Car woes

lordharris

Ok, I need help figuring this out.

About a year ago, my sister bought a used Nissan Micra from an authorised Nissan second hand dealership. Recently it went catastrophically wrong - I'm not 100% sure of the details but basically the automatic gearbox is completely munted.

Since the dealership where it was bought has since gone out of business, she took it to another Nissan garage and was told it would cost £1500 just to take it apart and look at it, probably closer to £3000 to actually fix it. Here's the rub:

1) The car only cost about £4000 to buy
2) It's only done 14000 miles (the Nissan mechanic said he'd never seen anything like it on a car that's done less than 50000-60000 miles)

Unfortunately the manufacturers warranty only covers it up to 60,000 miles or three years (whichever comes first) and the car is about 5 years old.

Now my contention is thus: the car may be 5 years old but has done pretty much naff all mileage and it's pretty common knowledge that when it comes to cars the mileage is more of a factor than age in terms of reliability. And to go so drastically wrong after such a low number of miles implies that the car is inherently faulty and my sister should not have to pay 3/4 the purchase cost of the car to have it repaired (especially considering that she doesn't earn much and is actually still paying off the cost of the car.)

So we've complained to Nissan multiple times trying to get them to repair it free of charge but predictably they're not having any of it as it is out of warranty.

My question is this: is there any point in continuing to pursue this or are we just going to have to bite the bullet and pay through the nose to have it fixed? What I am hoping is that, as with unfair bank charges, the OFT reserves the right to judge what is fair and reasonable as opposed to what the warranty technically covers.

Obviously the Nissan Micra is a totally lame car but that is besides the point.

Many thanks

P

Takoda

There's a motoring section which would probably get more informed replies than this section. Not dissing this section but some of the motoring bods don't always make it over here. You might want to duplicate your post there or ask a mod to move it.

lordharris

Apologies. I did think about putting it in the motoring section but I thought consumer issues might be more appropriate. I'll let the mods decide where the best place to put it is.

lordharris

Thanks for the info, I'll look into it in the morning.

1) I *think* the business just went into liquidation or bankruptcy or whatever it is that businesses do. Is there a way to find out what happened to the company (sold, liquidated etc)? It must presumably be recorded somewhere?

2) I think it has a full Nissan service history but I'll check.

3) Sadly I think it was paid for outright. (My mum lent my sister the money.)

vikingaero

If the manufacturer won't make a contribution or a goodwill repair then take the car to a member of FedAuto:

https://www.fedauto.co.uk

Sometimes you'll find that if you get the dealer to do the repair they subcontract the work to a fedauto member anyway so if no payment is forthcoming then cut them out. My dads Merc has a faulty autobox and Merc wanted £5k to install a new one. A fedauto member fixed the problem for £1300.

lordharris

Ok, 2 interesting developments...

1) I found out that my mum actually bought the car on credit card.

2) Unbeknownst to me, while I was exploring the avenues of recourse, she went ahead and had the repair authorised for the princely sum of £2400.

Interestingly, I also found out the car was only bought 6 months ago, not a year.

Now, we are trying the tactic of claiming back from the credit card company the cost of repair, due to breach of the SOGA, as advised by the OFT.

I'll let you know how it goes...

olly300

lordharris wrote: »

Ok, 2 interesting developments...

1) I found out that my mum actually bought the car on credit card.

There was information on TV recently - one of Don's (can't remember his surname) consumer programs that if you buy a something with a credit card/loan but the legal owner is someone else then the credit card company/loan company don't cover the item under the Consumer Credit Act.