Group 1 Automotive UK Omdömen 20 398

If you’re considering buying a vehicle or relying on main dealer support when something goes wrong — please read this.

My experience with this branch has been, without exaggeration, the worst I’ve ever had as a customer.

I took delivery of my Mercedes CLA in 2023, and from the outset there were noticeable issues with how the car handled. What should have been picked up and resolved immediately instead turned into over a year of ongoing problems.

This resulted in repeated visits where I was consistently told work had been completed — wheel alignment, steering instability, and more. Yet each time, the same faults remained. On multiple occasions, the car was returned to them only for the same “completed” work to be done again. That’s not just frustrating — it shows a complete lack of competence and quality control.

On one visit, their head technician even joined me for a road test and agreed the vehicle was not handling correctly. Days later, I was reassured everything had been resolved, including so-called “bespoke” alignment adjustments.

Within minutes of leaving, joining the M1 near Leicester, the car suddenly drifted sharply to the left — to the point it felt unsafe.

Despite this, I was told again that everything was “fine.”

At that stage, I had no choice but to go independent. A full inspection and road test by DEKRA confirmed exactly what I had been reporting all along — the vehicle was pulling to the left and was not safe.

The car was then seen by another branch in Nottingham, who frankly were no better — but even they admitted they regularly deal with issues coming from Leicester.

The standard of work here is unacceptable. It’s careless, inconsistent, and at times, potentially dangerous.

One moment that sums it up: while I was at the Leicester branch, another customer asked me about my experience. When I gave an honest answer, a sales advisor told me not to “put off his customer.” That says everything about their priorities.

This has been a cycle of denial, repeated work, and unresolved faults — all while being told nothing is wrong.

If your issue is anything beyond what a computer can diagnose, don’t expect real expertise here.

Avoid this branch.

I recently bought a nearly new car from gp1 BMW reading. I live in Teeside and the car I wanted was listed on the BMW approved used car website. It was the exact model I wanted with the right spec etc at around the right price, the only thing was the distance. I rang up and spoke to one of the sales execs Hamza Khan. Hamza dealt with my whole purchase himself and was extremely helpful, efficient and after speaking with for over an hour about my car history (very patient man) we came to an agreement on the price of the car and he came back with a fair price for my trade in vehicle. I didn’t want to commit to a purchase straight away as there was a couple of other cars I had my eyes on. Hamza told me that he had another gentleman interested in the car and if I definitely wanted it I should leave a deposit. I declined and said I would get back to him over the weekend. In the meantime I received a video walk through of the car and all the details etc. on the Monday morning I rang up to buy the car but I had missed out. The other interested party had left a deposit. I left my details and asked Hamza to call me back if for any reason the deal fell through. A few days later I received a call telling me that the other party had failed to complete and if I wanted the car it was mine. I left a deposit and within a week had paid for the car and was driving it. I was kept informed of each process on a daily basis and any issues were addressed straight away. They even agreed to meet me half way in Lincoln to swop my older car for my new one. Now that’s a fabulous service from Hamza and his team saying that I had never even seen the car in person and I wasn’t disappointed when I did. I felt I was getting the correct level of service that I expected from a brand like BMW and I would recommend BMW reading to anyone. I am due to change again in a couple of years and I will be contacting them first.

The customer service i have received from Mark and Harrison in sales has been exceptional, All questions and queries answered and sorted promptly. The Cupra Formentor i have bought is excellent. I highly recommended Cupra Ipswich.

I purchased a Discovery sport MM71… from Group 1 Sidcup in September for £27,000. From January onwards, the EV functionality failed and the car was not working as it should.
Despite multiple attempts to repair the issue, the fault was never properly resolved. This resulted in months of inconvenience, repeated emails, and long periods without a reliable, fully functioning car.
Under the consumer rights act I was entitled to reject the faulty car. However, I was ultimately forced to accept £24,000 — a £3,000 loss — simply to bring the situation to an end and be able to replace the car. This was not a fair outcome given I had a faulty vehicle for several months.
While the car has now been collected and payment made, the overall handling of this situation was extremely disappointing. I was left without a properly working vehicle for an extended period and had to take a financial loss to resolve an issue that should have been properly fixed.
I would strongly advise anyone considering purchasing from here to be very cautious, particularly with EV or hybrid vehicles, and to ensure any faults are fully resolved before committing.
Based on my experience, I would not buy from this dealership again.

Car service:
No parking spaces available, which made the experience frustrating. The parking system felt disorganised and added unnecessary time to the visit. I tried to speak to the manager, but he was unavailable, and although the team at the desk said they would email me about my complaint, I haven’t heard anything since.
On a positive note, the car was very clean at the end, which was a pleasant surprise.

