Hi there,
Here I leave the previous post in which I tell you how Rocha Automóveis stole 1000 euros from me:
After being ripped off once again in Porto, I was mentally exhausted.
I considered not buying a car and continuing to use Uber and public transportation or buying a new car, thinking that perhaps this would reduce the risk of being scammed.
At that time Dacia was the cheapest car brand out there, but after sending several emails asking for information, plus they were quite incompetent, there was no availability until the end of the year.
We decided to give another used car stand a chance because it was close to home, and we could get there walking.
At Martin Cars they had a 5-door Peugeot that interested us for 6450 euros.
Here I must point out the absurd way in which the prices of used cars have gone up. We sold Diego’s car for 8000 euros, which was a Ford Eco Sport with 80.000KM; besides, inside and out it was like new.
We sold it because our idea was to spend 2 or 3 years touring South America (in the end it was only 6 months) and it didn’t make sense to leave the car unused for so long. Today we think that we should not have sold it because it would have been ideal to come from Spain with everything and to use it in Porto; especially considering the prices and qualities of what is currently available.
We arrived and the lady who attended us called her father.
Marco quickly opened all the doors of the car and went to get the keys for us to start it and he also came with the documentation so that we could see that everything was in order. The documentation was neat and tidy in a folder.
I must also note that Marco was impeccable from head to toe. Also, the stand was squeaky clean and smelled good. Just the opposite of what we had found so far.
Marco told us that we had an 18-month guarantee without us having to ask.
Since the air conditioning did not cool, he told us that it would be fixed the next day.
We asked him if we could take the car out for a test drive and he said yes because he was insured to drive cars without insurance, so we could test drive it without problems as long as he was in the car with us.
So far, in all the Stands they had told us that we could not test drive the cars because they were not insured and see how absurd it is to buy a car without testing it.
The next day we went and tested the car and decided to buy it.
It was the first time we had come across an impeccably clean car that smelled good. In fact, the passenger’s carpet had a little dirt on it the day before and had been cleaned so we found it spotless.
These are the details that make the difference.
The car had a couple of things to fix: ABS light that wouldn’t turn off (although it had already gone off the next day) and a noise in the driver’s seat door.
Since the mechanic was not going to have time to fix it right away, I asked Marco to write an email in which he promised to repair these things as soon as the mechanic was available and to give us the part that covers the trunk that was already ordered.
Marco was surprised because he was giving us his word and we also had an 18-month guarantee.
We told him that we had been scammed on countless occasions and recently at Rocha Automóveis they had stolen a thousand euros from us and that we felt safer having something in writing.
He immediately sent us the email as we had requested.
Since they closed for lunch, we returned in the afternoon to finish the purchase.
We took out the car insurance with a contact that Marco gave us. Also, something that I liked is that he told us to take out the insurance with glass coverage and travel assistance because it was what he considered a priority.
In the afternoon they did all the paperwork for us at the moment, and we made the transfer once they issued the invoice.
We told him that the transfer wouldn’t arrive instantly, and Marco did not even pay attention to that detail and told us that “it will arrive in a few days”.
Here it should be noted that at Rocha Automóveis they told us that we had to make sure that the transfer arrived immediately because otherwise, we would not be able to take the car.
So, you can see the difference when people aren’t miserable.
Something that was curious to me is that the car came from Belgium and Marco said that he normally brought cars from that country. I asked him why and he told me that he preferred to buy the cars in Belgium because there they were very strict with the controls and they were less likely to lie, because in Portugal they lied about the kilometers and about almost everything.
We left there without believing that we had finally found someone honest in Porto.
The details that I mentioned to you remained to be fixed and we were waiting for Marco to let us know when the mechanic was available.
In general, the car worked perfectly and from the first weekend we took advantage of it for sightseeing.
So, we can consider that this was a story with a happy ending.