CarGiant - has anyone bought a car from them?

[Blu]

CarGiant in NW London.
Are their prices reasonable?
Can you haggle or is the price the price?
I need a good value reliable 2nd hand car....anywhere similiar in S London?

DH thought it was fine pricewise, pretty much what it is in the book (don't know which book this is, but apparently there is one).
They fell down on the offer they made on our car though (he wanted to trade it in).

They had an excellent review in the 'Honest John' motoring column of the Saturday Telegraph this week

we got our car from cargiant a couple of years ago. it was a fairly dreadful experience (i was 8 months pg too.......), but we're very happy indeed with the car we got. reasonable price, though like bp, they didn't offer as much for the car we part exchanged as we'd hoped.

What was dreadful about the experience, Hoxtonchick?

(I'm expecting any car buying experience to be dreadful, tbh! I've only done it once before, but my car was written off by thieving vandals just before christmas)

Blu, we went to CarGiant but they don't haggle the prices and I don't think they tend to make good offers for trade ins (our car was more than 10 years old so didn't qualify anyway!). We found they were good to have a look at all the cars and see what we liked and then we bought the one we wanted from Ebay at a much better price.

Sorry that's a bit long but hth.

mostly due to me being pregnant i think blu, so don't panic. and it was too hot. and i refused to test drive anything. so best to ignore me perhaps!

Well, I don't need to trade-in - my Insurance co already have my wreck of a car! And I would be much too wuss about buying a car on e bay...I have never bought anything off ebay! I sort of want this thing done and dusted in the shortest easiest time possible. Which is why I wondered about carGiant as they have such a huge range available on any one day and you can take it wawy with you.

i think it's just what you want blu. loads of choice. i think we looked on the website first & had a few in mind. i think we had to wait a couple of hours before actually driving it away so enjoyed the delights of harlesden....

ds quite enjoyed the experience. and said that he thought the (at the time unborn) baby would be proud of the car . she now enjoys trashing it...

We got ours from there a couple of years ago. I was not overly impressed with the whole experience but have nothing specific to complain about. Overall I would call it ok.

We are very happy with the car and according to dh it was fairly priced.

The onle thing is according to my dh again they get most of their cars from leasing / rental companies so they may not have been treated very well in the first years of life.

it was a nightmare this was last jan and still having no end of probs with car.
trade in was as expected and got an ok price.
this car has cost nearly 3k as had to have new clutch new alloys and so on and so on.

Hmmm, ok if they have been part of a car leasing scheme as employees are penalised for doing damage. I wouldn't want one that had been a hire car from a rental co!

Ex-hire or lease cars shoudl be fairly easiy to spot though as they tend to have much higher mileage than you would expect. If you choose a car based on mileage rather than year this should be a better indicator of reliability.
I've bought my last 2 from there and intend to buy the next one from there too. Nice not be to be hassled and prices good. All cars are checked and you can buy an extra warranty if you need the reassurance. Only slight quibble I have is that you can only test drive round the industrial estate, so if you're looking for a very nearly new one probably worth test driving the model you're interested in at a dealer first.