Carsa - Portsmouth Reviews 

Great experience thanks to Guy

After seeing the car my son settled on for his first car as a 17 year old, Guy was professional throughout. Sadly, he was away on our scheduled collection day, and we were left with Jocaooa instead. We found her incredibly salesy, pushy, gobby, patronising and presumptuous. She struggled to accept that we simply wanted the car without all the add-ons and gimmicks they try to sell on top.

What should have been a simple paperwork transaction paid by bank transfer took over two hours, to the point that the manager, Steve, had to step in. We were told just as we were about to sign and pay that the 90-day warranty was capped at £500 and limited to a single claim. Handing over almost £13k with so little protection is ridiculous. At that point we decided not to proceed.

As we were considering leaving, I spoke to Steve and explained what had happened. He came over, sat with my family, and talked through the options. He agreed to reduce the price of the 1-year warranty, though it couldn't be included free of charge - this wasn't an attempt on our part to negotiate a discount, we simply felt genuinely misled. Had we known upfront, we wouldn't have bothered with the car and would have looked elsewhere for one with adequate warranty cover.

Steve rescued the sale, and we went ahead. He handed the paperwork back to Jocaooa to complete, where she misspelt my son's name based on how she assumed it should be spelt, and even presumed he had a nickname. I spotted the error immediately and asked her to fix it. She confirmed she'd corrected it on the DVSA and warranty paperwork, and that updated documents would follow by email before close of business. The documents that arrived still had the incorrect name. A few days later the V5 arrived, also incorrect, leaving us to pay for admin to get her mistake corrected on the V5, on top of the time wasted.

We called Carsa to get the warranty document amended and were told it would be sorted and emailed the same day. Nothing arrived. I then chased by email - again nothing. I finally called Carsa HQ and the document was corrected and issued immediately (thanks, Erin).

Come on Carsa - this is basic stuff. I'd also recommend Jocaooa learns how to handle customers with more professionalism. It's OK if a customer doesn't want bolt-on products; not everyone wants everything on offer, and we're not walking chequebooks for your commission.

If Guy had handled the paperwork throughout, I think it would have gone a lot more smoothly.

Really friendly staff who made the process easy from the start.

Great service at a very stressful time buying a car for the first time by myself in over 20years but everyone was very helpful, put me at ease and guided me through. I dealt with Steve who didn’t put me under pressure, took time to explain things and helped me get the best price for my part-exchange.

Callum was great! Walked me through the whole process!

I purchased a car from carsa in June & everything has been fine until we've had recently had heavy rain after the drought we've had for the past few months when I heard a slurping noise as i settled into the driver's seat & found 0.5 of a cm of water sloshing around in the driver's footwell, i took the car back to portsmouth carsa & Russell immediately emailed the customer service explaining the fault, 24 hour later I had an email saying they had images of the cars seals before it was sold & they were all good so more or less blaming me for the leak, I immediately took the car back to Russell & showed him the email & he agreed with me that this is a fault with the car so he has emailed customer services again & hopefully I'll get someone who knows how to talk to customers who have spent over £20k on a car not some little fool accusing me of damaging my own new car, idiot

Guy managed the sale of my Volvo xc40. He had a very relaxed approach with no hard sale. He allowed enough time to spend with car and answered all questions we had. Nice chap.
Car was lovely enjoyed the drive home from Portsmouth to London 😊

Just don’t do it , recently purchased a car from the Portsmouth branch
Salesman pushing overpriced warranties and car cleaning products
The car itself had lots of faults some where obviously covered up
We rejected it but nothing silent no communication and then they block your phone and emails
Appalling service,

First time buying from a car supermarket and the last time, Carsa covered up faults with the car then will not take responsibility ignoring calls and emails then blocking phone numbers and emails, desperately pushing overpriced warranties and car cleaning kits.
Our salesman was Callum now I know why he couldn’t look me in the eyes when I asked if the car was good,…. Shameful

Great friendly workers and a clear simple purchase. Overall amazing experience

Calum at Portsmouth was above and beyond helpful thank you so much to him and the Portsmouth team all wonderful

I genuinely struggle to understand how this place has any five-star reviews given the experience we’ve had.

My sister had been saving for years to buy her first car and was incredibly excited when we finally found the car she wanted at Carsa in Portsmouth. We made the long journey down there, but during the test drive my dad noticed that the car had no windscreen washer fluid and less than 15 miles of fuel, meaning they actually had to cut the test drive short.

When this was raised with the staff, there didn’t seem to be much of an explanation. At the time, these appeared to be relatively minor issues, and as we hadn’t spotted anything else concerning, my sister went ahead with the purchase and drove the car home.

Unfortunately, once we got home, things became much worse.

We topped up the windscreen washer fluid, only for it to come pouring straight back out. It turns out the washer reservoir has a severe crack in it, which certainly raises questions as to why there was no washer fluid in the car when we test-drove it in the first place.

