Fairly good mobility scooter, but with a fault, and poor customer service
I bought the Motion Aura mobility scooter for my disabled elderly mother, and decided to go with the Motion Aura scooter due to the large pneumatic tyres, suspension, and padded seat. I bought the scooter from Seacroft Mobility online who are retail outlets for Motion Healthcare, and now wonder if I did the right thing as things have gone wrong, and the customer service from Seacroft Mobility is almost non-existent even if there is a fault under warranty.
We paid £100 extra to have the scooter delivered, unpacked, set up, and shown how it all works. However, the driver just dropped off the box and left. So I had to struggle on my own to remove the scooter from the box, and noticed straight away a couple of small scratches on the scooter bodywork which had happened whilst in the box. After I contacted Seacroft Mobility a few times, I received a refund for the ‘white glove’ delivery service but with no explanation. I had to phone Seacroft Mobility to try and ask what had happened. There seems to have been a breakdown in communication between Seacroft Mobility and the delivery company.
The scooter itself seems good quality, although there are a few things I would have changed. The plastic bodywork is a sort of metallic matt finish which shows up every scratch, mark, and stain possible. Just fingerprints show up on the bodywork, so I am forever cleaning it. I would have preferred some kind of paint finish which prevents this.
The tiller can be adjusted so the angle can be changed. However, other scooters let you change both the angle and height separately, and I would have preferred this. In addition, the tiller angle changes by lining up the metal teeth on the adjustment wheel. Unfortunately these metal teeth are slightly too wide meaning the tiller is either too close to the user, or too far away. I would have preferred a finer adjustment of the tiller to suit the height and distance of the user.
The instruction manual is not complete, as it does not mention certain features about the scooter. For example, there are two settings – drive and manual. The ‘manual’ setting allows you to push the scooter. If the scooter is set to ‘manual’, and you insert the key and turn on the scooter, there is a constant beeping noise to warn you that you cannot drive the scooter due to it being in ‘manual’ mode. The instruction manual does not say anything about this, so at first I was left wondering why the scooter was beeping.
The instruction manual also does not say what the recommended tyre pressure should be. The tyres say they have a maximum pressure of 50 psi, but even when I contacted the manufacturer Motion Healthcare, they simply said the tyre pressure varies depending on the user and circumstances. This is true but completely unhelpful! I have found out elsewhere most scooters with pneumatic tyres have a recommended pressure of between 25 and 30 psi.
We quickly noticed a fault with the scooter, in that it increases the speed itself and without warning. It is an intermittent fault that does not happen all the time, but can be dangerous if the speed suddenly increases without the user realising. Sometimes when we turn on the scooter, the scooter automatically sets the speed to maximum regardless of the speed when the scooter was turned off. Other times, when the scooter is moving, the speed suddenly changes to maximum even though the user was not touching the speed buttons.
I contacted the manufacturer Motion Healthcare about this fault, but they said they don’t deal direct with the public, and I should contact the retailer. I repeatedly tried contacting Seacroft Mobility by phone and e-mail, but I never had a reply back until I started leaving negative online reviews. They said they don’t know what the problem is or whether it can even be fixed. The problem could be a design flaw caused by Motion Healthcare. I was told to return the scooter to Seacroft at my expense so they could have a look, but it would cost a fortune to send the entire scooter back to them, and it may get damaged in transit. In addition, their one year warranty is useless as it only works if the customer returns an item back to the retailer at the customers expense. So we are left with a mobility scooter with a problem and no way to fix it.
In summary, the Aura scooter is mostly good with some minor things I would change and improve. The manufacturer Motion Healthcare needs to improve its instruction manual as a number of features and information is missing. There could be a design flaw on all Motion Aura scooters, and with no way to repair it. And the retailer Seacroft Mobility have almost no customer service even if there is a fault whilst under warranty. Unfortunately, if we need to buy a scooter in the future, I would not choose either Seacroft Mobility or Motion Healthcare again.