Very friendly while they are selling but will wash their hands of you when you have a problem with the product sold.
Firstly I would like to say this review is honest and genuine and I hope it will help others make an informed decision before purchasing from this company.
My husband brought a new KTM enduro from this dealership back in May 2022. By April 2023 he had only put around 3500 miles on it due to not riding in the winter months and having ill health. Despite it being maintained well and kept in our garage which is clean and dry it had corroded excessively. As it was under warranty, he immediately took it back to the dealership. They deemed it to be so badly corroded that an entire new engine would be required. However they informed him that this would not be covered by the warranty and he would need to pay around £3000 to have the work completed.
Given that this bike was not yet a year old he obviously questioned this and was offered for an “automotive consultant engineer” to review the vehicle. He happily agreed to this. Unfortunately the company automotive consulting engineers do not actually sent qualified engineers to assess vehicles and the man who provided this service only had a diploma level 3 and was not a chartered engineer.
He provided an ambiguous report stating the corrosion was due to cleaning products that had been used (he never asked what had been used) but at the end of the report ironically stated that “if the corrosion was due to a manufacturing issue it would have been evident within the first year of purchase” which of course was the situation.
KTM Chester ignored the concluding line of the report and took the stance that my husband who actually works for Toyota manufacturing engines had not maintained the vehicle properly and therefore still declined to rectify the issue. I can see that in our google reviews they are still taking quotes from the ACE report but of course leaving out the concluding line stating it would have been evident in the first year of purchase.
My husband therefore paid for an actual qualified and chartered motor engineer to assess the vehicle as well as the garage it is kept in and the cleaning products used. He reported that the corrosion was very unusual and clearly due mistakes in manufacturing.
I would like to point out at this point that my husband has kept motorcycles for the last 18 years and some of those before he owned a garage and he has never seen corrosion like it. He in now way professes to be an expert but at the same time he is clearly not a novice in maintenance given his many years of bike ownership and having higher education certificate in engineering.
Despite this KTM still declined to rectify the issue and instead employed a company named ‘lawgistcs’ to correspond with my husband with regards to the court case he has had to pursue. It is interesting to note that this company advertise that they also write replies to online negative reviews on behalf of dealerships/garages. They have been quite inflammatory and aggressive in all of their correspondence despite having been sent the chartered engineers report and no doubt knowing my husband is in the right for this issue.
Many months on and my husband is still having to deal with the stress of this situation. The ridiculous thing is rectifying the bike would have cost KTM Chester such a minimal amount yet they would rather put another human being through so much stress. Needles to say I would not recommend anybody purchase a vehicle from this dealership.
I can see many positive reviews from KTM Chester on google but of course the reality is that all sales people will be very friendly when they are selling but sadly this can change very quickly when an issue arises.