My brother, who works as a car estimator, then looked over the vehicle and noticed further issues. In his opinion, the car showed signs of having previously sustained significant damage and been poorly repaired, including a noticeably misaligned bonnet. These were not issues that had been made clear to us when purchasing the vehicle.

What has made the situation even worse is the customer service afterwards. My dad has repeatedly tried to contact Carsa by both phone and email to discuss the problems, but has received no meaningful response. His calls are now not being answered, and it appears that both his and my mum’s numbers have been blocked.

For a young woman who had spent years saving for her first car, this has been an incredibly upsetting experience. She trusted that she was buying a vehicle from a reputable dealership and has spent a significant amount of her savings on it.

The complete lack of support or willingness to engage with us since the sale has been appalling. Whatever the explanation for the condition of the vehicle, ignoring customers rather than addressing their concerns is completely unacceptable.

I would strongly recommend that anyone considering purchasing a car here thinks very carefully and has the vehicle independently inspected beforehand.

We certainly wish we had.

Callum Portsmouth was very professional and helpful. It all went very smoothly after a mix up with head office.
Callum is very serious and professional

From initial enquiry through to driving my new car away, the whole experience was first class, the car I purchased far exceeded my expectations, would definitely recommend Carsa and a big thanks to Doug at the Portsmouth branch.

I had a great experience with Carsa from booking a test drive to purchasing a vehicle. The customer service was great, and the whole process was as smooth as it could have been.
At the dealership, Louis was very professional, welcoming and helpful throughout the process. He made everything straightforward and was happy to answer any questions I had, without ever making me feel pressured. I really appreciated how easy and stress-free the experience was from start to finish.
I’m really pleased with my new car and would definitely recommend Carsa, especially Louis, to anyone looking to buy a vehicle.

Brilliant experience, very smooth and very friendly! Highly recommend Joccoaa!

I attended Carsa Portsmouth to support my son purchasing a used car from the branch. To say I was disappointed is an understatement, so much so that if it was me buying, I would not have bought from this branch, and we will not be back to buy a car from them (my wife and myself are due to buy later this year, so Carsa can count this as two potential buyers as lost). Our initial test drive and meeting with the young sales assistant was a positive experience and he was a pleasure to deal with. When we returned a couple of days later the original sales assistant was absent so we had a meeting with a new assistant. As she was the only assistant available and working at this time, it was obvious she was being pulled in many directions with many appointments booked in. The initial chat was pleasant enough but it was obvious that the staff are pushed to sell all sorts of additional services (warranty, paint protection etc..). I get it that they make money from these services but the time wasted was ridiculous. The attitude of the sales assistant changed dramatically when all of the additional services were declined by my son. She continued to deal with new arrivals and move cars around the forecourt whilst we were sat waiting on her. All this whilst the two gentlemen on the main desk sat and chatted and didn't offer any help to either the assistant or ourselves.
Several cheeky comments were made during our visit regarding the process of buying the car - I was made fully aware that they are an internet sales service and that the sales assistant had very little to offer other than sort out the paperwork, she also was quite clear that because we had started the process with the other assistant days before he would benefit from this sale and not her. This made sense given the attitude during the latter part of the sales process. She also saw fit to question our experience of owning and driving cars (I am 52 and a very experienced Engineer, my wife 45 yrs old and has owned many cars) when we questioned the resetting of the tyre low pressure warning alarm (she pumped up the tyre and said this was the solution as this happens whenever a car is left on the forecourt for the day??) My question was what had they done to reassure us that there wasn't a tyre issue. Very cheeky and very unprofessional.
We were also left unattended for up to 20 minutes while she dealt with others in the branch , which would have been acceptable had she told us the timeframe for the process and paperwork to be sorted. I did ask her at one point as she was stood with the reception/management team what we were waiting on - to which she replied 'the invoice' - end of her conversation. I tried to tease a little more out of her and received the same explanation - 'the invoice'. It was at this point had it been my purchase I would have walked out of the deal. She appeared disinterested and I was made aware that when I turned my back on the team, she made a flippant remark and laughed with the desk team. Had I seen this I would have questioned the professionalism and left the premises there and then.
There are more issues than the ones listed here that I encountered with this woeful branch. Suffice to say I will take my business elsewhere in future. Not a good experience for my son in choosing and picking up his first decent car. I would NOT recommend this branch of Carsa.

We paid £39 to reserve a car and have it delivered to the Portsmouth depot. Only to get a call the day before saying they could not do so due to logistics and we can then see the car another 7-10 days later. This was no good for us so I called and cancelled. They agreed to refund the fee but this has not materialised. I have further called and you cannot get through to customer services without seeming to have an order! Poor poor customer service, clearly we are glad that we did not buy a car from them as there would be no service afterwards, that much is clear! Avoid.

Please note Carsa, you could redeem part of this experience by actually refunding the amount as you had agreed!

Had a brilliant experience picking up my new car, Louis was very friendly and helpful explained everything all the way through.

We've just bought our new car! Callum at Portsmouth Carsa helped us go through the procedures smoothly, and was extremely diligent.