Recently had both an incredibly good and relatively bad experience buying the Wife's 2018 Passat GTE Advance. We'd been looking around for about a month for something to replace the 2015 Yeti with, the main criteria being larger luggage capacity, leather (cloth was getting increasingly hard to get sticky finger mess from a 3-year old out of), no less equipment than the Yeti, and it had to be Petrol/Auto. Having done a lot of ringing round for various cars (namely Seat Ateca, Skoda Karoq, VW Tiguan and BMW Q3) I was getting increasingly disheartened by the condition and spec of most of these for the budget (£17-19k), and those that did seem well specced I never got chance to view because used cars seem to sell in days if not hours at the moment!
I'd started looking beyond SUVs, factoring in estates into the mix, originally looking at F31s and B9 platform A4s, discovering that the Passat GTE Advance was not only in budget and newer, but typically high specced and had the added bonus of the PHEV that seemed to offer the ability for 90% of the wife's travelling to be done on electricity alone. I'd seen a couple at a local car supermarket, and initially the experience was OK, I'd put a £99 refundable deposit on a car in order to secure it for long enough that I could get over to view it. The communication was good and I was around 2 days from the scheduled viewing only to see a higher specced car appear for £150~ more, a quick call to discus the quality of the new vehicle, confirming it was "mint", I moved my deposit from one to the other and that was that. The day of the scheduled viewing came and I trundled down only to find an ex smokers car that stank, it was filthy inside and out, and was literally peppered in scratches and carpark dents, quite a way from the "mint" that was described to me on the phone. In addition the car didn't have the full VW Service History advertised, infact it didn't even have FSH of any kind as it was missing a service. Disheartened I left only to be badgered by calls and voicemails in the following weeks, and as of yet no refund of my deposit.
Anyway, onto the good. I found another car, a bit further away in Derby, but at a main dealer (Parkway Volkswagen), it was a bit pricier which was to be expected given the approved used status of the vehicle, but the 2-year warranty, the additional spec the car had, and the fact it was a year younger made the man-maths stack up in favor of upping the budget £1k~ (I'd have been paying more than this for the VW Insured Warranty - which isn't as comprehensive as the Das Welt Auto warranty, as well as needing to install a reversing camera - a compromise with the wife in return for driving a longer vehicle). The new car had 360-degree view cameras, electric tailgate, rear sun-blinds and a few other options that made the car more appealing).
So as this car was further away, I didn't want a repeat of the "mint" previous car, so I asked if it would be possible to get some "real" pictures of the car, rather than the touched up advert ones. The salesman (Kyle) went out immediately and took a 1080p walk around video of the exterior and interior for me, and made a point of actually highlighting areas of damage (a few stone chips to the leading edge of the bonnet, and a scratch on a wing mirror cap - no big deal), plus 1 point for Kyle already. I sent over a deposit and waited for closer to the proposed pickup date to send over the balance (yes, I paid before physically seeing the car, I did this with my 440i as well). Kyle had matched the car supermarket's offer of trade-in for the Yeti (without seeing the car), which was also nice of him taking my description of the vehicle on face value (point 2 for Kyle).
We're 3 days from collection at this point, the balance had been paid, and I was off to the neonatal unit to finally pick up my wife and premature daughter (born 10 weeks early) to bring them home, I'd stopped off at Sainsbury's en-route as we needed more nappies and "tiny baby" clothes. I had parked, as I always do, a million miles from the entrance, in an empty section of carpark. Returning to the car I could see that some utter ****sack had scraped the front nearside corner and had already scarpered
. I contacted Kyle (he'd already been talking to me outside of working hours on WhatsApp) with a description and hastily taken photo of the damage, fully expecting to be bent over on the trade in value, only to be told "he'd see what he could do". When I got home I took some additional photos after cleaning up the area as best I could, showing that there was only bumper damage, no deformation, no damage to the headlight or front wing, fired them over to Kyle (at around 8PM!) who responded almost immediately saying he'd send them over to the bodyshop manager and come back to me, but "not to worry". Less than an hour later I'd been told they'd fix it at cost for £150 and that'd be the end of it, I'd owe an extra £150, not too shabby at all considering, and again all of this out of hours on a Friday evening!
Finally collection day comes around and after having a good face to face look around the car I spot that the interior door handle on the driver's door is cracked (couldn't be seen from the angle of the photos or the video) and that I'd ideally want it replacing. Kyle trundles off and gets his manager to agree to buy the part and ship it out to me to save the round trip and I can get it fitted myself without affecting the warranty. Seemingly an acceptable solution to me I agree that's fine, do the necessary paperwork, say my goodbyes I get into the car to realize that whilst it's not been given much fuel, it was at least fully charged, the drive home was uneventful and was 80% electric (which was a new experience for me, one that has made me really think twice about where to go after the 440i).
I get home and plug the car in, only to find that the "granny lead" is a bit... flaky. It sometimes works, sometimes not, and if it doesn't work then a swift smack with my fist or a rubber mallet (the charge cable is encased in rubber to waterproof it) seems to get it to work 100% of the time, but clearly there's a loose contact somewhere within. I fire a message off to Kyle and he says it's not a warranty covered item, but he'd see what he could do. Two days later I get the message that a refurbished charge cable would be sent to me with the trim piece. Great, better than buying my own replacement charge cable.
A few keep in contact messages were exchanged between myself and Kyle over the next week, with him informing me on the status of the trim piece and asking me how the car is/how the wife is getting on with it, which was nice.
Roll around to this morning and Kyle shows up on my doorstep, hand delivering the charger and trim piece. Absolutely A+++ service, I was shocked!
) 
Decides he wants to buy a decent sedan. Likes the look of the then-current Lexus.
