Last month, my wife and I took delivery of a brand new Fabia Vrs. We were so absolutely delighted with the car, this month we have chopped in our 3.2 litre Vectra Gsi for a brand new Octavia Estate. We get delivery of our new car on 24th April, but because the car we are chopping in is due for a mot on 4th April, the dealer has agreed to take the PX early so that we don't have to mot it, and lend us an Octavia Vrs for two weeks until our new estate is ready!

I never even got the drippings off the crappy Vauxhall dealers' nose.

congratulations. another convert.

Commendable! Nose? Drippings?

The dealer in question is WINCHESTER SKODA - Excellent service and a cracking good deal. Make you feel very special too.

Quite a bit better than the Southampton dealer (freeborns) from whom we brought the Fabia Vrs. They didn't seem interested in selling us a second new car in 2 months. Salesman had a day off and noone else seemed particularly interested in me.

Strange, that! - Their loss. Won't go back there again.

Perhaps they're finding Skoda selling so well that they don't care if their next one is to you or someone else?

No it is fairly common in some of the Skoda network and I suspect across the industry in general and is nothing new.

I have been seriously ill and around September last year I wrote to FIVE Skoda dealerships in my area asking their best OTR price for an Octavia Elegance Estate 2.0TDI DSG with several extras, so it was a good package for them to retail.

After some 6 weeks I had only one response to my enquiry and it was only after follow up telephone calls re my letters did I get a further two dealers to respond.

I did four Online request for quotations via Brokers and all four responded within two days and chased me from that point on.

I bought via a Broker and at a price the local dealers did not even get close.

I was a cash buyer who knew what I wanted in every respect, in short I was a give myself up customer, yet those local dealers with their expensive premises were not interested in making some money to pay for those premises. I bet a pound to a penny my writing request was seen as being yet another time wasting ******, the industry never learns.

I have had only a couple of contacts with Skoda UK customer service and whilst polite they certainly do inspire one with their response or knowledge and if your have a poor marketing importer you will get a poor dealer network.

Perhaps they're finding Skoda selling so well that they don't care if their next one is to you or someone else?

I do hope that with the sweet smell of succes and all the honours Skoda have piced up recently, it doesn't all go Pete Tong.

Mind you, they would have a long way to go to be worse than Vauxhall!

The dealer in question is WINCHESTER SKODA

Although I didn't get my car from them I have popped into this dealership a couple of times and they are always friendly and helpful. Although it's a bit further than my local dealership, I am considering taking my servicing needs over there as they seem to be fairly flexible when it comes to doing mapped cars ie. wont let that influence warranty issues.