Stratstone Saab Nottingham

I have been a customer of Stratstone Saab Nottingham for over 2 years now. I hadn't used them or heard of them until my T-Reg 9-3 broke down whilst on my way to a business meeting. I had it recovered to them unannouced. They looked at it straight away & found a sensor was faulty. They had one in, fitted it & i was on my way within minutes. The car I had was bought cheap and covered nearly 200,000 miles before I got rid of it. By the time I had done with it I had to visit Stratstone Saab Nottingham various times for Service & Repairs. They were always exceptional I couldn't believe that I had found a car dealer this day in age where the customer really does come first. Ian, Brett & Matt in the service dept are a credit to there industry. When my old car hit 200,000 miles I needed to change. As they had given me fantastic service I thought I'd give there sales department a go. I spoke to Andy Ellis who find me the vehicle I wanted at the right spec, age & mileage. I signed and was in my new car 3 days later. Andy was fantastic. Since then I bought another Saab for my wife from Andy. I'm now looking forward to driving the new Twin Turbo Diesel. Who knows I may make my third purchase from them. In summary I would highly recommend them to anyone as I have done to many friends and colleagues. Reading the review from Barry T he looks like he's complaining about the Northampton Dealer why he's posted it here I do not know. Don't let his rambling review put you off. I think that its criminal that he can put this on the web for anyone to read and tarnish their reputation that they obviously work so hard for.

10

Mark J.

I was looking for the phone number for Stratstone Saab Nottingham on the internet when I came across the above review, which supprised me as I have a deisel Saab that I have been very happy with and when I have visited the Nottingham dealership for my annual services I have always found the staff to be both efficiant and professional. I read the review above and noticed that even though is based under a review for Stratstone Saab Nottingham his anger is aimed at the Northampton branch and not the Nottingham dealership. I hope that people are not put off visiting my local garage as they are always very helpfull.

10

John A.

Dear Mr Nash RE: SAAB 93 VECTOR – A12 NFL YS3FF46V851024740 Just a short note to update you on our latest SAAB experience. The problem is not the EJR valve as we originally thought, but the turbo has “blown” and needs a complete replacement, estimated cost £700. Add to this the car hire of 3 – 4 days plus the loss of at least one days work from our Area Sales Manager and we will have little change from around £1600. We cannot of course take this vehicle to Stratstone for repair, as they propose to impound until we have paid for all the other repairs which we should not have incurred. It appears from the feedback we are getting from other Saab users that the company do in fact have a problem with their turbo diesel cars, which they do not have with the petrol model, could this be true? If it is, you are knowingly inflicting on companies such as ourselves, who have purchased the car for business use, a cumulative cost of many thousands of pounds in repairs and loss of earnings. At the moment we still await a response to our letters of 27th July and 14th August. Whatever your views and those of the Saab Company they would be appreciated to enable us to consider our next course of action. RE: INVOICE NUMBERS 7868, 8147 & 9270 I refer to your letter of 31st July regarding the above invoices. You have obviously not bothered to investigate the basis for our failure to pay these invoices and have presumed that you can simply threaten us into immediate settlement by resorting to legal action. Please feel free to instruct your solicitors to pursue this debt through the court. We would welcome the opportunity to highlight the disdain with which this matter has been treated both by Stratstone Saab Northampton and subsequently Jonathan Nash. The tone and attitude of your letter along with its inherent inaccuracies only reinforces our view that no one at Saab is interested in the problems with the car nor in their resolution. You simply seem to believe the standard of workmanship you carry out or the reliability of the cars you supply are irrelevant and should be paid for regardless. This view is held even when the car is not fit for the purpose for which it was originally sold. Minor details, such as an independent report from the AA confirming that the car was returned to us in a potentially life threatening condition are ignored, along with the consistent problems we have had with this car on the turbo, clutch and gear box since it was purchased. Your claim we have not notified Stratstone Northampton of our problems is as spurious as the rejection by your parent company of any responsibility in this matter. Both companies have a duty of care particularly where issues of public safety are involved. Steve Clark the Service Team Leader at your company has been inundated with details of our complaints each and every time they have occurred. His response (particularly to the last incident of omitting to fix the car wheels on properly) has been predictable, first his apologies, second a commitment to investigate further and get back to us finally, nothing. In these circumstances should you wish to proceed directly to legal action, we would be delighted, the wider the audience who gain access to these problems the greater the potential damage to the reputation of Saab for good quality, reliable motor cars. Indeed, with a little more effort on your part, we may be able to gain some press coverage particularly if the hearing is in our local area where we are well known to the local media. Please either address the issues we raise thoroughly and let us have a considered response or sue us for recovery of the debt. But please do not treat us with a complete disregard for our problems that your letter implies. Trusting we will hear from you shortly. RE: SAAB 93 VECTOR – A12 NFL YS3FF46V851024740 I refer to your letter of 25th April 2007 regarding the above vehicle. You chose to ignore my reply dated 8th May, which of course is your prerogative. Meanwhile the problems with the car continue. It is truly remarkable to us that, at a time when communications between individuals are so accessible, that someone in your position within a business such as Saab, cannot even be bothered to respond to a customer. Nevertheless, I think you should know that once again this month we have been presented by Stratstone Saab with a further bill for £1500 for repairs to this 3 year old car once again for the gear box. Whilst we will pay this bill you should be aware we have not been idle in the period since we last wrote, indeed, we have been very busy. We have ensured that our suppliers and customers as well as all our staff have been informed of the problems we have had with this car. But more importantly we have communicated to them the totally dismissive and complacent approach adopted by you the UK Managing Director of Saab to our problems. We have made it clear to everyone that we accept that any vehicle manufacturer can have the misfortune to produce a motor car which is demonstrably unfit for purpose. However, only Saab, in our experience, would display the contempt for the customer’s problems which you demonstrated in your response to the problems this car created. Whilst no doubt many of our contacts will not take the matter further, we have no doubt that some will have considered purchasing a Saab vehicle. By circulating copies of your letter and keeping everyone abreast of the continual costs of our vehicle we are hopefully deterring potential buyers of Saab cars. In this way whilst your company may have gained some small financial benefit from your approach to us we have no doubt this will come at some considerable cost to your overall business. We propose to continue this communication exercise until such time as we eventually dispose of our rogue vehicle. We will not of course ever consider buying another, but neither will any of our staff or many of our suppliers and customers. We are thankful that Electronic mail and websites give us this forum to share our bad experience with hundreds others, many of whom, like us, used to consider the Saab companies reputation as reliable as their cars. It only took the one car, allied to your letter of 25th April, to prove us wrong.

10

Barry T.