Car sold - new owner on complaining

motorguy

A friend of mine sold his daughters car - a 2004 120,000 mile Mini One Diesel. She had been using it for three months or so with no issues, but needed the money and had her dad sell it.

The purchaser came with his girlfriend and beat him well down on price, inspected the car, pointing out any fault as a reason to further drop the price. He also took a long test drive. That was on friday.

On monday the purchasers girlfriend rang to say that the heater in the car had went cold on the long journey home, then the temperature light came on, they stopped and filled it with COLD water, drove on until the temperature light came on again, then filled it again with COLD water. They took it to a mechanic and he has diagnosed a blown head gasket, which she says is going to take £500 to fix.

Her boyfriend then phoned later in the day saying the same, and that the mechanic had quoted £1500 to fix. (!)

They are threatening legal action against him if he doesnt pay up.

Several things

(a) is he liable?
(b) surely the loss of water could have been because of a burst hose, and the use of cold water AND letting it run empty is more likely to have caused the gasket failure?
(c) The added complication is that i have small car sales website on which the car was advertised - they have said to him that they are going to hold me liable as they bought it through the website, even though at the time i said the car was being sold by a third party and give them all the details to contact him direct and made it clear to them that i was not the seller?

Thanks in advance

LandyAndy

A private sale? Tell them to sling their hook.

bosseyed

LandyAndy wrote: »

A private sale? Tell them to sling their hook.

I'd agree with that. If its a private sale its essentially sold as seen, buyer beware etc etc - if its gone wrong since changing ownership its just tough luck for the new buyer. Tell your friend to tell him to get bent.

Mark_Hewitt

pgilc1 wrote: »

(c) The added complication is that i have small car sales website on which the car was advertised - they have said to him that they are going to hold me liable as they bought it through the website, even though at the time i said the car was being sold by a third party and give them all the details to contact him direct and made it clear to them that i was not the seller?

In that way they can no more hold you liable than you could hold Autotrader liable.

Keith

Firstly, tell them to !!!! off.

pgilc1 wrote: »

On monday the purchasers girlfriend rang to say that the heater in the car had went cold on the long journey home, then the temperature light came on, they stopped and filled it with COLD water, drove on until the temperature light came on again, then filled it again with COLD water. They took it to a mechanic and he has diagnosed a blown head gasket, which she says is going to take £500 to fix.

Secondly, point out that they have likely caused the damage.

JQ.

They are trying it on. Seems to be a more common occurrence these days, it seems people don't like to pay for anything.

Private sale = no recourse. Tough luck.

I would make sure you're mate does not offer them a bit of cash to make them go away, as that might be seen as an admission of guilt and they then return for the rest more formally.

I have no doubt that the next step will be threats - in which case report them to the police and stop all contact.

mikey72

It's not worth the aggro.
Take it back and give them a refund.
Despite all the advice, it still has to be fit for purpose, and the head gasket shouldn't go on the way home.
If you advertise it on your website, you could be hard pushed to disassociate your business from the sale.
If they're serious they'll take your mate and maybe you through the small claims.

custardy

mikey72 wrote: »

It's not worth the aggro.
Take it back and give them a refund.
Despite all the advice, it still has to be fit for purpose, and the head gasket shouldn't go on the way home.
If you advertise it on your website, you could be hard pushed to disassociate your business from the sale.
If thet're serious they'll take your mate and maybe you through the small claims.

when should it go then?

DKLS

Sold as seen tell them to go forth and multiply.

What do they expect from a 120k miler?, looks like they sold the car at the perfect time.

vaio

mikey72 wrote: »

It's not worth the aggro.
Take it back and give them a refund.
Despite all the advice, it still has to be fit for purpose, and the head gasket shouldn't go on the way home.
If you advertise it on your website, you could be hard pushed to disassociate your business from the sale.
If they're serious they'll take your mate and maybe you through the small claims.

Clear cut private sale and I’d say tough luck, buyer beware etc etc

Clear cut trade sale and I’d say Sale of Goods kicks in and means the seller needs to repair or refund.

The website advert is what makes it a grey area. As Mikey says above, you could find it difficult to disassociate yourself from the sale. If they push it to legal action it’s going to come down to who a county court judge is going to believe and in this case any benefit of the doubt is going to go to the buyer.

The auto-trader analogy is good so long as the rest of the cars for sale on the site are also owned by third parties, if the site is cars you are selling yourself then you might struggle as car dealers have a long history of using third party private sales as a way of trying to avoid their Sale of Goods responsibilities on crap cars.

You also need to think about any claims you made in the advert as obviously they need to be true and this applies even if you do manage to disassociate the web site from the sale.

To quote Clint Eastwood “do you feel lucky?”

motorguy

vaio wrote: »

Clear cut private sale and I’d say tough luck, buyer beware etc etc

Clear cut trade sale and I’d say Sale of Goods kicks in and means the seller needs to repair or refund.

The website advert is what makes it a grey area. As Mikey says above, you could find it difficult to disassociate yourself from the sale. If they push it to legal action it’s going to come down to who a county court judge is going to believe and in this case any benefit of the doubt is going to go to the buyer.

The auto-trader analogy is good so long as the rest of the cars for sale on the site are also owned by third parties, if the site is cars you are selling yourself then you might struggle as car dealers have a long history of using third party private sales as a way of trying to avoid their Sale of Goods responsibilities on crap cars.

You also need to think about any claims you made in the advert as obviously they need to be true and this applies even if you do manage to disassociate the web site from the sale.

To quote Clint Eastwood “do you feel lucky?”

Fair comment.

I will need to rethink my strategy going forward if there is any risk of a buyer of a third party's car being able to come back to me. I block book advertising space on a local autotrader type website who then 'grab' all advertised cars from my site nightly. Thus i've been using up spare capacity to advertise cars for friends and other traders and taking an agreed amount should the car get sold because of the ad.