3 stars propped up by the Salesmen but Service not so much. Norwich

I've given 3 stars propped up by Sales from when I ordered the car they were great kept calling me with updates and more they were Gold

2 years later, first service. Wait on arrival to be told they don't have an auto courtesy car as "cars get sold" can I drive a manual (after they checked my licence) said legally yes but... Which was why I booked it in well ahead of time and I'm a Motability customer might be a clue.

Come back with auto courtesy car like it was some miracle and it's the car they sent me the reg details of when I checked in 2 days earlier. Bit sus imho.

Then get told it'll be ready by 5. I query are you sure it's supposed to be getting 5.4.3 on it too. Assures me by 5 blah blah.

Not arguing, I got a call by 2pm saying it was only a day as we weren't going to do the software update DESPITE it being a key part of the booking no one bothered to tell me we aren't doing those. Had they I would've gone elsewhere, I will go to Kings Lynn next time see if that's any better.

So now we're back to 2 days as expected, no complaints there as it's what I expected.

Talk about stress I didn't need though. Had it not been for the excellent work from sales when I ordered this score may have been lower.

They spent more time explaining the insurance excess (not relevant covered by Motability) and the fact you make no effort to clean the outside of cars at all now than maybe explaining about the software you might not have been doing. (To be fair service rep hadn't been told, but is that actually worse no internal communication)

Clearly your own internal communication is as bad as with me

Look no one was rude or anything like that but kind of expect better communication and treatment especially when you book a long way ahead to get the car in not a cheap car either but guess everyone got their money now eh

All the please give us a 5 star review signs in the showroom are really annoying me after this.

Dealt with Kevin from the Parts Department at MB Oxford and what great service I received
Very Knowledgeable and very quick at sorting my request out

Absolutely brilliant from start to finish!! Thought it would be a hassle buying from Liverpool as I’m in Newcastle. Nathan has been great. Everything went so smooth. Rang him with an enquiry on the Thursday and received my stunning car the following Tuesday. Can’t fault anything! Would definitely recommend this garage wherever you are in the country. Would definitely buy from them again 👌🏼

Buying a car can be stressful but our sales representatives made it really easy with the choice of the car and finance options available.

On the 2nd April I left a review giving Group 1 BMW Worthing 3 stars as the parts department were great and service department were terrible. They didn't bother to respond at all to the request for a quote to re gas my air con.
You can see below, but The Group 1 Trust Pilot 'police' came back with " We regret the service department's delay in responding to your air con service request. We've reached out to them to get in contact with you to arrange the air con service with you. Once again we apologise for the lack of communication and we thank for bringing this to our attention, as feedback helps us improve."
Well they haven't improved. It's 10 days since they posted the above and I've heard nothing from Group 1 BMW Worthing; no calls, missed calls, emails or texts ... nothing. If they read this and do decide to respond and quote, maybe they'd consider doing the job FOC considering how bad they have been.

Service was completed to my satisfaction, a problem with the DAB radio was also looked at and not resolved. The car has had to be booked in again

I had a very disappointing experience at Group 1 Volkswagen Exeter on Saturday 11th April.

My partner urgently needed car parts to fix his vehicle for work, so I cycled from Heavitree to Marsh Barton carrying the old parts with me as reference. As you can imagine, they were used and oily, and by the time I arrived, I wasn’t looking my best—but I was simply a customer needing help.

After waiting to be seen, I was approached by a member of the parts team who immediately made me feel unwelcome. While I was trying to explain my situation and carefully unwrap the parts, he abruptly told me he couldn’t help because “the system was down” and offered nothing more than taking my details for a call back during the week.

I explained I had come from far away and that this was urgent, but he showed no empathy and simply repeated himself. The interaction felt dismissive and, honestly, quite judgmental.

What made this worse is that I then went to another Volkswagen dealership nearby, where I received completely different treatment. The system was actually working, and the staff member there went above and beyond to help me—proving that the issue was not the system, but the lack of willingness to assist.

Customer service should not depend on how someone looks when they walk through the door. Anyone could return another day to purchase a car, and first impressions matter.

Unfortunately, because of this experience, I would not feel comfortable returning to this branch.

My wife and I both have range rover Evoque's which were recalled to Group 1 Chester due to the passenger air bag defect.
Initially i spoke to Sid to try and get both vehicles booked in for half a day so we wouldn't have to travel so much.
For a job which takes between 40minutes and an hour i was surprised that he insisted that we bring each one in for a whole day. One was booked in for the 7th April and the next was for 8th April.
This is purely for the convenience of the dealership so that the mechanics can fill in small time slots to fill their day.
I put this down to lack of planning and no thought for customer service or the inconvenience to the customer.
This dealership is more interested in pleasing management and fulfilling targets.
Land rovers and range rovers are easy to sell, but managing customer service in Chester is a lot more difficult.
I knew from previous experiences with this dealership that they would mess things up somehow, so when I went with my wife to drop her car off and bring her home i asked about the appointment for my car the next day.
Guess what, there was no booking, no surprise there.
I told the lady that we would take my wife's car home unless they re booked my car in for the following day as they had promised.
We had made arrangements for looking after grandchildren and moved other things around to suit JLR for the 2 days we would only have one car.
However there was one positive out of it, because i was getting very annoyed at what i perceived this dealerships lack of attention to detail. Ellie went to speak to the invisible management and was able to get my car in for the following day, thank you Ellie.

