My thoughts are that if this is the competence of that sales centre displaying a car at its best in order to get you to buy it ??? i'd be running away from the place as fast as my size 11s could carry me.

Not sure if its the same problem but my Civic tourer 2016 diesel had all lights come up on dash and went into limp home, I took it to Honda with limited power and after a days checking they said all the injection system needed replacing at a cost of over 4k

for a second opinion I took to a trusty old garage I used to use and they confirmed the problem being dirty diesel over a long period, but as I used various garages to buy diesel I couldn't say which it was, not that it would help.

so I now have a 1.8 civic hatchback instead, but I gathered it happens on the CRV around the same date

If they can't even get the selling process right, just think how useless they'd be at after-sales care.

Exactly.

There are few bigger warning signs than a seller who cannot be bothered to present their product in as good a cindition as possible.

I have walked away from that car and have serious doubts I'll go back there again ,as has been pointed out they can't even present the car properly for sale.which is odd for what I believe is a large network ( evans halshaw \ carstore ). The end result was that the limp home mode was due to low fuel pressure and they also put on a new battery but not sure why .