Sweeney & Forte Motors D3

Max Power1

http://www.sfm.ie/

any opinions on past dealings with these guys?

MarkN

Cowboys.

Sold my girlfriend a lemon Peugeot 206 years ago, wouldn't stand over any warranty work, I threatened to take the car out of the garage mid work on the clutch and have it taken to a main Peugeot dealer unless they dropped their price nearer to a main dealer clutch price and just their general attitude is all wrong.

Plenty of small independent garages to choose from without getting yourself in avoidable hassle.

Max Power1

MarkN wrote: »

Cowboys.

Sold my girlfriend a lemon Peugeot 206 years ago, wouldn't stand over any warranty work, I threatened to take the car out of the garage mid work on the clutch and have it taken to a main Peugeot dealer unless they dropped their price nearer to a main dealer clutch price and just their general attitude is all wrong.

Plenty of small independent garages to choose from without getting yourself in avoidable hassle.

wow. I have to say i'm shocked. That wasnt the impression I got at all to say the least.

MarkN

It's just one story but I'll see her later and get the full list of problems she had with it and report back - all I remember is they didn't want to know.

Lauder

I have bought several cars of them in the past, no issues. Generally considered to be a good helpful honest garage. They used to be an Alfa/Fiat garage, now they are open to all brands.

Same staff as when Fiat/Alfa garage, and they are genuinely helpful people.

colm_mcm

heard only good things.

Max Power1

Grand, thats more of what I expected tbh. The staff were very helpful (a welcome contrast to a certain north dublin motors dealer I visited on the same day) and the cars seemed well prepared for sale. Im looking at a 1.8 rover 75 and, despite some wear and tear on the steering wheel, its in great nick and will have a full2 years NCT, low mileage and a 6 month parts/labour warranty.

Ill be going back in about 10 days to buy it (pending some financial details) and im delighted to hear the positive reviews.

colm_mcm

No harm to take any negative feedback on board too but was surprised by the 206 story.

Max Power1

colm_mcm wrote: »

No harm to take any negative feedback on board too but was surprised by the 206 story.

Oh I will, but its just normally a gut feeling is accurrate and in this case I expected 100% glowing feedback, hence why I was taken aback at the negative post being the 1st reply.

Obviously the car will get a rigorous going over and test etc (thanks in part to the couple of recent rover 75 threads on here )

MarkN

Drivers seat not bolted properly, first heavy braking resulted in seat coming loose towards windscreen, clutch went, differential went all in the space of 6 weeks, rev counter didn't work and was told she didn't need a rev counter. Didn't want to know about it when these problems were brought to their attention. She was dealing with one of the Forte's themselves so you'd think they'd be the ones representing the business with passion! When she went in alone they were intimidating and spoke down to her because she was a girl where as she normally has guys eating out of her hand! It was the gearbox then that went last year and I only knew her then so I was able to deal with them via her. Obviously she shouldn't have bought the car without things like rev counters not working but a young girl buying her first car isn't going to be too clued into the process of buying a car but a good garage wouldn't use this to their advantage to sell a car.

If anyone from the garage wants to dispute any of this I'll gladly stand over any of my claims.

GTE

Have these guys changed hands in the last 9 months?

I ask because I was in Dublin and my brake light switch went so I pulled into the service place (the Howth side of the traffic lights, the sales place is on the City side)

Anyway, they just so happened to have the switch as they were sent the wrong one by accident for another car the week before. So they changed it for 30 quid. I thought that was good. The mechanic was really nice about it. It was dark, I was an L driver with my mam and we had to go to Kildare.
Mechanic was an utterly nice man.

However, another mechanic, seemed to be an owner or high ranking guy was on the phone having an aimless conversation for 20 damn minutes behind the reception desk while we waited. We ended up going into the workshop to find someone.

I think its a mixed bag. Avoid the heavier of the mechanics

The main point of this post was that the utterly nice mechanic said that the garage had changed hands recently (about 6 or 9 months ago when this happened)