Kept waiting 40 minutes for a pre booked test drive. No apology, no excuse offered.

I purchased a (65) plate Kia Sorento from the Harrogate branch. Buying remotely due to restrictions had me concerned to say the least. I was reassured by the sales manager that Stratstone Harrogate were my eyes and ears during this transaction. A 2 minute video of the car showed a few stone chips (to be expected) which were addressed. What they hidden from the video was a damaged roof liner, a very unhygienic cabin (scary I know in this climate), a 20cm scratch that had gone down to the metal work and to top it off I found out that the car had missed a servicing which invalidated the remaining warranty. When I raised my concerns with the 'salesman' he became very confrontational, insisting I would have to pay to have the car removed. After the vehicle left, I had to wait 4 days for my funds to be returned as the individual hadn't passed the details to the accounts team (who resolved the issue within hours of receiving). Scary these are asscotiated to Evans Halshaw, who are great!

I have had a 5 star customer experience with Stratstone Mini Harrogate. I have very recently purchased a part exchange 2018 used Nissan Qashqai in the Click & Collect process whilst the show-room is in Covid 19 lockdown. During the process I received quick responses and detailed answers to my queries from Paul who is the Head of Business . Obviously the only down-side was not being able to test-drive and physically pre-view the car during lockdown . I had a first class handover with Sophie on the day of collection. Just a couple of alloy wheel minor scuff marks which was to be expected on the day to day life of a 2 year old used vehicle - Otherwise an excellent condition car that drives beautifully and at a very good competitive price. I would fully recommend this dealership for your future purchase .

I booked a test drive on Sunday afternoon for a test drive on Monday. I drove the vehicle and was happy with the car. I left a deposit (£250) to reserve the car for 24/48 hours(?). After a brief discussion with my wife I decided to buy the vehicle. I rang up Mini Stratstone at Harrogate to ask for the registration number in case I required it for insurance purposes. I was told that the vehicle had been SOLD. I made another telephone call to the manager who said that the car had would be sent to a partner. This arrangement had been made at 1400 on Sunday, just before my test drive was boked. The manager could not explain why or how this had happened. I think I know. In my naivety I explained that I would be paying cash after a 'total loss'. The loss of any finance commission must have been too precious to the salesman, Head of Sales and the manager. The manager was very apologetic and was going to investigate. He offered to pay for petrol and the use of a car as compensation. I suppose that was the least that could be done. I would not want to buy anything from anyone who was either so incompetent or completely unethical. Unfortunately, the reputation of car sales oes not get better.

I took my mini in to be checked after my brake warning light came on and what I thought was my service light. As I was early I was met by a very pleasant man who asked me to wait until the service staff arrived. The service staff arrived not much later and I have never been spoken to as rudely as the female member of staff spoke to me. I was too shocked to say anything at the time but spoke to the team leader when they rang to tell me about my car. He said he would speak to the member of staff. When I went to pick up my car I was informed by the team leader that 'it was all a miscommunication and was now water under the bridge'. I picked up my car and I will not be taking it there again.

As an ex aftersales manager with BMW I am only too aware that generally if we do our job well in the auto industry we hear nothing so no news is good news. I would just like to express my thanks and gratitude to the team at Mini Harrogate. They were all professional and friendly from the guy cleaning cars asking if he could help to Matthew, the salesman dealing with questions on his day off and Charlotte, the head of business coming out for a chat to make sure everything was ok when we picked up the car. I would not hesitate in recommending them to family and friends.

I have have never dealt with a garage so poor in 45 years of buying cars: very rude staff, badly presented, not the car we ordered and no communication. I would advise prospective customers to stay away from Stratstone MINI Harrogate.

