I always think twice before leaving a negative review, but in this case I do feel it is warranted. If you do buy from this company get the additional warranty they try to sell you, its worth its weight in gold.
I bought a Mercedes Coupe from The Phantom Motor Company on 24.11.2021. Issues straight away which were reported. Then more issues which were reported on 24.12.2021 via email.
I received a reply from them on 05.01.2022:
“You are covered with a 12 month warranty, so if you ring law data on 01767310009, and give them your registration number, they will direct you to the nearest garage to where you live to get a quote for any work. Once you have a quote, email us, and id the quote sounds reasonable, will will tell them to Carr on with the work, and we will pay the invoice”
Reported 26.11.2021:
*Car would not lock (Now resolved, needed a new remote battery)
*Driver's side air bag warning light is on - now resolved
*Only 1 key fob was supplied - now resolved
*Front & rear parking sensors not working
Reported 22.12.2021:
*Drivers side front suspension has a loud squeak when driving and this is slowly getting louder.
*Stop/Start of the engine (so when stationary) does not work
*Only 3-wheel nuts on the rear passenger side wheel (one is missing)
*Brakes judder slightly when braking. I was informed that the brake pads had been replaced on the MOT
Additional issues:
*Passenger side electric seat stopped working along with the heater
*Reversing camera stopped working
I run a few companies and spend a lot of time on the road, so I have found it hard to be able to schedule in for the car to be inspected and be off the road for the day so in my own error I held off getting the car checked out. The vehicle got to the point where I knew I had to get it sorted so I finally booked it into a Mercedes specialist who spent a full day going through the various issues (and I was charged £150 for the privilege by the garage). There were 9 pages of fault codes, they informed me the car had been accident damaged and that the suspension "squeak" was actually a damaged wishbone and the brake pad issue was actually warped discs.
Once I had the report back I contacted Phantom to get the car repaired. I emailed them and was told to bring it in and they would make all of the repairs that I had emailed them (I had sent the PDF's of the issues and fault codes the garage had given me).
I have just collected my car today (15.07.2022) and Phantom refused to repair the wishbone or the warped disks because I have been using the car for the last 6 months. This was refused by a company director. It does not matter that I reported it within a month of the purchase – they are saying this is fair use. I raised the issue with the chap giving me the keys back and showed the emails etc but was told it had been refused by the director. I told him I appreciated it wasn't his fault and I wasn't going to waste either of our time arguing about it. They did repair everything via a 3rd party warranty that I PAID FOR, no doubt making some money out of the repairs.
I am not expecting a single thing from Phantom, just giving a truthful review of my situation. In addition to the long list of vehicle issues, the actual customer service has also been very poor, with zero communication throughout the time the car was being repaired. Even reporting the issues I had to get my assistant to ring over and over as no-one responds to emails or answer machine messages. Even when I first bought the car, they told me to come in on a Wednesday and it wasn't ready for me and still needed to be MOT'd, so just an hour and half drive wasted in rush hour traffic.
Whilst they were repairing my Merc I was given a courtesy car (for the 2 weeks and 2 days they had my vehicle), a Passatt, which had wheel/steering wobble on the motorway, poor brakes, heaviest steering imaginable, no working air con, no working reversing sensors, stank of cannabis smoke and was generally an awful car to drive.
I did want to post the email that was sent to them but there is a restriction on characters which is a shame. I know this is a large company and errors do happen, but the fact that the director (who had reviewed my email) chose not to fix an issue that was clearly their fault when it had been sold to me speaks volumes about how their business must operate from top to bottom.
