Rix motor company, Warrington – avoid at all costs

Rix motor logo - pushy sales

Rix motor logo - pushy sales personisfied

I had a staggering experience today at Rix Motor Company in Warrington.

As many of you may know I’m in the market for a BMW M3 and so I wanted to have my first test drive of one. How a car drives is so important to me – I’m a drivers car man. I found one that seemed well priced and had most the options I wanted so thought it would be a great start.

I arrived (it’s about 30 mins from my office) in Warrington to see the car. They greeted me fine and Henry, my assigned sales bod, offered me a drink and I used the well appointed facilities. My initial impressions was good, possibly even impressed. The place was well setup and customer focused. Little did I know.

We then went through a whole process focused on sales, not on the person being sold to. Had a quick look at the car before an appraisal of my S2000, including them test driving it before a finance quote appeared and a talk about gap insurance.  I mentioned a few things on the car I thought weren’t top notch and we had a look and they offered to fix them. Fair enough. We’re about 25 minutes in now.

Now, we’re standing outside next to the car and something that still incenses me happens. Henry, my up until now nice salesprson says:

‘If the car drives well, will you leave a deposit today’

I’m OK with that, it’s an OK question and as I do a fair amount of selling in my own job, it’s not an offensive question. Now, I’m an honest man, and maybe I shouldn’t of been but I said no – it’s my first car I have looked at, and I haven’t even driven it.

‘If the cars drives well though, I need to know you want to buy today or we don’t normally let people drive the car’

I say I can’t guarantee this as I don’t even know whether I like SMG or manual, having never driven one. We have reached an impass. At this point, I’m pretty angry at this point because I just think this is plain rude. Selling me a car is all about the drive, all about the feel of the car. This is probably true of most drivers cars. I say that I don’t really want to buy from a company or person that is so pushy and uses such a forceful sales technique. At this point the sales guy (henry) becomes, quite frankly, a dick. He gets all flippant.

‘Well I’ll just get your keys and you can go’ (I already have my keys)

I ask for my form so they don’t have my details

‘No, those details are ours, but don’t worry, I won’t be calling you’

As you can see, this is not what you would call a good sales experience. I can’t even begin to think what the after sales service is like. It’s bound to be terrible as these guys are a bunch of pushy sharks. Avoid them at all costs.

PS – Have a look at the reviews here: Blagger reviews of Rix Motor Company. Those that are easily sold (bought straight off) and the car was OK (seems to be very lucky) are OK. The bad reviews though, are filled with venom. Further proof they are to be avoided.

About Rob

I'm an average petrolhead - I love cars and get as much driving experiences as I can out in the world from test drives to track days.