Experiences of different car dealers..... good, bad, dire.

We started our car search mid summer on the back of helping a family friend replace her elderly Focus. Started at Peugeot and Renault who share a showroom, totally Disinterested sales staff (i like the new 3008/5008). The local Skoda dealer sales staff were very good but the Yeti was too big. We seriously considered a Fabia Monte Carlo and even though it has a good level of spec every Fabia we see seems to be driven by blue rinsers or their husbands. Next stop Audi to look at Q2, good sales experience and they sniffed out my OH was looking too, had a tempting A1 Sportback offer, just not quite tempting enough for a car about to be replaced. Unfortunately friend didn’t like the contrast Q2 C pillar colour treatment...... onto SEAT and friend likes the Ateca. Buys one at another Seat dealer I found too pushy but they had the car in the required spec. So, we moved onto local Suzuki Dealer who was Suzuki’s first UK dealer. Not too bad and certainly didn’t push too hard (they also sell Subaru which I just love the sound of the flat 4). It was the only non VAG brand we kept returning to. Had a look at run out old shape VW Polo and the very young salesman was very polite and professional but not especially great deals and felt it was another old persons car. The MINI dealer appeared very professional but a month later they still haven’t been in touch, we had seen the new special edition 1499GT (Anyone remember the Clubman 1275GT?) Another Suzi dealer and part of a very large dealer group had scruffy sales staff who wrote my enquiry on the back of a compliments slip.... no one had business cards suggesting high staff turnover. The two MG dealers contacted Still haven’t been in touch with details of the new ZS, can they really be so busy selling MG’s? The SsangYong dealer was very good and followed up my enquiry but OH took one look at the Tivoli brochure and said ‘no’. However the Sytner group Seat dealer we are buying from have been very patient and let us take our time working through the Ibiza option until the Arona idea suddenly seemed better for us. I think it is fair to say car dealers are improving their sales approach mostly for the better, the young aggressive salesmen are much less apparent than 10-20 years ago but the lack of saleswomen is still very apparent. The former OH was in car sales and it appears there are no more female car sales staff now than 15 years ago.