Car bought in Feb, Air Con not working, where do we stand?

Tilt

As usual the thread is being un-necessarily lengthened by pointless argument. The OP hasn't even been back since Thursday! We don't even know if the seller has refused to honour his obligations yet! Personally I will not waste my time entering arguments which may be pointless so I will wait untill the OP comes back with any latest developments.

s_b

Actually Tilt i think its a very interesting thread because both sides of the shop counter are being discussed irrespective of whether the OP was a one thread wonder.
I also find Wigs post refreshingly correct in my opinion as he seems to see things in the light of common sense and reasonable law enforcement rather than seeing honest traders sent to the wall with unreasonable requests for expensive fixes on second hand cars where the owners took it upon themselves to have a go rather than give the retailer a chance to have a look.

liam8282

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Re-gassing cannot cause corrosion as described by the OP.

Something can have corrosion and still work perfectly well you know. My point being if the OP has regassed the system incorrectly they could have caused the damage at the points where there is corrosion.

The OP is not qualified to be carrying out repairs to an aircon system or regassing it. If their was a problem he should have took it straight back to the dealer and asked them to sort it out.

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Re-gassing cannot cause corrosion as described by the OP.

Back to repeating things to try convince yourself you are right?

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Of course it doesn't and that is not what I wrote, was it?

You said that it is the dealer responsibility to fix the car, even though the OP has already attempted to fix the car themselves and COULD have caused the damage themselves, so yes it is what you wrote.

Flyboy152 wrote: »

And why should I assume the OP is lying? I prefer to go on the evidence presented, not supposition.

Why should you not assume the OP is lying? You are going on supposition that what the OP has said is the whole truth, with no actual facts on the matter.

You have not considered anything from the dealers perspective at all.

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Again, it comes down to evidence and proof. The dealer would have to proof that the fault wasn't present at the point of sale, not that the OP attempted to remedy the issue.

Which I believe would have covered when the car was sold and there was no complaint by the OP until 3 months later, also there was no complaint until AFTER they have attempted to regas the aircon system themselves.

Sounds like the OP has tried to save themselves a few quid by doing the job themselves, bodged it and now wants the dealer to sort out their mess.

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Re-gassing cannot cause corrosion as described by the OP.

REPEAT.

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Which is why I prefer to go on the evidence presented, not supposition.

REPEAT.

Wig

Tilt wrote: »

As usual the thread is being un-necessarily lengthened by pointless argument. The OP hasn't even been back since Thursday! We don't even know if the seller has refused to honour his obligations yet! Personally I will not waste my time entering arguments which may be pointless so I will wait untill the OP comes back with any latest developments.

I don't think it's pointless to discuss things and try to get at the truth of the matter by using case law.

flyboy, you, me or anyone else might learn something.

We all know we used to hate seeing so many people telling people on this forum that "No MOT = No Insurance" and it wasn't until Raskazz came along with the evidence (near enough case law) to the contrary that everyone learned something and we could be sure that the advice we were giving out was correct -that no MOT did not mean no insurance- and now anyone who says the former is quickly shot down in flames on this board, and a good thing too.

Flyboy152

Wig wrote: »

And as I have I said, a car can have faults AND be satisfactory whether declared or not they are to be expected. You obviously have a different opinion, but unless you can bring case law to support your argument you are no more right or wrong than I am.

I have case law to support me in this thread but I admit it refers to merchantable quality not satisfactory quality. Therefore I will not push the issue. Although I'm sure it would still be a relevant authority in a court case today.

You also kept quiet pretty quickly on the gearbox thread as soon as I mentioned the exact same circumstances of a judgement in Thain v Anniesland.

Apologies for missing that particular post, I don't hang on threads ad nauseam. That said, Thain v Anniesland (1997) has been argued to not be definitive on the question on durability and has most likely been superseded by the 2002 regulations.

chim289

FAO Tilt & others wanting to help

The dealer has chosen not to respond to any email, message or letter that we have written to him. What is our next step?

Just to confirm some details that I have noticed while skimming through the thread, can't be bothered getting deeply into it, I only came for advice not a pasting as others have pointed out to certain posters.

The info I gave about brakes etc was as background info about the dealer. The brakes were knackered but his MOT place said they were fine. We had specifically asked for the brkes to be changed but as his mechanic had given them a full bill of health despite us asking it was clear we wouldn't get anywhere by asking him again to do it. Brake discs aren't hard to change so we did them ourselves.

The car has climate control so therefore when the temp outside is 2 degrees, you can't put the a/c on. If we set the temp inside the car to say 20 degrees, the air con will only come on if the temp in the car is currently over 20 degrees. So if the temp is 2 degrees as it was when we test drove the car it will be the heater that gets the temp up to our desired temp, not the a/c taking it down. We only knew about the fault with the a/c once the temp went over our desired in car temperature. There is no individual a/c button, it all works through the c/c.

We purchased a canister hoping that it just needed a regas, trying to keep costs down - it was cheaper to buy this than to take to a garage for a regas. All we were doing was trying to save some money, we had no idea it was faulty until it would not take a charge from the gas. We haven't tried to repair the system or touch it in any way other than connecting a can in an attempt to refill the system.

The car was advertised as having a/c. Due to being unable to test the system we bought it in good faith that it was working. For all I know the dealer may not have known about the fault if he did not have it tested himself. I believe he purchased the car in the winter also so would only have been able to test the heater part of the climate control. At no point were we told that the a/c was not working.

