there are poor dealers out there... virtually everything up here is run by Arnold Clark! (need I say anything more) but when you find a chain worse than Arnie, that's saying something. I've never had cause to visit a Evans Halshaw branch in the past, (this is my first Ford), there's no way I'll be back.

[Mr R]

sparticus5, which dealer did you eventually buy from?

Arnold Shark and Machargs were both doing the same deal recently on a Zetec S petrol:

* 24 Monthly Payments of £189

* Deposit £2390

* Ford Deposit £500

* APR 4.9%

both advertising choice of colour and on a 60 plate.

Cheers for any info.