unpleasant Car Dealer

gabriel77

consumer direct said to not use the loan car, keep it on my drive, inform him of this and on receipt of the refund he can have his car back. My head hurts I just wanted to buy a car and have peace in our lives. but no. thank u for your advice

Hotspur

OP

I'll put it very simply for you.

You must reject the car NOW in writing AND return the loan car. Ask for a full refund. If no refund arrives then go to the County Court and complete forms to take legal action to recover your money. This process is known as a small claim and solicitors are not required as legal costs are not usually paid.

I know that it is frustrating and probably you feel that it is unfair but this is how the legal process works in this kind of dispute.

If you don't reject the car you face the prospect of being stuck with a lemon and not being able to use it or sell it.


Then go buy another car elsewhere and preferably get it checked out first.

PS

consumer direct said to not use the loan car, keep it on my drive, inform him of this and on receipt of the refund he can have his car back. My head hurts I just wanted to buy a car and have peace in our lives. but no. thank u for your advice

CD are wrong IMHO as it isn't your car, if the dealer asks for it back then you'll have to give it back otherwise you could be accused of unlawfully retaining his property for which he could take you to the civil law court. Keeping it for a while does give you some bargaining power though so I wouldn't be in a hurry to return it.

gabriel77

thanks i will do that Monday. And get the bus isnt life amazing and full of surprises and horrible nasty greedy people. makes me want to go and live in a cave.

Hotspur

gabriel77 wrote: »

thanks i will do that Monday. And get the bus isnt life amazing and full of surprises and horrible nasty greedy people. makes me want to go and live in a cave.

Luckily the majority are like us on MSE and want to help. :beer:

Wig

gabriel77 wrote: »

consumer direct said to not use the loan car, keep it on my drive, inform him of this and on receipt of the refund he can have his car back. My head hurts I just wanted to buy a car and have peace in our lives. but no. thank u for your advice

As far as I know, you can't do that. You have to either deliver the loan car back to him (that's what I would do if I was going to reject). Or do as Consumer Direct say but make the car available for him to collect at any reasonable time. It can't be used as a bargaining chip.

Have you got a google email account?
If you have and you can work out how to do it try asking in the newsnet group

uk.legal
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.legal/topics?hl=en


You can also access usenet usually from your ISP email account using outlook express.

If you put a thread in there, copy your OP from this thread, and mention the issue about what to do with the loan car if you reject the corsa.

If you get some replies you can trust replies from The_Todal, Cynic, R mark Clayton, & Alex Heney, Even if they don't agree with each other I would respect their replies.

rev_henry

I feel so sorry for you OP. Do you still have the dealer's credit card details? If so, just keep paying the £52 a week on it until he gets it sorted. He's basically implied that you can do so hasn't he? Only thing is your son won't be able to drive it I imagine.

Small Claims Court really isn't as big and scary as it sounds, and if you win you'll get all your costs back from the other side. You may not even have to go to court at all, you can submit the initial claim online and then the dealer may get scared and pay up. Or he may ignore the claim in which case you win by default without going anywhere near an actual courtroom. Do you know if the dealer's been around for a long time. Don't want to scare you but I'm just thinking he might 'close down' then spring up under another name to avoid paying the court judgement. But if as you say he's a family dealer then this shouldn't be the case, and if he doesn't pay up after judgement the court bailiff will be able to take lots of nice expensive cars off him, i.e. he has assets.
But yes, you can't do any of this until you've waited 14 days after the letter.

Keith

Before you reject the car, don't you have to give the garage a fair time to fix the issue. The dealer is fixing the problem and you have a courtesy car in the meantime, perhaps if you leave him to get on with his job he'll phone you when the car is fixed?

Wig

Keith wrote: »

Before you reject the car, don't you have to give the garage a fair time to fix the issue. The dealer is fixing the problem and you have a courtesy car in the meantime, perhaps if you leave him to get on with his job he'll phone you when the car is fixed?

No, there are two separate ways of dealing with this sort of issue. You either reject or you accept the item.
Can you agree to a repair on an item you have not yet accepted? I have heard that you can, but I'm sure it lessens your chances of rejection. If I was going to agree to a repair attempt I would make sure I wrote to the seller, that until satisfactorily repaired I do not accept the item.


My understanding:
If you are going to reject you should be careful to know what you are doing and have a reasonable chance of success if it goes to court. The sooner you reject, the more chance you have of success, however, you cannot reject once you have accepted.

To "accept" means that you have taken ownership of the object that was sold to you, that means that you have

• used it without fault for a reasonable period or
• used it with fault but not complained to the seller, or
• used it with fault and then taken it upon yourself to repair the fault without contacting seller.
• And possibly in the OPs case tried to use it found fault & returned to seller immediately but then allowed a repair attempt which has been going on for 3 weeks now without formally rejecting it.

To allow a seller to make a repair on the object can be argued is an act of acceptance from you, although I'm sure there are examples where a rejection has been allowed after a repair attempt or two, I'm just not familiar with them.

If you think you have a strong case for rejection the simplest thing to do is to reject straight away and refuse any offer of repair. "I want my money back now". But you can't reject an item that you have used or had it in your possession for a reasonable time to have allowed you to inspect it and determine if you want to keep it. i.e. you have accepted it.

How long is reasonable? How long is a piece of string? AFAIK it differs according to the nature of the object and the circumstances, and the judge
An item of clothing = 1 day
A piece of jewelry = 1 - 2 days maybe slightly more.
A take away meal = 1 or 2 hours ?
A new car = I've heard up to 6 weeks but I wouldn't know
A used car = 3 days - 1 week? I really have no idea.


Once you have accepted the item you have no choice but to allow the seller to deal with it as they see fit, repair, replace, refund. So if it breaks after you have been happily using it for a reasonable time, you then have to determine if it was satisfactory or unsatisfactory for it to have broken after that amount of time.

Points in the OPs favour

• It failed straight away 10 miles
• she told the seller straight away
• She apparently asked for a refund straight away but was turned down
• it was returned to her but again failed immediately
• She has now formally rejected it or will do on Monday

Points against the OP

• She did not issue a letter of rejection straight away
• She cooperated with a repair attempt
• She arguably cooperated with a second repair attempt by accepting a loan car
• She has waited just over 3 weeks before issuing a rejection letter

A court will have to decide.

gabriel77

yes ive thought about that but who in their right mind would give their full card details to a complete stranger, a bit of a mental unbalance their i think. Yes but that becomes theft doesnt it, or I could go shopping. The whole situation is ludicrous. He has been trading since 1981, but it was his fathers then, he is about 25 yrs old and impossible. Dont think it will close down overnight as they have many expensive cars on the forecourt and a very busy mechanical workshop run by his younger brother. I guess thats why I left it for 3 weeks and trusted him. Hopefully they will see im not a pushover when they receive the letter and respond immediately. I pray for this. thanks

gabriel77

it not a fair time to fix a car three weeks, how long does it take, I asked for a refund when it first broke down an hour after i bought the thing. I trusted and believed this guy purely because of his website and his smart business premises. but there you go all that glistens is not gold.