Reduced me to tears! (Peugeot)

Member Name: icklegirl

Product:	Peugeot
Date:	13/10/01 (1914 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fixed my car

Disadvantages: Had to shop around for service with a smile

I have been the proud owner of a Peugeot 306 for nearly two years, and absolutely love the car. However, I can not give the high level of respect that I have for my car to the people that are meant to be there for me when something goes wrong.

I have had two separate run ins with Peugeot approved garages, and both times I have left either completely dissatisfied with the work they claim to have done, or been charged an extortionate amount of money for next to nothing being done to my car.

My first incident happened when I noticed that my car failed to pick up the signal from my key when I tried to unlock the vehicle and disarm the built in alarm. This literally meant that I had to push the key up to the sensor to try to deactivate the very loud alarm. I could get into the car using the key, but had to sit there listening to the deafening alarm whilst trying to get the stupid thing to work. On one particular occasion I was sat outside my Dads house at 11.00pm for 30 minutes with the alarm going off trying to deactivate it, whilst waking all of my Dad’s neighbours.

I changed the battery in the key and still no joy, so I took it to the Peugeot garage near to me in Elstree. They took a quick look and told me it was my battery, I told them I changed this and after much protesting that there was actually something wrong they took the car off me for two days. When it was returned to me there were indents in the plastic around the sensor, so they had definitely done something with it. What I found to my despair was that they had actually made it worse!

I took it to the garage in Edgware and explained the problem, and just gave them the keys telling them I didn't want the car for a few days, basically as long as it took to fix it. By this point I was in tears from all of the stress it had caused me. The man at Peugeot was very sympathetic, but told me he had no space but to bring my car back tomorrow. This I did and once again
the car was ready for pick up in two days, and to my relief they had solved my problem. The range still wasn't amazing, but it was much better than before.

The second run in I had with Peugeot was when I went through a rather big puddle and some water got into my on board computer. This meant that the car stalled every two minutes and driving turned into a real chore. I took it into the Peugeot garage at Edgware again and they explained what had gone wrong, but with me just being out of warranty they wanted £800 for the job, as it was right next to Christmas I really didn't need this expense. However the ever-helpful Edgware branch advised me to do an out of warranty claim and I ended getting back £500, better than a punch in the face I thought.

So in conclusion I have mixed feelings about Peugeot garages, I have come to accept that it is like most things in life, if you shop around you are likely to get better service in one branch than another. Sadly this is the case when it most definitely shouldn't be.

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