2002 Peugeot 206 CC review from Australia and New Zealand

I bought the car outright at the center in the city. Deposit was paid, car was ordered and produced, only to find Peugeot had wrongly quoted me for the factory alarm. They had miscalculated and asked me to pay an extra $100 for the factory alarm I had initially ordered. I had been quoted an amount for the car and did not feel I should have to pay for their mistakes. I cancelled my order/purchase. It took 2 weeks for Peugeot to refund my deposit, despite promising it asap, the day of cancellation. I even have receipts proving the day the actual refunding transaction was performed.

The roof has leaked since I bought the car. I have taken the car back to the service center 5 times. Each time they say they have fixed the problem and tested it, to find no problems. Yet every time it rained or I washed my car, it would leak again. I have just gotten my car back today, supposedly fixed.

I bought my car in 2002 with the option of extending the warranty, and had no intention of doing so unless necessary. I have obviously found it is necessary, only to find as of March 2004, Peugeot have decided to no longer offer this option and even people who bought their cars before this date, are not subject to any warranty extensions.

The leather seat on the driver's seat has deep indentations from sitting on it, despite the fact, I was only driving it on weekends when they occurred, and I only weigh 42kg!

The stitches of the leather seat on the driver's seat started tearing a year after I first purchased the car, even though I rarely drove the car at all. Peugeot promised to replace the seat and told me the seat would be approximately 6 weeks, arriving from France. It took about 3 months and lots of phone calls from myself before it arrived. 6 months later, the stitches have again started to tear. Peugeot's policy is for the customer to pay for the 2nd new part first and once it arrives and is installed, will be refunded.

The back seat between the head rests buckled after about 4 months from date of purchase. When I took it back to the service center, the man told me he'd never seen it before and that they would replace it. Two months later, they finally got around to replacing it - with another buckled seat. THEN told me there was nothing else. Further more, they told me they only replaced it once, and would not be replacing it again, even though the same thing would happen again. I eventually spoke to the salesman who sold me the car about 6 months later, who was shocked at the treatment I received. He said he had seen the same problem several times, and that it is not rare. I took it back to the service department and told them it wasn't acceptable to replace a faulty part with a faulty part. After making quite a fuss about it, the fault was replaced with a brand new part. Since then, it has not buckled.

In replacing the back seat, the service men managed to put my back seat buckle under the seat as well, in a place where it was impossible to retrieve without removing the entire seat. So once again, the car went back to the service center.

In taking my car to the service center for the scheduled services, despite having a car specifically for transporting customers to nearby places, I was told to walk 15 minutes to the nearest train station, which I thought was extremely rude.

Further more, the first 6 times I have had to take my car in to the service center, for whatever reason, for them to work on it, I have had to pay for a replacement car. Peugeot supplies limited replacement cars for a charge of approximately $50/day. Despite hiring cars of much less price myself from other places, these are still costs I believe should have been shouldered by Peugeot.

The two times I have received a replacement car at Peugeot's cost, it was with great reluctance, and only occurred because the sales department agreed to shoulder the costs.

The first time, they lost my booking, then told me I had the dates wrong and it was for the next day. The second time, they gave my car away despite promising me a car. So they hired a land rover from a leasing company for me. However, I had to wait a further 15 minutes before the car was available, 10mins of which was waiting for someone to come from the leasing company to sight the car before I could take it. This extended my stay by approximately 20mins, making me extremely late for work.

After I first bought the car, the roof refused to close. I had to call road service to manually close it. There was no apparent reason for this.

I was also initially told I had the best alarm I could get with motion sensors, even with the roof down. I have obviously, since found this to be false. This was a great selling feature! Too bad it was not true!

It is not so much the mechanics of the car that is the problem. I have found it is by far, the professionalism and technical knowledge of Peugeot staff. Not only have I found them rude, uncooperative and ignorant, but I feel Peugeot has produced a total lemon, in keeping with the opinions of other Peugeot drivers I have come across.

I am now forced to have a car with numerous and never ending problems.

I certainly don't need to keep driving the 30-40mins it takes for me to get to the closest service center, paying for a hire car, and continually taking time out to attend to this lemon.

A new car should not have all these problems - ANY problems for that matter!