On leaving the dealership on Wednesday 8th I noticed that my dashcam had been disconnected, and the wires were left dangling.
i was most displeased with this, on checking my wife's car i found that they had done the same to her dashcam.
If either of us had been in an accident that wasn't our fault we would have no proof.
I called the dealership back and spoke to Laura (i think) who apologized for this and said it was policy to disconnect dashcams as filming in the workshop was banned.
If you are going to disconnect dashcams then at least re connect them or have the courtesy to inform your customers of this.
Laura was very apologetic and offered me and my wife a voucher via email for dinner at the Grosvenor Pulford.
It does not surprise me that to date this has not been received
Yet again i am disappointed in this dealerships lack of attention to detail, customer service and ability to plan small jobs.
If it wasn't for the fact that I am a Land Rover fan i would not buy another JLR vehicle after experiencing this level of service.

First time using the Kings Lynn branch & we had a very pleasant experience. Credit to all of the team. 👍

I had a very disappointing experience with Land Rover. I booked my car in for an airbag recall service and took a day off work on Friday to attend the appointment. However, they cancelled at the last minute, which caused a lot of inconvenience.

I then asked if they could rebook me on a Saturday, as they are open, but I was told that recall work is not done on Saturdays unless I pay extra. This is unfair, especially since I had already lost a day’s wages due to their cancellation.

Overall, very poor customer service and lack of consideration for customers’ time.

Chaotic reservation system which meant that 5 people had reserved the same van. Unresponsive sales staff that you have to chase to get any updates/information. They don’t make it easy to spend £65k.

Group 1 Auto BMW in Brighton. 08436439. Essential Oil Service. Full review to follow but please note Group 1 will not stamp your service book for an essential oil service despite the book being a record of your servicing. In my case they attempted to charge me for disposal fees in addition to the fixed price, and offered to replace a part at a cost in excess of the value of the car which was not identified as even an advisory on the subsequent MOT. There were two advisories on the MOT which Group 1 BMW had not identified.

This is the 2nd time I’ve had car booked in at Mercedes Norwich 1st time sat waiting 4 hours for then to do nothing as in previous review.
Booked in today with loan car confirmed so another days holiday only to get there to de told no loan car available some crap about booking systems fault 40 mile round trip for nothing again they don’t care about you or the car once it’s sold and definitely don’t care about warranty work I’d advice anyone buying a new car go elsewhere. And guarantee the response will be sorry please contact or complaint department 

Went to Volkswagen Chelmsford to view a car we liked negotiated a price to purchase, agreed to discuss with my wife & return. 6 days later we returned drove the car & wanted to go ahead with the sale only to be told that the price could not be honoured due to it being a different month. Most of the day wasted travelling to & from when we could have been told this over the phone when booking the test drive.

After replying to you Via email and asking for a reply to say that your looking into my issue plus replying to you after your reply on Google, I have to say that your still not replying to me, This is after 3 weeks on Google and a week after replying to you on Trust pilot. I am replying to your comment below and i did send emails to this address months ago and i have not had a reply. Please at least acknowledge that you have my emails and that your looking into my complaint with a expected date that my issues will be dealt with. Here is your reply Reply from Group 1 Automotive UK

Mar 30, 2026
Hello Malc,

Thank you for sharing your feedback. We are very sorry to hear about your experience at our dealership and the difficulties you have faced in receiving a response.

We take all complaints seriously and aim to provide timely communication, so it is disappointing to hear that we have not met your expectations in this instance. To ensure your concerns are fully addressed, we encourage you to contact us directly at complaints@groupso that we can review your case and work towards an appropriate resolution.

We appreciate you bringing this to our attention and are committed to improving our communication processes.

Group 1 Automotive UK

Communication is one of the worst
I made a post on the Feb 4, 2026 regarding the poor communication and the way i was treated at the stockport VW dealership. I have written many times with complaints to Group1 customer complaints, 1st 16th November 25 / 2nd 8th December 25 and 3rd which was the 19th December 25 and i also filled in the feedback form that i was asked to give a high score by the lady who sold me the car, I emailed "tellusmoregroup1auto" on the 10th February 26 and still no reply , I note a lot of reviews on Trustpilot that are damming of the company don't get replies and will only reply back to certain reviews, This shows how bad this company is for communication.