JCB Kent - Opinions on dealer prep

[titusrider]

I picked mine up from Jcb gillingham on a dull day and it all looked fine, next day when the sun was shining it looked dreadful, whole car was covered in fine scratches, especially bad where they had taken foam pads off the doors and rubbed off whatever sticky marks where left.

I contacted my salesman but he wasn't really interested, that's one of the down sides with living 300 miles from your dealer

My advise would be to do the prep yourself, every time I look at my new 25k car on a sunny day it really pisses me off.  :cry

That was the same as my experience, picked up from their ashford branch in the rain and it looked great.  I knew I wanted a detailer to look at it anyway but they polished it up as standard without any special instructions from me.

I had the detailer im using come and look at it and he was pretty amazed by the swirl marks already in it, you can see a lot more now its been sunny occasionally!

If I was doing it again I would ask them to do the minimum possible work

[GTI_for_her!]

Many thanks for all the comments.
I think I'll tell them to just leave it and take the time to do it myself. Like I said its gonna filthy by the time we get home anyway.

It would have been great to stay with a local dealer but between selling the wife's car privately 4 months ago and the discount from DtD I'm looking at a saving of near £5000. Local dealer gave lower trade in and refused to discount so no brainer in the end.
I think I can live with the £47 train ticket and drive home!!

Anyway, thanks again to all on the forum which I've become addicted to for the last few months and can't wait until Thur to pick the car up now.

[Mark V GTD]

If you do then make your instructions very clear (and be diplomatic!).

I will be going down the same route with them too - I will explain its bacause I want a detailer to do it (rather than anything to do with this thread, lol!).

[p3asa]

Guys did you pick up your cars from JCB?

Mine has been ordered from there and I was just wondering what condition your paint was in and if you did tell them to do as minimal prep work as possible?

[mistertee]

I did in dec, all i did was ask him to refrain from putting the dealership stickers on (which he did). The car was in fantastic condition when i picked it up, and I'm an keen amateur detailer! I was checking for swirl marks and chips and couldn't see a single thing

[GTI_for_her!]

We picked our car up mid Jan.

I had asked for no preparation to be done to the car so cant comment on that but they were more than happy to accommodate our request regarding how we wanted the car presented.
I just had the protective sheets removed and that was it.

Brought the car home and did all the work myself. Paintwork is like glass with no marks at all and well sealed. Will probably never be like that again!!

I suppose it depends how picky you are. I'm sure no dealership sets out to badly prepare a car but it will come down to the individual doing it, time allowed and cost.

[andygou]

Picked my GTI up from Gillingham on Saturday & really couldn't fault either the preparation or the handover. Even on the busiest day of the year they allocated an hour for each handover. which was more than adequate. The biggest fault I could find crawling over the car once we got home was that a little bit of transit wax hadn't been cleaned off the bottom part of the sill paintwork (which was only visible when lying on the ground!)

[dubber36]

Hmm sorry to hear that - I will be telling them to do only a technical prep and leave all protective pads, covers etc on the car and I will have it done at a local detailers. I will ensure the paintwork is fuly inspeced before I drive away though.

How can you do that if all the pads and covers are still one it?

[Mark V GTD]

The idea is that I remove the covers when I collect it (check the bodywork and paint) and then drive it to the detailers...