I have been driving for nearly 30 years…
I have been driving for nearly 30 years and owned many cars in that time. Buying from Daci Autos was the single worst buying experience of my life.
I had been looking for a very particular car for a while and felt like all my Christmas's came at once when I saw my car advertised on Autotrader with Daci Autos. The car was about a thousand pounds over retail market value but the spec, mileage, extras and appearance made it too good to turn down. I paid a deposit over the phone, sold my old car (for £4500, Daci Autos offered me £1000) and arranged to get the train, plus taxis from Southampton to Bristol on a Saturday afternoon to collect.
When I arrived I was shocked at the condition of my vehicle. The front end was completely littered with stone chips. It looked like it had been sand blasted. None of this damage was visible in the pictures and I knew from being in the trade myself it would cost a lot to get sprayed (I had the front end resprayed a couple of weeks later to make it up to an acceptable level at a cost of nearly £1100). I tried to negotiate a better price but the arrogant car salesman would not budge on price. The car was advertised as "Excellent condition inside and out".
The car had a large chip in the middle of the windscreen, which again cost me £150 in glass repair excess through my insurance.
At this point, in reality I probably should have walked away. However, the car is basically the car of my dreams and I was stuck between a rock and a hard place because of the lack of car and requirement for a car to get to work the next day. The finance was already paid on the car and finding another in such a short time frame would have been impossible. I begrudgingly drove the car away. I then started to notice some issues...
Firstly the car was missing parts.
the interior sun visor was missing. Easy to spot you may think? Well ordinarily, yes. However the car I collected had a stupid windscreen sticker across the top (even though I asked them to remove it) and was not visible (or the sun visor needed) until this was removed.
Secondly when I got home I thought I would check all levels etc and found that the air box lid was missing. This cost me over £200 to replace.
Now to the real problem. After owning the car for nearly 3 months and doing under 1000 miles in that time, the car started to overheat and a coolant warning came up on the car dash. So I drove to my local garage in Southampton to diagnose. They confirmed it was the Waterpump, thermostat and coupling that had failed.
I spoke to the warranty company once they recieved evidence and they claimed it was pre existing and therefore not covered in the warranty type I had been supplied with. So basically the car had been sold to me with this fault. The cost of the repair was nearly £1200 and the warranty company offered to pay just over half, leaving me with a bill of £584.30. I spoke to Daci Autos and being very reasonable offered to split that cost, even though it was evident this was a pre existing fault when they sold the car to me. They declined and instead offered me a payment of £150, which I begrudgingly accepted. Daci Autos then said the reason was so expensive to fix was because the garage I used charge £95 p/h plus VAT. The warranty company offer £50 plus VAT (If there are ANY garages in the UK charging £50 plus VAT I'd be surprised, but certainly not where I live. The staff member at Daci Autos then said "oh in Bristol they are loads at £50 per hour. So I decided to test this theory. I called 10 garages within a few miles radius of Daci Autos. The cheapest I could find was £80 per hour, and the dearest was £112.50 per hour. The average?..... £95 p/h plus VAT.
Daci Autos then said I should not have got the car repaired without letting them know first. I need my car for work and needed to get it fixed. They then said I should have returned the car to them for them to inspect it. They expected me to drive from Southampton to Bristol in a car with a faulty water pump.
Also I have to say the state of the cars on display were absolutely shocking. All of the cars on display were absolutely covered in bird poo. Not just one or two spots, absolutely covered. The cars had not been washed for weeks.
Do yourselves a favour and look elsewhere. You have been warned!








