Quingo scooters

Aideen50

im just wondering if anyone has purchased a quingo scooter in recent months.  Interested to hear feedback about your experience with the company who sold the scooter. 

exdvr

Hi @Aideen50.   I have had no dealings whatsoever with this company but I found these reviews on their website.   I leave it to you to form your own opinion.  Seems to be a lot to pay for what is supposedly? peace of mind.

https://www.google.com/search?q=quingo+scooter&gws_rd=ssl#gws_rd=ssl&lrd=0x48764f2a88f7ae11:0x9206de63d7310736,1,,,&spf=1568124253165

david235

I agree with @exdvr - Quingo products look expensive and the contract hire (which is structured to be very similar to Motability) is especially expensive. It seems many of their models are only promoted on contract hire now. Even if you take it that there is some benefit to the five wheel system (which I see as more of a three wheel / four wheel hybrid), a scooter is never going to be as manoeuvrable as a powerchair.

Take the contract hire example for the Quingo Classic - £361 advance payment, then 38 four-weekly payments of £130.02. That's a staggering £5301.76 over 36 months - and as it is contract hire, you have to hand back the scooter at the end of the term! It's a pretty standard class 2 scooter, albeit with the 5 wheel system. To put that in perspective, you can contract hire a small used three year old hatchback car with 20k miles for around £6000 over four years (price plucked from a quick Google search) - making the Quingo more expensive per year than the headline price of the car. Admittedly you would have to tax and insure the car yourself, as well as provide any warranty and/or breakdown cover that you wanted, but it is still a jarring comparison.

A more useful comparison for the intending scooter purchaser is against the cost of a similar albeit conventional scooter. Head on over to CareCo (other mobility retailers are available) and you have a choice of several similar 4 wheel class 2 scooters for under £1000 bought outright. Even when you add on £120 per year for insurance and full-coverage warranty and £200 for a new battery somewhere during that 3 years (I'm being pretty generous with both those figures, especially as an add-on warranty is arguably not needed in the first year), you're still talking around or just over £1500 for a scooter that you own outright, and probably is still usable or at least has some residual financial value after 3 years.

If you don't care about buying new, you can probably find a functional if tatty second hand scooter with a less than stellar battery for relatively little advertised locally - at least enough to get you mobile for a while until you can afford something better.

I insure mobility products primarily for the third-party cover. I do not bother buying a warranty on mobility products as I find warranties are typically not cost-effective. Outside Motability's contract hire scheme and extremely expensive solutions such as the warranty bundled into Quingo's contract hire, most warranties exclude wear and tear to batteries and tyres. A warranty on a cheap scooter is likely to be particularly bad value - in the unlikely event of something catastrophic happening that isn't covered by the manufacturer's warranty, you will likely save money in the medium to long term run by paying for the repairs yourself. I can understand the desire not to be hit by unexpected bills when you are on a limited budget, but you will likely save money over time putting the money you would have paid for a warranty into savings and using it to pay for repairs or putting it towards a new scooter.

There have always been gimmicks in the powered mobility products industry in an attempt to charge disproportionately high prices. Personally I would feel fairly secure putting the 5 wheel scooter into the bracket of being a gimmick. It is an interesting idea, but I have my doubts that the practical benefits are as large as suggested. If you are routinely going to be headed into tight spaces, especially tight indoor spaces, then a powerchair is probably a better option than a scooter. If ridden carefully then a 3 wheel scooter is perfectly acceptable - though you do have to slow right down before taking tighter corners so as not to tip the scooter onto two wheels (or completely over). For most outdoor uses, a 4 wheel scooter with its wider turning circle is no problem in practice.

Aideen50

Hi @david235, thank you for your response.  I actually bought one of the quingo flyte scooters simply because it was self loading and unloading into my car and therefore much easier for me to use.  The scooter is marvellous however my experience with the company has been very poor.   After parting with £4,795 I have failed to get a response from the MD of the company despite having emailed and called on numerous occasions to speak with him. The message I keep getting is he’s too busy to speak with me.  Unbelievable..... I can’t believe that someone could take a large amount of money from someone and then be totally unavailable to deal with them directly!  Very disappointed in the lack of customer service I have experienced. 

taliacdf

A little late to join this discussion however, i have a small quingo scooter and based on my experience i would avoid avoid and again avoid, expensive and totally unreliable most reviews are appalling and those that are positive i suspect they've paid to be written.  I' currently trying to get out of me contract with them.  If you are in receipt of PIP's or DLA try motability

stephenwilkinson

Aideen50 said:

im just wondering if anyone has purchased a quingo scooter in recent months.  Interested to hear feedback about your experience with the company who sold the scooter. 

I bought one for my dad not so long ago. I didn't buy it new as they're too expensive but I found a website selling secondhand/refurbished models. https://scootermobility.co.uk 
Hope this helps, Stephen.

stix

I have one on hire purchase and from the beginning there were problems. I became disabled and desperate to get out and I paid a down payment for a Quingo Plus model. The model they sent looked slightly careworn (demonstration model?) but I was assured it was new. What certainly wasn't new was the charger that came with it, it was faulty. The light on it was flickering and I could hear it arcing inside, and as a former electrician, I knew what it was. 
I told then about it and they said they'd send a new one, for about £60! I said that's a bit steep to replace something that's faulty. The receptionist began arguing and I said I know arcing on electrical equipment when I hear it, and it spells a fire. They sent one free. The problem now is: the scooter loses power quite quickly when out, it can be ok and working on full power but when suddenly meeting a hill, just gives up and the dial on the scooter goes into the red and I have to come off the power, and yesterday I limped home the last half mile at about 2mph. It did stop at one point and I switched off and sat for a minute or two, gave the machine a shake, switched on and managed to get home.
Long story short, the repairs engineer won't be able to come out for 10 days. I told the slightly 'shirty' receptionist that I was disabled and cannot go out and she said "we'll bear that in mind, goodbye." This insults the very meaning of the word 'service.' I will be cancelling the hire purchase agreement.