Pulman Group Reviews 

Just purchased my third car from Pulman Skoda Durham. Again I dealt with Dave Nichols a better guy you could not wish for.He is friendly, polite, and not at all pushy plus very knowledgable about his trade. He will bend over backwards to help you in getting the deal you want. Both the product and Dave are first class and I would not hesitate in reccomending both if you are considering purchasing a Skoda.

Skoda Cramlington, a lovely customer orientated person sold my daughter a car, from test drive to driving away with a new car was simple, efficient and not at all troubled. Evidently a professional in the customer service field.
Well done Ian Brunniche and thank you for the very positive experience.

Would not give me any information regarding leasing a skoda on motability as the specialist was on holiday and wont be back until next weekwhen I asked if anyone could help the saleswoman said sorry there isn't but if I left my number the motability specialist would ring me after her holidays, why should I have to wait, I am going to try Lookers skoda in Newcastle I hope I have a better customer experience.

I was looking for a Motability car and  Decided to look at the seat cars. I was keen to get a car sooner rather than later eventually decided on the sea Leon.. from start to finish the staff were totally brilliant and I got my car within 10 days of order. Cannot fold them one bit.. definitely would recommend.
From a very happy customer

This garage is shocking if your asian don't go there you will be treated horrible

Booked in on 2/3/2024 my Pulman bought Skoda Fabia 1.2 tsi 2016 for simple battery change and recode £60 .Sales lady wrote on job sheet "customers own battery"when booking me in for 4/3. i took the afternoon off and arrived at reception .After waiting half an hour i was bluntly told it couldnt be done..My brand new Bosch 5year warranty Stop Start battery bought specifically for my car was not "Skodas own part" and they would not do the exchange ..I was left speechless! I had booked it in ,took a day off and they let me do a 60 mile round trip to Pulmans dealership to leave me with a failing Skoda Battery. I was So angry .They did Not "deliver a great customer experience".I could have took it to any other garage much nearer home but i wanted it taken back to the Skoda dealer it was bought from. No warning , no help .Left in the lurch ..

Why can't I contact the actual garage. Keeps going to a call centre!!
My can't won't lock or open. The alarm goes off whenever I open the doors with the key. The infotainment system keeps re-setting and loses all of the presets and stored items.
Basically can't drive the car and car won't lock. I need the car looked at straight away and can't get in touch with the garage.
Absolutely no customer service and no interest in my situation

I hired a car from Pulman Skoda in Cramlington and the service from start to finish was first class. Competitive hire, brand new car and a very easy booking and handover process.
Special mention to Claire who was a star and made the whole process a pleasure.

Pulman Skoda, Sunderland. Electrical problem w/ my 10yo Octavia. First contact: Gary - Mr unflappable; he and the team got it sorted. Everyone I came into contact with, Gary, Emma, Michael in Parts, car valeters, Techs... were professional, friendly and extremely helpful.

Car broke down due to rear brakes sticking, AA stated that important to have rear wheels removed and full clean of brake drums. It was booked in for annual service and I instructed them to have wheels removed and full clean and had to pay an extra £69 on top of pre-paid service I paid nearly £800 for the Air conditioning and cambelt renewal (at only 30,000 miles). Service cost a lot above the pre paid service yet the brakes stuck again immediately I drove out of the garage. The urgent work was not prioritised by the garage as the MOT attached to the same service documents that day stated clearly I must bring car back again urgently to have back brakes checked and cleaned for an additional further £700 anticipated costs. I took the car to another garage and they cleaned the drums and checked everything for £55 compared to the extra £700 the skoda garage wanted me to pay, and they said that the brakes could never have been cleaned properly from new, inspite of 5 services at the dealer garage. Hand on heart I know I got the work done properly but had to take it elsewhere outside the dealership. Why did the garage think the cambelt and air conditioning which were recommended for checks should take priority over the brakes? even if so why did they forget to clean the drums that day. They were just keen to make profit on the recommended items and seemed to forget that brakes are important and which I had to pay extra for after a request from the AA and me !!!!! and still not done!!!!! What bad service. My safety comes first and I will never use them again.

Well I bought a Skoda enyaq, Sean brown who sold the car was so helpfully and went above and beyond to make sure I understood everything about the car and said don’t hesitate to contact me if you need any help this salesman are very hard to find.so speak to Sean if you are looking for a Skoda, top guy.

Should be a 0.
Took my vehicle to Pulman Seat (same group) for a service.
It was washed without permission and looked like they’d used wire wool to do it.
I was told they hadn’t caused the damage and that ‘no one else had complained’.
They denied me costs for a machine polish that I was happy to arrange myself and promised to sort.
3 months later they had my car for 2 days and washed it again causing yet more damage then waxed it leaving wax all over the glass and tried to say they’d had it machine polished.
Absolute cowboys.
The faceless, voiceless Service ‘Manager’ (Lee Morris) is a disgrace.
Staff had the audacity to call me a liar.
His method of dealing with complaints is to ignore calls and emails and never get back to you hoping you will go away.
Eventually got half the cost of a machine polish that they could have paid for when they first caused the damage.

