So what an utter disappointment. Cutting to the chase, no deal. However it is the way I was treated by the dealer which has annoyed me the most...
The guy who phoned me on Friday definitely booked me in for an appointment, and also said they would give my car a free wash and vac, usually £15. I'd said to him that I thought I was in some negative equity so I didn't think they could put a decent deal together, but he assured me that they were really keen to do a deal so they could probably swallow the negative equity and put further dealer/finance contributions in place to make the numbers work. I said I'd be surprised, but he convinced me to make an appointment.
I turned up at the dealer today and they had no record of the appointment, but I explained the conversation to the sales guy who was introduced to me so we sat down at his desk and I said the only car I'd realistically be interested in was an R, and that I wanted to maintain the spec level of my GTI but with the Pretoria Alloys and Metallic paint (Certainly no offer of a wash and vac which had been booked in). I'd configured one online which had a list price of £38,230. He clearly didn't know a lot about the cars, no idea about the options either. Told me he'd only been there a couple of weeks but as I knew exactly what I wanted I didn't think it would matter. I showed him the printout of the Drivethedeal price (£32,417) and he shrugged it off, saying they wouldn't take my GTI in p/x so it wasn't really a factor.
He was really trying to discourage me from adding any extras, as that would mean it would be a factory build car, and that would be no good (I wanted Tech pack, Keyless, Reversing Cam, DCC, Prets). He said that would be the highest spec R he'd seen and that it would be expensive.
He then took my key and went to inspect my GTI for it's p/x valuation. After a long wait, he came back and basically said I owe £3k negative equity, lumped on to a £38,230 car so basically if I put £1500 in, it would be £652 per month. No discount, no contributions. List price, that's it.
I think he knew they were so far out but I just wish the guy who rang on Friday had looked into it a bit more... (He was from a telesales team who work for the garage)
I told him of my displeasure and that I'd wasted an hour out of a busy day for nothing. His parting line was that I should go back in 12 months or so when hopefully the equity has balanced out a bit, as they would hate to lose me as a VW customer.
So a bit disappointing. I knew the equity situation wasn't great thanks to the terrible p/x values and the fact I put a really small deposit into the PCP, but still i wish they'd had treated me a little better. I certainly won't be going back to that dealer anytime soon (Lightcliffe VW Liverpool).
