I first saw the CC on Top Gear when it was a concept car being billed for full production and seduced straight away. I saved up my pennies and ordered one as an import in April 2001 but was advised I would have to wait a whole six months for delievery. This seemed acceptable as I was getting a great car and getting about 20% off of UK retail and I could get by without a car temporarily if need be. Anyway, the company I was getting it through, Grey UK, changed their name to Snoop4 (since gone bust I think) within a month of me handing in my 10% deposit and then when I paid the remaining 90% (just under 10K) six months later the dealership lost the money for two weeks and the delivery company failed to deliver meaning that it all ended up with me picking the car up myself over a month overdue on Xmas eve 2001. I had been terribly unprofessionally treated by Snoop4 (who agreed to a partial refund), the dealership and especially the delivery company but I had my car and I was happy.
Three months later I was going to see a friend in Reading and on the M3 northbound just south of junction 3 when all the cars on the road began to break heavily. I braked heavily and safely enough that when I saw the car behind me coming in quite fast was able to ease off the brake a bit to give them more room. Sadly by the time we had both stopped a third car managed to forget to brake and instead tried to veer in to the central reservation, he somehow missed the car behind me and then smashed into my rear axle, bounced out again and then hit my front axle. The car was still driveable and I drove round to my friends in Reading as that was closer but in the light of day next day it became apparent just how bad it was and I got a tow truck to take it away. I told the insurance company that the latch on the right hand side had been shook loose and that although the roof may have looked OK it was clearly affected in some way, sadly the insurance company (Elephant, wouldn't touch them with yours) hadn't passed this on and by the time the parts had finally came in they needed to wait on parts again. When they did eventually return the car there was a loud clanking noise from just above the rear axle which it turned out was a workman leaving a tool inside the car so it needed to be taken back to be checked out and removed. All in all due to a crappy insurance company and an innefficient garage the car was off the road for exactly three months. The low point came after one month when somebody from the legal company left a message on my answerphone at 2:00 on a Saturday to say they were removing the insurance from my courtesy car effective at midnight as they believed my car must be due to be written off as the damage was taking so long to repair. On phoning up the Elephant I couldn't even get them to agree that this was bad customer service, oh and somebody knocked lightly into my first hire car (Ka) causing me to lose the deposit and somebody keyed the second hire car (Astra) resulting in the same thing happening again. By the time I had got the car back summer was upon us and I was happy again, the car seemed to rattle a bit more than before but it is just quite a rattly car.
So, speed forward to fifteen months later; waiting to join a roundabout and the car behind me decides I must have gone already and accelerates into the back of me. They didn't hit me very fast but sadly the combination of them being a 4x4 with a big scary bumper and me having a delicate metal roof assembly proved to be a bad one. This time I decided to choose the garage myself and put the car in to a Peugeot dealership but Axa (my current insurers) said I could not get a courtesy car if I did this (although presumably I could and claim it back) and the AA advised me that if I did this and the repair was shoddy the insurance company could effectively leave me out to dry so I buckled and went to one of their 'approved' repairers. Again we had to wait on parts for about four weeks but when I got the car back one of the panels was out of alignment by just under an inch and they said there was a fault with the 'central locking system' which they thought must have been caused by the previous accident. They fixed the panel alignment, somebody even said that they had noticed this fault previously but they obviously couldn't explain why if that was the case they had not corrected it. I soon found out that the central alarm fault was actually a fault of the roof alarm which would sound about 80% of the time when the roof was up as the car clearly believed it was not closed properly and just went beep beep beep beep (well you get the idea). I was told that they had never checked the roof believing it to have not been that bad an accident and in fact they believed it was nothing to do with the accident but would gladly book it in at the local Peugeot dealership on the understanding that I may be paying the bill. They had to wait on parts again for about three weeks this time and eventually abandoned Peugeot parts department prefering to source a part from a different dealership. I now have the car back over three months from the accident and it all seems to be working OK, the remote on the radio/CD is not properly working (don't know where that came from) but I'm willing to just let that go frankly. What I'm more sad about is that summer clearly ended on the very day I got by car back.
So, I would be the first to admit that I've been unlucky in being involved in two accidents and the service that I had from Elephant was poor but the real culprit here to my mind is Peugeot parts. The Peugeot garage I have just dealt with has told me that if they want to request a part they are not allowed to phone Peugeot parts but have to submit an order by fax. Once Peugeot parts have this fax they have four days in which to come back with a provisional date, this is pathetic. I think it's a lovely car but (as I believe I've said on a post before) how did Peugeot make it.
As for me, next time I think I'll buy a German car, maybe if I'm lucky I can win myself a Porsche on here http://www.bestofthebest.co.uk.
:rolleyes:
OK, that's it, rant over!
Oh dear sounds like u had a very bad time 
Does p155 me off tho when ppl expect to get a UK car and UK service from an importer! 