Buying a car - they’ll take your money with a smile.
Anything else - AVOID.

Generally what they do they do well. However you have to be very cautious about believing what they tell you during the sales process.
In my case, I was offered a deal to prepay for the first two services, which was an attractive offer. However the dealership is not all that conveniently located so I asked whether they still offered “collect and return” as they had when the business was family owned and customer service oriented.If that was not offered I would not have taken up the service deal and instead have had the car serviced locally.
Now that my first service is due it seems that they do not offer the “collect and return “option any longer. The best they can now do is a courtesy car with a very hefty insurance excess.
The bottom line is not to take anything on trust that is not set down in black and white.

Couldn't give a 0 so I guess a 1 will do. By no means would I buy another car from Pulman SEAT. They missold us a car. Blamed us when the car broke down. Have taken 7 weeks to "fix" the car. Couldn't even get the car out of the car park. They refuse to issue a refund or any compensation. They rifled through our documents in the car and tried to imply that getting a fuel filter changed has causedthe car to have a fuel gauge problem. We have been to the motoring ombudsman who have happily accepted our case. Avoid them at all costs.

My son purchased his first car today.
Excellent customer service from salesman David Nichols.
Wouldn't hesitate to recommend dealing with him to my family and friends in the future.

My grandad bought a 9 month old Skoda Fabia ex demonstrator from Sunderland branch of Pulman in June 2021 with 4000 miles on as a cash purchase. On test driving the vehicle, the engine management light came on. He was otherwise content with the car and the salesman promised the issue with the vehicle would be resolved when we collected it. He collected the car a week later, no engine management light and we were good to go… or so we thought. He paid the balance on the invoice and took delivery of the car. Around 2-3 months later I received a phone call from the salesman asking my grandad to pay over £200 because their admin department had made a mistake with the cars original invoice and didn’t include the full price of the return to invoice insurance policy. He settled this balance, but this would not have been ideal if he didn’t have the funds at the time because as far as he was concerned the car was paid for in full.

Around 2 months later, when driving the vehicle the engine management light appeared again and it went into limp mode… after contacting Skoda assist it appeared the original fault Pulman were meant to have fixed happened again! The vehicle was taken into the Durham Skoda branch (as this is closer to home). Fortunately we managed to get this fixed under the Skoda warranty, but if this vehicle had been outside of its main manufacturer warranty we would have been left with a substantial bill.

Now fast forward to this month, we noticed the car had an issue with water ingress and the windows were steaming up badly. On inspection of the door seals, the drivers and passenger front door seals have started to degrade, perish and split. The texture of the rubber in the area is dull and this breaks away when touched. Pulman agreed for the vehicle to be brought back into their Durham branch for inspection, where it was kept for a full day and decided that a warranty claim wouldn’t be raised with Skoda because “it’s the way in which you enter the vehicle”. Skoda UK warranty department were not consulted about this, apparently the decision was made by Pulman’s own warranty department without raising this further. The damage to the door seals are parallel with the drivers seat base not the footwell, so unless my 73 year old grandad is an acrobat there is no way he could be dragging his feet across the sills where the seals are starting to split (let alone dragging his feet along the passenger sill to get in the drivers side, considering it’s only him that uses the vehicle!). They have quoted £188 to repair these seals so I have since raised a complaint with Skoda UK as I don’t feel this has been assessed properly - our family have owned various VAG cars for years and never had an issue, we have dealt with other local dealers with no issue at all but we will certainly not be giving Pulman another penny

Absolutely shocking. From start to finish completely unprofessional and incompetent. Their angry and full of attitude “Sales Manager” (I think he’s called Ian) is a disgrace.

I have a Skoda Yeti which has. A full Skoda service history. At 5 years old it developed a leak from the panoramic sunroof.

Having spent £60 at Pullmans to have it examined. I was told the issue was a known issue to the company and it would cost me £2856 to solve the leak.

I was told there would be no help from Skoda with that amount even though I had bought three cars through Pullmans and had had sent a number of friends there to buy cars.

I took my car to an independent Skoda specialist who fixed the problem for £80.

I have not set foot in Pullmans since.

I still own two Skoda cars.

Booked a hire car months in advance for a family holiday in the UK. Received an email 4 days before I was due to pick up saying it was cancelled. They said there was a 'problem' as I was a British citizen living in Switzerland with a Swiss driving license. Utter rubbish, have hired many cars before. Wanted to support a local company and not one of the big hire companies - never again with this one.

Enquiring about paint warrant 8 months ago in cramlington. Unable to see the man who deals with that so sent email and photos, six months later still no response so service sent my same email from them to same guy and still no response.