Vospers Review
Website: https://www.vospers.com
Phone: —
Address: Marsh Mills, Plymouth, Devon PL6 8AY
ABOUT COMPANY:
Vospers… The story so far.
The Company commenced trading as a motor business in Plymouth during 1946. The present Chairman’s father founded the business and he was joined by his own father after incorporation in 1951. Over the years the Company became franchise holders for AC, Fiat, Volkswagen, Jaguar and Simca and then was appointed a Ford Retail Dealer in 1957. Vospers entered into the daily rental and contract hire business through their associated company, Vospers Rentacar Ltd in the 1950’s.
In 1960 Vospers were appointed Ford Main Dealers and moved to their site in Millbay Road. Subsequently the Company was appointed a Truck Specialist Dealer for Ford trucks and vans in 1966.
Peter Vosper joined his father in the business in 1966 and assisted in the development of the Company to the status of sole Ford Main Dealer in Plymouth in 1970. Following the sudden death of his father, Peter Vosper became Managing Director in 1974. Further expansion followed over the next five years into other activities such as Motorcycles, Marine and a Vehicle Body Building operation. 1979 saw the building of a new truck facility and then in 1980 the creation of a specialist Used Car business, Ferryport Motors.
A major acquisition in 1986 secured Ford representation for Vospers in both Truro and Penzance. The 90’s saw further growth of the Company with the acquisition of premises in Redruth/Camborne — Vospers of Pool and, in early 1995, the Ford Main Dealership in Falmouth. This exceptional period of expansion culminated in the opening of the prestigious new state of the art premises at Marsh Mills in 1995 in Plymouth. The building reflected the Company’s intention to ensure customers and staff have equipment and premises fully capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century. During 1996, in line with its commitment to customer satisfaction, premises at Millbay Road were completely refurbished. This provided a valuable service to drivers in the Plymouth City Centre.
Since 1996 Vospers has also acquired St Austell and Liskeard from Cornish Ford, Chaddlewood Garages in Plympton and opened a Ford authorised repairer in Tavistock. The Company has continued its expansion programme with a brand new Dealership at Treliske in Truro. Developments also included a new Accident Repair
EveAmBought a new transit from vospers Exeter, My first ever new vehicle. Faults galore, asked to drive another van to compare if mine was as it should be, Manager personally contacted me to tell me that I was wrong and he would not allow me to drive another. When sold the van I was not informed it had adblue or where to purchase it…. They drove it 100miles to clear a fault and I had to battle for fuel to be out in it when it came back at the bottom of the red. 6 weeks lead time for the 1 and only courtesy vehicle……That is one vehicle serving thousands of ford van owners under warranty and undoubtably more. I cannot stress how poor the aftersales by the sales team in particular is. Everybody I have spoken with has had the same experience and will not purchase from there again.
Someone went into my car, as I bought it from vospers I thought I would ask the insurance company to use them to repair car. Everything was fine, they picked up car and said somone would call me in a few days, no-one called, so I called them to see what they thought and how long it would take. They said not long and should be ready in a few days, someone will call me. So again I waited and no one called so I called them and they said, that it will now take about another week because they are waiting for another part to arrive, someone will call me next week. I waited over a week and then yesterday get a phone call from the rental company telling me that they have phoned vospers and car should be ready by the end of thursday and to drop rental car back Friday, that someone from vospers should be in contact. So I wait all day Thursday, no call, friday I wait, lunch time I get another call from rental company telling me it won’t be ready till later today and they can’t drop it back till Tuesday, someone from vospers should be in touch. I’m fuming, this accident was not my fault at all and I should of gone with someone else to repair car, from them saying a few days to it being over 2 weeks before I get my car back. If they had kept me up to date I wouldn’t be so annoyed but they haven’t rang me once. I need my car as rental I can’t take my dogs in it. Get your act together vospers and start communicating with your customers, it only takes a second to phone and keep a customer in the loop.
