Howard Basford

Quite the worst experience I have ever encountered in 30 years of car ownership. Very poor standard of repair to my car after having my car for three weeks. Worse still, they advised me my car was to be ready on Fri 30 May. Recieved car Friday 6 June. No reason for the delay but on each of the SEVEN days they told me it would be delivered to me but after I called them on each day I was told it wouldn’t be possible to deliver. Result I lost a client and a weeks income. When the car was returned the repair was terrible. Today several weeks later the new front wing has come free of the car completely. Seenig this it seems unlikely that the wing is new or that the bumper is new as they stated. Rather they are poor repairs of the original damaged items that went in for replacement.
I intend to have the repair assessed this week and will post the findings to this review.
This was a repairer selected by my insurers agent. I have refused to allow the car back to them as these people are liars.
Next week I am back in a hire car while I try and sort out this mess, all from a minor bump while my car was parked.
One final oddity, I have obviously reported this incident and made a claim for loss of earnings. Howard Basford refute my claim and have given my insurer a story about a bracket they could not sorce and a list of calls they made to me.
My mobile phone and landline log all calls in and out. I was able to send a complete inventory of all calls to and from Howard Basford, Turns out none of the calls they claimed to have made ever happened but their number did turn up as a nuisance call made at 01:50 shortly after my complaint went in. If the parts are not new I will be taking my complaint to the police.
Real nice people avoid at all costs.
I received advice from a local garage about the work done. They thought the bumper and wing are probably new but poorly painted and incorrectly attached.

Absolutely awful! Intimidating, threatening, entirely unpleasant people to deal with. Didn’t get the job done properly despite 3 (yes three!) times they returned the car to me. They were the Approved Repairer of direct line, and this has seriously got me reconsidering continued use of Direct Line as my insurer. Really got to wonder what the approval process consists of!
Avoid at all costs, and use at your peril!!! No stars!

Not the quickest repair, but certainly the lady Trish was absolutely wonderful at customer service & couldn’t do enough for me. I’d definitely recommend them but mainly for her. I think she was helpful, cheery, sympathetic. She arranged a courtesy car even when I wasn’t entitled as a goodwill gesture and also sweet talked my insurance company into getting the documents switched over without charging me a fee. Very good service from her.