The car is a 2003 Ford Galaxy - car is unusable on a hot day without a/c as it's a big space with lots of glass. It has 1 previous owner and 85,000 miles on the clock (all backed up by a huge pile of receipts including the original Hendys receipt). We paid £6,000 for the car, £3,000 on finance. Book price means this is extremely high, but living on the South coast means we have to pay an extortianate amount for cars compared to the rest of the country. The same car 200 miles away would have been about £5,000.

Any other relevant questions I will be happy to answer, but I'm not getting into rucks over who did what, who said what etc, I just want advice, cheers.

scheming_gypsy

If they won't respond to you then your next step will probably be trading standards. They'll probably decide if it should still be covered under the SOGA or if it's classed as wear and tear

Flyboy152

chim289 wrote: »

FAO Tilt & others wanting to help

The dealer has chosen not to respond to any email, message or letter that we have written to him. What is our next step?

Just to confirm some details that I have noticed while skimming through the thread, can't be bothered getting deeply into it, I only came for advice not a pasting as others have pointed out to certain posters.

The info I gave about brakes etc was as background info about the dealer. The brakes were knackered but his MOT place said they were fine. We had specifically asked for the brkes to be changed but as his mechanic had given them a full bill of health despite us asking it was clear we wouldn't get anywhere by asking him again to do it. Brake discs aren't hard to change so we did them ourselves.

The car has climate control so therefore when the temp outside is 2 degrees, you can't put the a/c on. If we set the temp inside the car to say 20 degrees, the air con will only come on if the temp in the car is currently over 20 degrees. So if the temp is 2 degrees as it was when we test drove the car it will be the heater that gets the temp up to our desired temp, not the a/c taking it down. We only knew about the fault with the a/c once the temp went over our desired in car temperature. There is no individual a/c button, it all works through the c/c.

We purchased a canister hoping that it just needed a regas, trying to keep costs down - it was cheaper to buy this than to take to a garage for a regas. All we were doing was trying to save some money, we had no idea it was faulty until it would not take a charge from the gas. We haven't tried to repair the system or touch it in any way other than connecting a can in an attempt to refill the system.

The car was advertised as having a/c. Due to being unable to test the system we bought it in good faith that it was working. For all I know the dealer may not have known about the fault if he did not have it tested himself. I believe he purchased the car in the winter also so would only have been able to test the heater part of the climate control. At no point were we told that the a/c was not working.

The car is a 2003 Ford Galaxy - car is unusable on a hot day without a/c as it's a big space with lots of glass. It has 1 previous owner and 85,000 miles on the clock (all backed up by a huge pile of receipts including the original Hendys receipt). We paid £6,000 for the car, £3,000 on finance. Book price means this is extremely high, but living on the South coast means we have to pay an extortianate amount for cars compared to the rest of the country. The same car 200 miles away would have been about £5,000.

Any other relevant questions I will be happy to answer, but I'm not getting into rucks over who did what, who said what etc, I just want advice, cheers.

Your first step is to contact Trading Standards and then the fiance company. Tell the finance company abut the dealer's lack of response and let them know that you will be making a claim against them, for the cost of repairs to the air-conditioning system, in accordance with section seventy-five of the consumer credit act.

chim289

Having contacted the finance company and sending yet another letter to the dealer we have received a call from him today. He has offered to pay half which had he replied to our original email we would have accepted however we are not sure what to do. As it stands he seems happy to allow us to have it done where we want it (this is tbh probably the best place locally for a/c so he can have no complaints) so we're glad about that as they are good, it will come with a year warranty and we know that it will be done properly, nothing else will be messed around with and it will be done within the next couple of weeks. (Having done a few hundred miles in the car this weekend we can vouch for the fact that it is unbearable without the a/c as there is no air flow whatsoever without it so t get it done asap would be fantastic). BUT he's only contacting us now as we've got heavy whereas before we were trying to be nice about it, he's trying to fob me off over the phone about how he only gives 3 month warranty, not 6 and he doesn't cover a/c on it and although soga does cover it for 6 months he's trying to scare me off saying a court would find in his favour because it's only air con not a vital mechanical part of the car. So because of that I want to push him for more. ALso I don't want to accept his first offer so to speak I want to try to get more out of him and there's a big part that wants to go the whole way out of principle. A dealer should have known about the problems that the Galaxys etc have with the a/c so he should have had it tested imo before selling it. We only found out about the problems afterwards and through specific Ford Owners club searches, it shouldn't be down to us to get a car tested for a/c problems before we buy it so imo he should pay for it all, especially considering the amount that we've had to chase him. But I don't want to push him too far and insist that he has his own people look at it or to end up in court as we need the a/c now not in 6 months time.

So do we
1. Accept half andf half and get it over and done with
2. Push for a bit more & then accept somewhere in between if he offers that
3. Wait for the finance company to get back in touch to see what they will offer
4. Push the dealer for full payment but risk having to spend the entire summer with no a/c while we are waiting for it to go to court (or would the finance company have sorted it before that point)

Advice very much appreciated, thank you

Tilt

Mmm, tricky one as you highlighted in point 4. Can you remind me that the car was advertised as having Air con when you bought it? If so then your rights under SOGA will be as they were when you made the original compliant. The problem is that although you can persue for a full repair at no cost to you, if you take him to court, you will as you say probably end up going through the summer without the air con working. Having said that, you could get it fixed and then persue him for the full repair cost afterwards. I'm not sure what (if anything) the finance co will do unless you rejected the car but i'm not sure that you are in a position to do that now. as you say, the dealer's comment; 'the court won't do anything because its just air-con', is quite frankly just an attempt to fob you off and an insult to your intelligence IMHO.