Kinghams of Croydon

[DaveP]

I am currently in conversation with Seat UK about my recent service at Kinghams.

Car is approx 3 months old, 10k miles. I believe, according to the literature that the car has to have an oil change service, which was quoted at ~£70 + VAT. I was telephoned and informed that I needed a "full" service to maintain my warranty. Obviously I obeyed. Came away with a bill for £160 something. Bit different.
Yesterday car was in for warranty work and they had not stamped my service book. Looking into the detail whilst waiting it states, clearly:

10k oil change

inspection service every 12mths or 20k.


Mine had a full inspection service.

I questioned the dealer and was told that Seat UK insisted that they did what they did. Today I am speaking with Seat uk.

I will keep you all posted of the facts.

 

[Steve Sugg]

That's Kinghams all over. I'll never go again after the hassles I've had. Do yourself a favour and find another dealer.

 

[F2 Stu]

yup we had problems of that sort when it came to servicing our bammer

 

[Steve Sugg]

When i got my ibiza from there, it was sold "totally serviced up to to gills" imagine my surprise when i took it elsewhere for a service (sidlow, felbridge) they said that it hadn't been touched for at least 18 months, nice eh? Kingham's had even stamped the service book! That the last in a long line of hassles I've had, I 've tried to get some sort of reaction out of them but they're not interested at all. Seat say it's down to the dealer so they don't want anything to do with it either! The last thing I've got to do is get some new plates that don't say "Kinghams of Croydon".

 

[Dudemeister]

Hopefully thats not a bad sign - my car's due it's first service in january 03 and was quoted £167!!! Car's only done 5000 miles since new.

But on the plus side they did do warranty work without questioning the fact that my car was not registered with SEAT UK (by the way it is now...) and were very helpful.

fingers crossed then!

 

[loadswine]

I thought I'd update this thread with a recent experience.
A month or so ago, I took my Altea TDi Sport to Kinghams of Croydon for its first MOT. No apparent drama till I checked my oil the following weekend.... I opened the bonnet and looked in... something was wrong, no dipstick in the dipstick hole , it was laid at the rear edge of the bonnet and oil was all over the engine bay! Grrrrrr!!*!
Phoned Kinghams who denied all knowledge and both the "service manager" and the proprietor stated " We would never remove a dipstick to carry out an MOT"
I was a little bemused at this and said that it had to be them, as nobody else had been inside my engine bay. This, of course met with total denial. I didn't know why the dipstick would be removed either until I did a little bit of research and discovered that the MOT emissions test for diesels requires that the oil be at min 80 C and this is measured by means of a probe inserted, yes you've guessed it, in the dipstick tube.
Wrote to Kinghams who did not even have the courtesy to respond.

No way is it my car ever going back there and I would advise that nobody else goes there either. I've since spoken to a couple of other Seat owners that I know locally and it seems that I'm not the only unhappy customer of theirs.

Be warned guys.

 

[ZBOYD]

Funnily enough I have recently received an email from the MD of Kinghams. Requesting that some negative comments dating back several years on the site be removed. I agreed that some of these were overtly negative and came across more as rants. (ie the ones where every other word is a profanity).

I have never liked posts like that, because they are not helpful to anyone and at worst potentially damaging to this site.

Mr Kingham went on to explain, that Kinghams are an award winning family garage and one of the oldest approved SEAT service centres in the UK. He claims that they exceed customers expectation 99% of the time and where there is a slip they make sure people are kept happy.

He also said he is passionate about their business and would always welcome any constructive comments on how they can improve their offering to SEAT owners.

I must add that SCN is here for us all to give feedback to dealers, positive and negative. However as we neither have the legal clout or finances to defend a claim made by a member of the public. We can be asked to remove published statements and we must comply unless we wish to challenge it legally.

In this case without proof its their word against yours and we can't defend your statement either way, we are a neutral party. Remember anything you post on SCN becomes essentially the property of SCN by means of us publishing it, and we can and will remove statements that are challenged.

I have invited Mr Kingham to join SCN as we do to all UK SEAT dealers that contact us or show an interest in the forums, we invite them to take an active role in this site and answer their praise and criticisms.

I would kindly suggest this not turn into a bashing thread, because it will be removed.

In turn if Kingham's do request removal, then we will be forced to prevent any future feedback to be published regarding their company. If we can not publish a balanced view of services then the site will not publish any views regarding Kingham's and the name and url details will be barred from the site.

 

[loadswine]

Sorry if I have crossed the line here. I understand your position and I will edit my post if it helps at all. I didn't know how else to present this really, other than recount my experience.
As I said, if this puts SCN in a difficult position, then I will edit or remove.
I'm not sure how else feedback can be given that won't come across in the wrong way unless it is of a positive nature.
Evidence in my case is circumstantial, but I wouldn't have bothered to put up anything negative if the dealer had actually responded to my letter.
I'm a mod on another forum myself and I respect the rules. Please let me know if you want me to alter or remove my post and I'll be happy to oblige.
I agree totally that if a balance of views is unable to be expressed, then not mentioning that organisation in any way is the only way forward.

 

[ZBOYD]

Nigel, I won't remove it until asked to. I have no problem with the wording of your post, its a far more clearly expressed posting than some people publish.

I would in most cases ignore it, but there are sadly some dealers out there that can't take any criticism on the chin or feel they should respond to it. In extreme case they have even threatened the site with legal action. Not in Kingham's case I might add, they have so far been quite cordial.

I'll outline that legal action can only be correctly levied at us if we refuse to remove any postings deemed to be damaging, when requested to do so. We of course do not vet every post and are not responsible for any information which is posted in this forum by members of the public. However we are publishing those statements, so when requested to do so we must remove them.

It's rants and profanity style postings I can't stand they are indefensible from our point of view and we can't be seen to promote this form of feedback.

However I only wished to state our official position, which is simply we remain firmly sat on the fence.

 

[DaveP]

Well, if they are reading this site and disliking negative comments then they never resolved that issue! So I must be one of their 1%.

Mind you all my experiences of all Seat dealers has been sub standard.