Pre Purchase Inspections

[plynchy]

You did indeed, and served up an excellent report for me! Maybe you should change your line of work? 🤔

Im always happy to cast my eye over something local to save anyone a wasted journey, Wish did the same for me years ago on a work runabout which I ran for 4 years, as did a friend of @mapmore recently on a T5 VW I ended up buying.

Always been a very helpful forum in my experience.

[Photogirl]

I think that's lovely. This form has an amazing knowledge base, I'm always blown away by the help and advice. 

[edc]

My old boss, not sure if he ever reads this forum, clocked my Boxster on my first day of work and promptly wanted one himself. He found one and we drove over to Cridfords before they moved and I looked round and drove the car while he looked at the paperwork. He did a deal and never drove it trusting my opinion. I guess he could have fired me afterwards if it backfired. 

[Scubaregs]

Simple fact is if you pay for a service, you should get that service and not just parts of it.

As had been said, trying to negotiate with "Well the inspection shows the car requires..........." rather than "As you can see here in the written report....." is a whole different ball(ache) game.

[SuperPaulie]

I mean these cars are 20 years old, you pretty much need to buy it and replace a lot of stuff to get reliability or at least expect to in the short to medium term. I bought my motor with all that in mind and am still pleasantly surprised 8 years later that I haven't needed to. Biggest expense so far was the clutch/IMS and the new roof, which in fairness I got all that because I wanted it, rather than a necessity.

Not a lot else you can buy for folding money that's been outside for 20 years and still good to go. 

In summary, a 20 year car that costs next to nowt doesn't need a paid for inspection, in my opinion.

[dunks]

22 hours ago, SuperPaulie said:

I mean these cars are 20 years old, you pretty much need to buy it and replace a lot of stuff to get reliability or at least expect to in the short to medium term. I bought my motor with all that in mind and am still pleasantly surprised 8 years later that I haven't needed to. Biggest expense so far was the clutch/IMS and the new roof, which in fairness I got all that because I wanted it, rather than a necessity.

Not a lot else you can buy for folding money that's been outside for 20 years and still good to go. 

In summary, a 20 year car that costs next to nowt doesn't need a paid for inspection, in my opinion.

Exactly , also an inspection is there to find faults , no matter how trivial but most faults are also likely to be expected on a 20 year car

If a car is given a clean bill of health but then faults are found a month later is the inspector in any way liable ?

Personally I would never pay for an inspection , and if I was selling a car and the buyer had an inspection and something was found and they started trying to use it as leverage i'd politely ask them to look elsewhere as the car has been priced according to the condition

[Quinten]

My son is still waiting for @Nick Giles to send the written report.  Several messages left, all ignored.  Yes, the inspection enabled us to make an informed purchase, but if your service includes a written report, the written report should follow.  It's not like it was a cheap service.

[Araf]

For balance, can people please update to advise if they have or have not received their reports?

[Photogirl]

44 minutes ago, Araf said:

For balance, can people please update to advise if they have or have not received their reports?

Not received (inspection was 23rd June 2021).

If Nick is finding that his workload is leaving insufficient capacity for him to fulfil the terms of his contract, the general advice is that he needs to either take fewer clients /or take fewer clients and increase his prices slightly. If working at full load means delivering only part of the service then that is not a sustainable business model given that much if not most of Nick's business is based on referral and recommendation. Failing to respond to messages is also thoroughly unacceptable. I don't know what to make of it.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Photogirl
date

[Photogirl]

48 minutes ago, Araf said:

For balance, can people please update to advise if they have or have not received their reports?

It's immaterial - if the report is not received within the specified timeframe as per Nick's terms (which as I recall was a day or two days most). Even a week is too long given that negotiations cannot be reasonably held beyond a couple of days. 

Edited September 16, 2021 by Photogirl

[edc]

I see he's also on one of the Facebook Boxster groups too. It seems a shame that what could be a good personal service to novice or distant buyers has become a let down for some. Even a sorry, it's late but coming by X date message is better than nothing. 

[SuperPaulie]

Pretty sure he's an admin on the Facebook group... If he says a report will be forthcoming in a few days and a month passes, id be p*ssed off like.

Don't do the job if you're going to take 100% payment and only deliver 50% of the gig, busy or not.

My opinion still stands that a report on a 20 year old £4k motor is pointless. Water pump works perfectly until it doesn't, then what? 

[Photogirl]

32 minutes ago, SuperPaulie said:

Don't do the job if you're going to take 100% payment and only deliver 50% of the gig, busy or not.

My opinion still stands that a report on a 20 year old £4k motor is pointless. 

Yes, that's where it ends. You enter into a contract then you must deliver. 

I think the requirement for a report will depend on the buyer. A lot of people on this forum are very knowledgeable, but I think a novice might do well to get an inspection done on an older or cheaper car - I'm talking about the buyers who think they can buy a cheap Porsche and drive away happy with a servicing budget of £500. An inspection could be a good lesson as a lot of these people are impulse purchasers who don't always understand the cost of repairs. You've got a point though - somebody spending 4k will probably be too tight-fisted to come up with £200 for a pre-purchase check, or else they're a clued-up buyer looking for a project car to fully restore.

