clocked car from a car dealer

sam1970

i've just bought a used mercedes last weekend from a mercedes dealer and according to the advert and the paper work the car has done 9000 miles. i became suspecious when i found that the car was serviced 4 months ago and the mileage then was nearly 10000 miles. I got the car checked by another mercedes dealer and it was confirmed that the mileage on the car is near 15000 although it was showing on the odometer as 9000 miles..ie the car has been clocked. trading standards say this is a criminal offence and i will need to notify the police....the dealer offered a full refund but nothing extra for the inconvenince as i waited 2 weeks to view the car which was in another dealership and all the time and effort i spent to investigate the problem....any suggestions please on what should i do?..thanx

jockettuk

i would take the money back then get right round to the police station with all your evidence.. chances are your car not the first or last

aliasojo

If it was me, I'd be there for the place opening to get my refund.

Then after I'd got my money back, I'd report it to the Police.

I'd be very annoyed about the whole thing and wouldn't use the dealer again, but I'd put it down to experience and not be too demanding about compensation for the inconvenience. I'd probably feel too relieved to have got my money back. The papers are full of folks who have got bad deals from garages and don't get their money refunded in full, so I'd cut and run.

Hope it works out and you get a more suitable car.


Also need to say that I think this is perhaps more suited to the Vent board so I'm going to move it over.

sam1970

actually by just mentioning the word trading standards, the dealer offered me
a £4000 discount on a brand new car similar to the used car i was buying from them(same specification)...I think this is more than fair and i will go for it.

serpico

The dealer may well have warranted the mileage based on the information he had from the seller and may well have been an innocent party until it was drawn to his attention.

Back in the 70s I sold a one year old vehicle guaranteeing the very low mileage to a punter. This was based on the the information we had. The vehicle had been sold new by us, then taken back p/ex it had a full mileage recorded service history carried out by us. The seller had signed a sellers invoice of which he had a copy stating that all the information on the invoice including the mileage as correct.

A few weeks later we had visits from both the Police and the Trading Standards and a letter from the buyers brief, The buyer had contacted the previous owner and been told that the correct mileage was 8K higher. The buyer never came to see us or gave us any opportunity to sort out the alleged problem.

We did not argue the point with customers brief. Police or T/S's but maintained the low mileage was correct and refused to offer any refund or compensation, the divvy's at T.S failed completely to investigate properly with us and we ended up in Court.

Our first customer had purchased two identical vehicles brand new, p/exing the first for the second within twelve months, then p/exing the second vehicle for a third one and then we sold both vehicles guaranteeing the mileage , our servicing records and pruchase p/ex invoices showed that the first vehicle had shown exactly the higher mileage as a alleged in the complaint, but our sales invoices showed that the camplainant had not purchased this vehicle it had been sold to someone else but the second which had the lower correct mileage was the one he had bought .

The customer who had purchased three new vehicles from us was called by T/S's as a reluctant witness to confirm the incorrect mileage, it turned out that when the complainant had phoned to ask him about the vehicle they had ended up talking on the phone about the wrong vehicle.

We called the correct purchaser of the higher mileage vehicle and produced all the service sales and purchase documentation and wiped the floor with the idiots from T/S's and were awarded nice costs against them.

Both customers including the one who had made the complaint continued to be good clients and bought further vehicles from us for years.

Swattie

I would also Notify Mercedes (Daimler Chrysler). If their own dealers are caught doing that sort of thing they can get their dealership revoked.

If it's an authorised Merc dealer, anything illegal reflects badly on the car company as well.

sam1970

I honestly think that the dealer, who is an official mercedes dealer, was caught by surprise in this case and they did not clock the car delebrately but still it is their fault that they did not check the car properly before selling it. the day they asked me to bring the car for a computer check they sounded very confident that iam wrong and that their paperwork is correct...as soon as the car was connected to the computer it showed 6000 miles difference between the computer reading and the odometer reading...did not need anymore explanation...they knew how grave was their mistake and they offered me a new car with a good discount after i refused just to go away with a full refund.All in all im happy with the way they handled the problem although i dread thinking of what happened if i didnot notice the milege on the service book and kept the car.