If it was possible to award Vospers 0 stars I would. Each time I have been in with car related problems over the years (roughly 4-5 times) I can honestly say that they have never managed to fix it, or helped me, or dare I say it, gone the extra mile in any way. One of these trips to Vospers was for a sun blind in the roof which had been dislodged. One of my boys when younger had pulled it out and needless to say it didn’t work any more. I was quoted over £1,500 for a new one to be fitted. I had hoped their skills would be slightly better than mine and would try to sort it for me, clearly not. Armed with nothing more than a few paper clips and some patience I myself decided to tackle it and to my surprise I managed to get it back working again. Shortly after this I was foolishly tempted at buying a Ford Direct car from them until they blundered the deal by giving me their cost price by mistake, forgetting to add on their £2K commission, yes £2,000 for looking up a car on a database, getting it delivered and then giving it a quick PDI and a polish. Needless to say that once they realised their error they refused to honour the original quote, instead offering to sell the car to me at the ‘discounted’ price totalling £1.5k more instead. How tempting. Eventually I bought the car from a London main dealer (very helpful), at a price very close to my target. Sadly, not living there it is not easy to take the car up when something goes wrong. Having took the car into Vospers of Plymouth with a problem I was told that the car was 4 days out of warranty, yes 4 days, and as their computer diagnostics wouldn’t tell them what was wrong I was informed that they might actually have to look at it the old fashioned way to find out. Now, I know what you’re thinking, why do I go back? The reality is I try not to, but because I had 2 warranties on this car and the fact that they enjoy something of a monopoly around these parts sometimes one has no choice. Now, my experiences has taught me that Vospers don’t like to do anything unless lots of cash is involved. Usually, when something develops a problem, you take it to an expert, they tell you what is wrong and then they tell you how much to it will cost you to fix it. Lets gloss over the fact for a minute that there is still Ford Direct warranty available and I am only 4 days out of warranty, Vospers like to try and extract the maximum possible cash out of you. They would like you to pay them to scratch their heads and talk things over at the very reasonable rate of £144 per 1.5 hours! Nice work if you can get it, particularly if the mechanic / apprentice mechanic looking at your car is feeling tired, slow, or just not really very good, remember, this is not for parts or expensive equipment just old fashioned labour. Bear in mind for minute, they are hardly likely to get their top banana out of the draw when they can squeeze more money out of us by utilising the slower less qualified mechanic. Also bear in mind these guys are probably earning around £8-9 per hour (I hope) of this money. OK, lets be optimistic, it may be a supervisor earning around £13-14. Would you let them loose on your car at £96 per hour? Incidentally, this is more than our prime minster earns, only to wait ominously for that call from their very nice lady advising you how sorry she is, but they they are a little bewildered and they will need a few more hours. Of course you wouldn’t. No one would, but clearly some people do. Judging by the fact that the polite lady who phoned me to give me this joyful news didn’t even know that Vospers were in fact a Ford Direct authorised dealer, heck, she didn’t even know what Ford Direct was! You can imagine, I felt even less enthused to part with my hard earned cash. I felt sorry for her actually, sorry that her training was so poor and that Vospers had chosen to then dispatch her to the front line to phone people like me armed with such poor information. To conclude, a terrible dealer with poor technical skills, and once you scratch the surface, terrible customer service too. A dealer that will not go an extra inch or think ahead. And it surprises me really, if they are so keen to lighten my pocket that they would not think 1) I have bought a Ford before and 2) the car is ‘just’ three years old, and maybe, just maybe, I might be tempted to buy another one soon. By dealing well with this problem could lead to a potential sale. Sadly I just do not relate to their business model at all. Frankly, I would never buy from Vospers or give them any future business of any kind. All in all I think they could probably look at changing their slogan…Vospers, means fleecing you in the South West.
Would not even give it one star! Plymouth vospers are absolutely useless! No help what so ever, get passed around 4 people three times and still didn’t get the information on what I wanted to know about my car. Dropped my car off at 8:30 got told it would be an hours job, 4 o’clock came and still it hasn’t been looked at. The customer service is diabolical and the honestly do not care if you have a life outside of your car.