[Kinster]

Does your dealer provide you with good sales and after sales service? Or do they like to mess you around? List your favourite/worst dealer!

[Adriann001]

worst dealer has to be Lister Park. went in afew weeks ago to ask about a glvebox retrofit does not exist their working on it now then ignored me. droped my car off today for some work doing to it. that will be £20 for the loan of a car for two days needless to say i refused and didnt pay still got a curtesy car. However the car hasen't been washed or cleaned inside and worst of all there was absolutly no petrol in it at all range said 10 miles.

best dealer victria of harrogate sorted the glove box and were very helpfull with prices for the other bits that i want for my car.

[blueflash]

I test drove a Cooper S at Victoria BMW near Harrogate in October. They were friendly and the country roads got me addicted to MINI straight away. The problem is that it's a small dealer and he told me I couldn't take delivery before mid-June '03. I went to Scotthall BMW and they have been superb from start to finish and I collect my MCS 24/03/03! I can't praise these guys enough although I've yet to experience the after-sales service.

[fanman]

My wife and I, went to Lister park and were completley ignored, in fact my wife was so anoyed that she telephoned the dealer principal and complained.
He was very apologetic and said that his sales manger would telephone the next day and personally organise a test drive and would give the best possible service.
He never rang.
We then telephoned Prestons at Nelson to try to arrange a test drive, we were not politly told that they don't arrange test drives and just turn up and hope that we are lucky.
Just by chance passing Victoria BMW, actually we were considering a 325 ti compact, the salesman was great, but the car didn't excite. He took us out in a cooper s and we bought one, pretty good service for a BMW garage.

[tomwexler]

We've only dealt with Victoria in Harrogate - good service, friendly staff and they call you back when they say they will - mostly... I'd recommend them. Even got a 2 litre BMW as a courtesy car once! (Saying that, the last courtesy mini we had was dirty and empty of fuel)

[Byrnie]

I have had good experiences of Scotthall. I cant comment on Lister Park or Victoria as their delivery periods were too long to order.

Scotthall test drove end of November, delivery early Jan. Pre delivery excellent. A couple of niggles that the service dept. enthusiasticlly look into and fix so after sales excellent too.

[LeeH]

Spoke to most dealers in the West Yorkshire area before buying:

1) Almondbury, Huddersfield
Best test route, sold the MINI to me as a product but I'm still waiting for them to get back to me with some figures, some 7 months ago. Started to wonder about their sanity when their sales person called me to "touch base" ???

2) Lister Park, Bradford
Worst test drive ever with girl who had no clue about the car. There's a chap there who knows his onions but you don't get to speak to him. At the point of buying, a different girl promised to get their "finance" people to call me to sort out figures. That they did, a week later, just as we'd signed up elsewhere for the car. They need to ditch these girls as once the waiting list is empty and the ease of sales subsides, they'll be worse than useless

3) Victoria, Harrogate
Nice salesman, good test route but the whole set up didn't appeal to me. Their test car was a totally "bazzed-up" ONE (£16k!), so didn't really work for me

4) Williams, Manchester
Nice enough, but a bit of "sign here NOW"

5) Bowker, Preston
More of the turn up and try and get a test drive stuff. Really poor when you can't pre-book

6) Ackrington
Great dealer, really nice salesman, willing to talk sensibly about specs & prices, very hard to fault overall. Unwillingness to move on the finance rate meant I went elsewhere where they would

7) Scotthall, Leeds
Bought from them, Keiron the salesman very good - the right balance between sales and "new MINI"; professional and the best rate on the car. They forgot to fit Euro plates for us but will at the first service. After sales?Hopefully good but yet to find out.

8) Fawdington, Newcastle upon Tyne
Waste of time; got some excellent figures from one salesperson and then another refused to accept they'd been sent to me, insisting I brought them in in person. If I'd got the first salesperson (which was like finding a needle in a haystack) I'd probably have bought from them. V.Shabby

Er, there is more, but it's no more interesting!

Lee.

[Hat]

Did you try Prestons in Colne?

[richhamer]

I found Almondbury very good. Their test route is fantastic and they let the car sell itself.

The car even turned up a month early and they totally exceeded my expectations (which are high) when it went in for a minor fault fix.

A friend of mine suffered the problem of no calls on figures though.

[miniblue]

Though I ended up buying mine from Reading, I did visit Scothall Leeds, when I was down there visiting family.

I knew Kieron, who works there, through a friend. He was great and enticed me with a quicker delivery than I'd get in Reading. Unfortunately due to the practicality of it all, I had to turn him down.

Scothall MINI always called when they said they would and were very efficient in dealing with my queries. And though off-topic, so is Reading MINI.

MINIblue