I was looking at much younger cars, but was quite disappointed by the standard of the ones I saw (and I saw quite a lot of them). The process made me appreciate my 22 year old 986 which is in lovely condition and recently underwent an inspection at my local indie - they were very impressed.

[edc]

Impulse purchasers won't be inspection purchasers. I'm not against inspections as such and I'm no expert mechanic but I've never paid for an inspection and I've bought some very risky cars in the past albeit they've nearly all been cheap. I've bought 2 Range Rovers with no service history at 155k and 175k. They were my first 2 RRs too 😂 I liken car inspections to a full on house survey on a 10 year old standard house in the middle of an estate. 

[Scubaregs]

Whether you agree with inspections or not, irrespective a service was paid for and the most important part not delivered. Poor show indeed and poorer show that no explanation or apology has been forthcoming to those that paid for it. Ignoring customer messages when they have a genuine grievance is also out of order.

Edited September 19, 2021 by Scubaregs

[TGI_J]

14 hours ago, Quinten said:

My son is still waiting for @Nick Giles to send the written report.  Several messages left, all ignored.  Yes, the inspection enabled us to make an informed purchase, but if your service includes a written report, the written report should follow.  It's not like it was a cheap service.

As @Quinten said, still no written Report. 

Nick was great in giving me a verbal breakdown on the spot to help us make the purchase, however that was on the 29th of July, and it is now the 17th of September, and we still don't have the written report. 

He makes you sign a fancy looking contract etc so it's not great that he can't deliver the report, and not even give me a response in my DM's, just leaves me on read..

[edc]

If any of you paid by credit card and feel that strongly about it then you can complain to your credit card company and use their refund procedure. I have done that via TSB in the berry recent past and simply attached my receipt and email trail showing non delivery. This was for a product but it should be no different for a service. I got my money back within a week. 

[½cwt]

11 minutes ago, edc said:

If any of you paid by credit card and feel that strongly about it then you can complain to your credit card company and use their refund procedure. I have done that via TSB in the berry recent past and simply attached my receipt and email trail showing non delivery. This was for a product but it should be no different for a service. I got my money back within a week. 

If this happens a couple of time he might pay attention.  Unfortunately this happens to one man/small businesses you only have a certain capacity and even if you can find someone else who works to your standard you need to double your business to make it pay that's if such a person wants to work for you and is not already doing it for them selves....  However it would be good if @Nick Gileswere to take the opportunity come to defend himself before he gets completely panned and loses recommendations and faith of the BoXa community.  There could be an acceptable reason, illness, bereavement etc.

[Photogirl]

4 minutes ago, ½cwt said:

If this happens a couple of time he might pay attention.  Unfortunately this happens to one man/small businesses you only have a certain capacity and even if you can find someone else who works to your standard you need to double your business to make it pay that's if such a person wants to work for you and is not already doing it for them selves....  However it would be good if @Nick Gileswere to take the opportunity come to defend himself before he gets completely panned and loses recommendations and faith of the BoXa community.  There could be an acceptable reason, illness, bereavement etc.

Small business owners have to understand their workload. If we're getting more bookings than we can handle then we are in sufficient demand to take fewer customers but increase our prices slightly. If the market cannot absorb a small price rise (which I don't think is the case here) then you have to either take fewer customers and deliver what you have promised, or take on a co-worker. 

I considered every reason you mentioned, but Nick was continuing to work each day as usual, so I'm confident there is no acceptable reason for failing to deliver reports or failing to respond to messages. I'm struggling to find a defence for that, in all honesty. To be clear - raising a commentary about poor delivery of a service isn't the same as panning a supplier and there is nothing unreasonable in the feedback in this thread. Nick will know all about this discussion, of that I'm fairly certain. 

 

[edc]

Of course there is always life or other business but as usual customer satisfaction and communication are key. I have dealt with a one man band for carpets for my house. Now guy, a bit difficult to pin down sometimes but eventually I chose what I wanted and booked a date. Just a week before my fitting he cancelled as he had an operation brought forward. At least he told me and explained he's going to be out of action for a certain amount of time and encouraged me to find an alternative rather than leave me hanging. 

[TROOPER88]

I can not fathom why Nick Giles does not respond to this thread.

You would think that if it was your business, you would want to defend yourself. I know I would. 

[SuperPaulie]

How long could it really take to write up the report from the notes? If it takes longer than an hour I'd be surprised. Seems p*ss poor to me.

[TROOPER88]

Really strange as he is all over the Facebook 986 owners club, he adds pictures virtually daily of cars he has inspected and taking on more and more work. 

If someone links in this thread to FB, it would be really harmful to his business which is why I can not understand his actions. 

[Photogirl]

On 9/17/2021 at 9:39 AM, edc said:

If any of you paid by credit card and feel that strongly about it then you can complain to your credit card company and use their refund procedure. 

As I recall the only payment option Nick offered was bank transfer.

[usman10316]

Judging by his facebook account and several posts in groups... he is totally fine.