used car from Private seller

nomoneytoday

Did you ask about the brake lines, and receive a positive answer in writing?

If not, I would save the £30 court fee towards the repairs as "let the buyer beware / caveat emptor" applies to a private sale.

If you want a warranty then you need to purchase from a car business not an individual.

paseodj

not too recently unfortunately, but about 6months ago

pcombo

Why dont you have a quote to how much it will be to be repaired, And send the bill to the garage before going to court.

quote

"again but they can always be chased and the person also owns their own company so I'm sure monies are recoverable in this case "

PZH

paseodj wrote: »

no, you're right an advisory doesn't make it unroadworthy, however the brake lines are so badly corroded that they ruptured on me on a 17mile journey, which means the car was and is unroadworthy, does that make sense?

Yes, but you also say...

paseodj wrote: »

not too recently unfortunately, but about 6months ago

AND also...

paseodj wrote: »

the rear brake lines were advised on the mot before last and yet never mentioned again...

How do you know they were NOT replaced? Maybe just not using the best ones available or maybe even second hand ones from a scrap yard ?

Maybe 6 months ago (NB: not 20 days) they didn't warrant an advisory. It has been a bad winter with lots of snow and grit on the roads.

Do you really expect people to go over a car they are selling with a fine toothed comb? That is up to you, surely ?

pinkshoes

I know someone who bought a private sale car and won a court case against the seller for lying about the condition, so it is not "sold as seen" in all cases.

BUT... you MUST have written proof that the seller has lied, otherwise the court will side with the seller. Anything verbal will be ignored and not counted as evidence.

If the advert says that the ONLY advisory in the last MOT was the tyres, which had been rectified, but you can prove this is definitely not the case, then the court may side with you.

You will, however, be asked why you didn't ask for the MOT certificate and advisory sheet.

I wish you luck with this case. Far to many shoddy car sellers trying to pass off dangerous cars as "safe" based on the whole "sold as seen" thing.

Flyboy152

pinkshoes wrote: »

I know someone who bought a private sale car and won a court case against the seller for lying about the condition, so it is not "sold as seen" in all cases.

BUT... you MUST have written proof that the seller has lied, otherwise the court will side with the seller. Anything verbal will be ignored and not counted as evidence.

If the advert says that the ONLY advisory in the last MOT was the tyres, which had been rectified, but you can prove this is definitely not the case, then the court may side with you.

You will, however, be asked why you didn't ask for the MOT certificate and advisory sheet.

I wish you luck with this case. Far to many shoddy car sellers trying to pass off dangerous cars as "safe" based on the whole "sold as seen" thing.

But part of the onus may be on the seller to produce receipts etc., for the work done or parts purchased.

paseodj

I have the written proof in the form of a screen print of the original advert as posted on EBay:




and written proof of the faults by one, an engineers report and 2, the info supplied by direct.gov which shows:



couldn't really be more evident than that

Aginoth

david39 wrote: »

This very point was covered last week in the BBC daytime consumer programme hosted by that "Dom" fellow - the chap with the bald head.

If you buy something as a private sale it is definitely "as seen", even if the seller does not stipulate that. There is no come back on it.

He may have told you some of the advisory points about the MOT, but obviously didn't tell all of them to you.

Although sympathetic to your plight, I think you should put it down to experience and move on.

Not completely accurate.

If the advert for the vehicle described anything in detail that then turned out to be untrue then the vehicle has been misrepresented.

I won a Small Claims Case on this last year, Seller said the vehicle had nothing wrong with it that would prevent it passing an MoT Test, and that it had passed it's last MoT 10 months earlier. Turned out to have massive structural corrosion that he knew about when it failed an MoT 2 weeks previous to the sale. I was unable to inspect as it was an eBay purchase at some distance, and on pick up he had hidden the corrosion with aluminium foil coated in waxoil liberally applied.

I won on the grounds that he had misrepresented the vehicle....if he had coughed up straight away would have cost him £400, as it was it eventually cost him £1100 due to costs etc.

misssarahleigh

Although i'm just glancing the first thing I must point out is that the MOT thing says "both front tyres close to limit" where the auction states "I have just fitted four brand new tyres".

Thats clearly a lie on the part of the seller if nothing else.

vuvuzela

misssarahleigh wrote: »

Although i'm just glancing the first thing I must point out is that the MOT thing says "both front tyres close to limit" where the auction states "I have just fitted four brand new tyres".

Thats clearly a lie on the part of the seller if nothing else.

There may well be 4 new tyres on the car. The OP says nothing about this.