A while ago I posted a thread asking about a whining noise i heard from my new x-trail.
I bought the car at a v good price from motorpoint. I know they do grey imports and I was content that the level of service would be a lot less than a pukka nissan dealer.
turned out the noise was of course the turbo going fubar. Not helped by a sensor that was a nissan recall.
now here is the problem.
I took the car along to a nissan dealer in Glasgow - Arnold Clark. they were v helpful and diagnosed the problem right away and sourced parts - all that good stuff.
At that point I had about 5k on the clock. Arnold Clark phoned me to say Nissan were refuting the warranty claim because the car had not been serviced in accordance with Nissan warranty rules.
it turns out that the car had been sitting in cyprus before Motorpoint imported it (I knew it was from cyprus) but, wait for it.... it was a full year older than I thought or had been led to believe. The V5 says im the first owner and first registered - no mention of registered in Cyprus.
Now it being a yeat older isnt the killer, after all it explains why it was so cheap but the problem was that the warranty conditions say it needs to be serviced every 12 months or 12k. In other words it should have had a full service before they gave it to me. Not just the laughable "pdi".
My ghast was flabbered as frankie howard used to say.
Arnold Clark (AC) in Glasgow bent over backwards for me and after a great deal of tooing and froing the warranty was honoured after I had the car serviced and AC managed to pour on the pressure by saying that the recall was a factor too. I cant speak to highly of them I must say.
Motorpoint on the other hand refused to answer calls and quite literally didnt want to know. I chased them for a while but other circumstances meant I had to give up. I will however start to seek recompense from them now and demand a guaranteed nissan warranty.
By all means go for grey imports but check 1st reg anywhere!!! Make up your own minds about the abysmal, insultingly low level of service from Motorpoint.
Yup, the Cyprus cars were a good £1500 cheaper than the Irish-sourced imports. Some dodgy colours as well - you didn't get a 'Military' light blue one did you??
My Irish-sourced X-Trail was only manufactured 4 weeks before Motorpoint sold it to me! (according to Nissan).
Sorry to hear you had problems. I noticed other dealers were selling X-trails a few months back that were obviously over a year old. If I remember they were the old models a year after production ended. I think I posted about them here.
I thought about buying an Octavia VRS from Motorpoint but glad I didn't. Hope the problems you had from the outset with them and now this go round the net.
Glad to hear that it was all sorted and that Arnold Clark were helpful.
no, its black and looks fine with the laether seats n all.
just to repeat, Im not complaining about it coming from cyprus, i knew that. I am not even complaining about it being more than a year old, I am complaining that it had been registered, more than 12 months had passed and no service = no warranty, even tho it still had 0 miles.
And, without a doubt, Motorpoint gave the worst service i have ever encountered.
We're on our 3rd and 4th cars from Motorpoint. Not had any issues with them.
Two have been new imports, two have been ex-National Car Rental hire cars. No problems on any so far!
My previous new car from Motorpoint was a Galaxy imported from Belgium. The VIN indicated that it had been manufactured 10 months before I bought it, however the warranty started only 10 days before I bought it.
Never had any warranty issues with Ford - it had the 2 year unlimited mileage European warranty rather than the 3yr/60,000 mile UK warranty, which was better for me as I covered 90,000 miles in the first two years!
The Irish-sourced X-Trails should be OK warranty and service-wise.
If they sold it as unregistered it might be something for Trading Standards.
For the price of a gallon of oil I'm going to be changing mine between services. I think the service intervals they give for the UK, different to recommended intervals Nissan state in all other countries, are way too long.
I also broke the habit of a lifetime and bought the 5 year extended warranty. It comes with free RAC membership from years 2 to 5 which is worth a few hundred. I figured that even if I don't keep it that long it's transferrable and should help the resale price. They were still offering the price on their website although it's gone up if bought through the dealers.
OK, I did have a problem with missing spare key and handbooks, but they turned up less than a week after I collected the car.
This was becuase it had been transferred from Derby to Burnley and the key/books were a few days behind the car! I ordered the car on the Saturday and wanted it on the following Wednesday, so they had to get their skates on! Wanted a black one so they had to bring it from another site.
Irish ones are not true Aventura spec by the way - they are missing the SatNav and ESP+, hence the big savings to be had (under £17k on the road for a brand new one). Irish top spec is called 'Elegance' and doesn't have SatNav or ESP+ for some reason??? Bizarrely, in Ireland these are 45000 Euros or £30,000 due to Irish car taxes!!!
Some of the lads at work have got Toyota Hilux pickups - I'm amazed but the X-Trail can actually cope with the slippery stuff better than the Hilux!
Last edited by withabix : Aug 11th, 2007 at 03:12 PM.
They seem to have the same ones there now calling them the Aventura but not saying they're imports or that spec is different to the UK model.
From the pics as you say there's no satnav and can't see any headlamp washers so presumably no xenons as should be standard. ESP not mentioned in the spec.
They are claiming "Save £6,916" which would be right if it was an Aventura but the spec seems more like the Colombia, the model below, except that the Colombia had satnav included from early 2006. Hmm.
Last edited by flynn : Aug 12th, 2007 at 02:44 AM.
I was also going to buy of the 'aventura' models from Motorpoint, great value, only reason I didn't was I prefer fabric seats to the leather.
I also reckon they are missing part of the alarm system, the internal sensors which are normally on the inside of the 'A' pillars.
Ended up buying a 2006 SE from a local Nissan dealer, very happy with the Xtrail, but those Motorpoint ones are a great deal.
Another point, I have bought from Motorpoint before, twice, a Terrano and a Mondeo, when it came to trade them both in, the fact that they were imported lowered the value considerably.
The other thing I didn't spot was the cruise control which should be on the right hand side of the wheel. Have they got the 17" wheels?
The pictures have gone because they've sold the one that they had pictures of! They normally have 50 X-trails on the stock list, but as they're on run-out I doubt they will have any more until the new ones start coming through.
They have the cruise control and the 17" 6 spoke alloys, electric seats, heated seats etc
Motorpoint sell so many X-Trails I wouldn't be suprised if they were responsible for maybe 10% of the X-trails on the road in the UK.
Last edited by withabix : Aug 13th, 2007 at 04:03 PM.
I am glad you got good service withabix. As I said, I went into this with my eyes open and I of course knew the car was imported (and very cheap). The problem wasnt that the car was over 12 months old per se, it was that it had been registered in Cyprus and that they should have know that and serviced it before they sold it the uk - as per the manufacturer's warranty conditions.
Maybe MP knew it was dodgy warranty-wise or maybe they didnt and are just thick. most likely they just don't care.
nevertheless I am only advising people to check and be sure because no warranty on a new car can (and very nearly was!) V costly.
It is a fact that the MP service was appallingly poor. Flynn is correct in that lotsa wee things were not right. To me their biggest failing however was that they refused to return calls and just completely blanked me. I certainly wouldn't buy from them again.
Maybe Derby MP is better than Glasgow MP but make up your own minds on the cost saving/poor service equation. I strongly advise you to check the bona fide of the warranty however!!!
I still like the car and it is getting its "2nd" 12000 service today. I hope they dont find anthing else wrong!!!!