My partner wanted a little cheap runaround for taking to work and back and that would be easier to park. We looked online and found a 7 year old Mini at Stratstone Mini in Harrogate so we drove over and test drove the car. It didn’t drive very well but we spotted another one that looked great and on driving it my partner really liked it so we decided to buy it. During the test drive the clutch was very stiff and biting very high (a sign that it’s worn down). After agreeing on the price we asked Rachel, who sold us the car, if we could see the service book and evaluate the condition of the car. We really wanted to know the state of the car we were buying as really, we had no idea. Unfortunately, we were told the service book was not available for us to see. I therefore asked them to do a full service of the car so we could see what condition it was in. This just seemed common sense to me. A day or 2 later Rachel called us to say the car didn’t need a service because it had one less than 2 years ago. They would however make sure the car was roadworthy and safe. She was aware that the clutch was very stiff and I asked her to make sure they checked it. Might it need replacing soon? Sure enough that evening Rachel told us the clutch was going to be replaced. We were really pleased because clutches are expensive to replace. However, the next day Rachel’s manager called me to say she’d replaced some things on the car. Great I thought but what about the clutch? She said she didn’t know anything about the clutch but as far as she was concerned it was absolutely fine. I tried to tell her we had been told something different the day before but she was adamant all her staff were ‘travel guardians’ and we could be assured there was nothing wrong with the clutch. On collecting the car it really was difficult to change gear and still very stiff but we had now been assured by both Rachel and her manager that the car was absolutely fine. A few days earlier I had been at my local garage, a lovely family run business, who has really helped us out with problems in the past. They agreed to have a look at the mini for us to make sure the clutch was okay. I decided to pay for a full service because I really wanted to make sure the car was safe and I had kind of lost trust in Stratstone at this point. The next day the garage told us the clutch was ‘knackered’ and a worn clutch can have an impact on the gearbox. I had the garage replace it and the car now drives brilliantly. A few days later I got a customer satisfaction email from Stratstone so I responded honestly about our experience. I explained they had sold us a car with a knackered clutch. I explained that this would have been absolutely fine had they told us this. We would happily have replaced it post purchase. The problem with having a knackered clutch is that eventually it will damage your gearbox. Replacing the clutch cost £570 but replacing a damaged gearbox would cost at least £1500. After replying with my comments the customer service representative Jas then called me and I explained this, however because the clutch was repaired elsewhere and they couldn't check it, she said there was nothing they could do. Fortunately, I still had the old clutch to show her so she agreed for us to bring it in. On bringing it in Rachel walked past us several times, ignoring us, despite us saying hello, portraying customer service as its poorest. In a customer service based industry surely such behaviour is completely inappropriate and childish. We showed Jas the clutch and eventually the service department confirmed it was knackered. She asked for the receipt of the clutch replacement and said she would get back to us. 5 weeks later we still had no response so I rang Jas who was working on reception for some reason and couldn’t speak to me. Eventually it turned out she still hadn’t made any progress on why nobody had been able to tell us the clutch was on its last legs. She called me the next day and said there was nothing they could do. She said that they didn’t have to check clutches on second-hand cars they were selling, they only had to make sure the car was roadworthy and safe. Clutches are not covered in the warranty they offer. The only time they would check the clutch (I’ve since learned they have to take the whole car apart to do this) is if it was biting very highly on the road test. Okay.. So at this point I was kind of losing the will to live because that’s exactly what happened and that’s exactly why we asked them to check it. I think somebody did check it, I think they wanted to replace it, but I think somebody, maybe management(?) decided it would be too costly to replace so they left it in and didn’t tell us. If I hadn’t had it checked the next day the car would most likely have broken down somewhere and the gearbox become damaged. Jas agreed to go back to the service department and asked them again if they might cover some of the cost of the new clutch. But I would have to wait a week of course, she couldn’t just ring them she had to go in person!? and was only there once a week. A week later she rang again and said they wouldn’t budge. This was a stressful process, but it’s also quite worrying. The checks they conducted meant they ticked all the right boxes but ethically I think there is a serious problem at Stratstone Mini. It also felt like nobody really took responsibility for what happened and each department seems to be quite separate from one another, meaning it took their own customer service representative over a month to get back to us with a ‘computer says no’ and who still to this day doesn’t know why we were sold a car with a knackered clutch, or at least why no one was able to tell us it was knackered. Her only concern seemed for us to be getting a money back but really we wanted them to ensure in the future the sales process was transparent and any questions such as what state is the car in? could be answered. Me and my partner will certainly never return to Stratstone Mini Harrogate and we have told all our friends and family about our experience and they will never be going there either. Stratstone will probably respond to this with their customer services number which I won’t be ringing. Our advice: Avoid at all cost, look for a more competent and ethical company!