I am not usually one for publicly shaming a company for bad behaviour, but this time I am beyond upset.
I have purchased my first MINI back in July 2013 from MINI Langley. All went well, the deal was closed to my satisfaction and all financial aspects were sorted out with me only needing to sign the usual lease forms with MINI Financial Services and the insurance documents with the insurance broker - all on premises.
The process was repeated in January 2016 when I took back my MINI and got a new one under a new lease agreement. Again, all went well.
However, I got a call in April 2018 from the dealership in Langley, about 10 months or so before the end of my lease, that someone is very interested in my (used) MINI and they would like to offer me a brand new 2018 MINI at an even lower lease than my current MINI, with nothing down. That sounded tempting, even though I was not actively looking to get a new car. So I went to the dealership and looked at the new car. Very similar to mine, so I was about to say no thanks when they started working me (the sales person and the sales manager). I told them that the car does not have Apple CarPlay - something I really wanted, and that there is nothing really new. They made promises such as possibility of them taking back the vehicle after only half of the actual lease period, and many other sweet talking temptations.
In the end I agreed to take the vehicle. I signed the papers the same day as they pushed really hard that I had to take it THAT day. I guess they were out of quota or something. I sat there till the evening and signed all the usual papers exactly like before.
So then the trouble started:
About 3 days later I went to the Vancouver Car Show (I did not know it was upcoming at the time), and who did I walk in to on the showroom floor? The very same sales guy that sold the MINI to me 3 days earlier. The thing that shocked me was that they had the new MINI 2019 model on the showroom floor - even though it was April 2018. Seems like he forgot to mention to me that the 2018 is old stock and the new 2019 model will be available in about 2 months. With CarPlay. Boy was I mad! His response to me asking why he did not mention the new model?
Sorry. (giggles)
A couple of months later I got a final notice from MINI Financial Services that supposedly my bank account details have not been given to them so they could not collect the lease payment. Which is strange since my bank account is the same as the last 5 years I have been with them. Same dealership, same brand of car, same office I signed the lease agreement. They already had all my details. Eventually I sorted that by paying them via credit card. It was this close or my credit rating would have had a red mark on it.
Today I received a letter that once again, if I do not respond within 5 days from today, my account will be in defunct due to missing insurance documents. The same documents I signed in the same office at MINI Langley as I did twice before. So clearly someone did not do their paperwork properly, this time with the insurance documents. According to them they tried to contact me repeatedly to rectify this - although my phone only shows one call from them that disconnected due to bad call quality.
I filed the correct papers and one can only hope this is the end of it.
What I do know for a fact- I will never again buy anything from MINI Langley. They have straight up lied to me, deceived me through the sales process and messed up every bit of the paperwork that can possibly be messed up.
If you want a MINI - rather go to MINI Richmond or any place other than Langley.
Update 2018-10-30 Just got a call from Autovin (as per MINI Financial Services) - they want to inspect the 2016 MINI for its end of lease inspection. Apparently MINI Langley did NOT tell their own people that I no longer have that vehicle as they asked me to trade it in. It just keeps on going...