Price misleading - is it legal?

alanrowell

So buy the car at £8500, then take your existing car to the scrapyard - voila you've saved £2000

You might even be able to sell your existing car privately so you'll make even more money

Wig

Hintza wrote: »

I read this and thought you had a point OP. But on reflection the garage doesn't need to offer to take your car.

They have offerd the car for sale at the price quoted £8,500. If that is reasonable then you buy and dispose of your car privately.

Basically they are telling you they don't want your car. Not great way of doing business but they are probably full of stock and just want to shift some and not add to their burden.

Would you want to be sitting on a pile of cars just now?

I disagree, if they don't want to take part exchange, they should just have said "we don't do part exchange". Instead they choose to say "if you want a part ex then the price of the car will be 10,500" In other words they could have handled it better.

What usually happens is that the price is set high to begin with and they ask you are you part ex'ing or cash? Then they tell you (if cash) "You can knock off £500 from each car". At least in my experience they do. I'm not certain if that is legal or not. Obviously it's perfectly legal to negotiate a price. But to do so implicitly on means of payment (cash) I'm not sure is legal. maybe it only becomes illegal if you subsequently hand over a credit card and they refuse, saying "that's not cash" You reply "it's as good as cash".

I think it is specifically in comparing cash price to a "credit" price that it is illegal, a part ex deal on a car is not "credit" and so probably does not come under the umbrella

bargain888

Thanks for all the replies. Basically, the price written on their website said £8500. If I went there and p/t exchanged my vehicle e.g £2000, then basically, the difference to pay would have been £6500. But when we got there, the actually price stuck on the car's windscreen was £10,500. Therefore, the difference to pay would have been £8500. I asked why it said £10,500 on the car's windscreen and they told me that was the price based on a non p/t exchanged transaction.

The whole point of us traveling all the way there was on the illusion that the difference to pay was £6500 and not £8500. The main point I am trying to get across is that they had no mentioned of the fact that the price quoted on their website was for non-p/t exchanged. Of all the times that I have been to a car dealers throughout my life time to buy an used car, I have never came across this kind of selling.

Ok, let me put this another way, If you guys were looking for car and came across one with a price that you think is reasonable, would you automatically assume that the price quoted was for a non-p/t exchange transaction...I don't think you would...unless it was a private seller.

Also the price was quoted on Autotrader as £8500 when we did a search on Autotrader. Autotrader then gives you the link to view their website and see other stocklist that you have.

Wig

I think there is possibly a case of misleading prices which is against the law. Your Trading standards might like to know about it.

harveybobbles

It's a grey matter...

If the advert was in the paper then you'd have very good grounds for going to Trading Standards, but as it was an internet advert then they can get away with it.

the same way people like them get away with putting the mileage on the autotrader website as "124 miles" when it is actually 124,000 miles - this is done 'cos of the way the autotrader website uses the search tools.

Again if there was a car advertised in the paper with 124 miles and you got there and found it had done 124,000 then again you could have a word with Trading Standards

You should always phone to confirm that the car is available for you to look at. Wheather its 10 or 110 miles away.

One other sneaky trick that dealers (Car Giant for example) do is to advertise a "ghost" car at say 9000 then when you phone up they say "Oooooh I'm sorry you just missed that one, but we have this one here which is similar at 11000"

Inactive

But....but...but, the car was actually on sale at the quoted price for cash, no garage is forced to take a part exchange, if they do, they are in their rights to offer a different deal.

Ring before you set off next time.