Help- car shop contract

annatdavies

Hi, we are after some advice please. We went to the car shop on saturday and saw our ideal car. My boyfriend paid £300 deposit, we were told it is non refundable but is transferrable to any car with the car shop. We arranged to part ex his existing car, leaving around £5500 to pay. We arranged to collect the car at 3pm today and to pay cash. It has since transpired that the car shop will not take a cash payment of anything over £500- which they did not tell us. They also have told us that the car will not be taxed but that we would be fine to drive the car the 60miles home without any tax and to tax it tomorrow at our local post office. We have left three voicemails and telephoned the car shop three times to try and speak to the manager who arranged for us to collect the car today but have heard no reply.
As their contract mentions nothing about the cash limit, or the illegal road tax situation does this mean we could get out deposit back?
Everytime i have bought a used car in the past the dealer has gone and taxed the vehicle on the day of sale as it is illegal to drive the car untaxed. They will not be doing this. Does this make the sale illegal? or give us option to get our deposit back?
We are obviously very concerned now about if there is any problem in the future with this car- they obviously will not respond to any queries. Any advice or previous customers of car shop please get back to us.
ps- our main problem with the cash has been that we saw the car on saturday, then yesterday was sunday and today is a bank holiday.

McKneff

Put the cash in the bank, I cant think of a single reason why anyone would want to pay this amount of cash anyway (unless its illegal of course) but that's none of my business.

Go and get the car taxed tomorrow

Pick the car up and either give them a cheque or bank transfer or credit card.

Dont mean to be rude but I would never pay for anything over £100 cash, you have no comeback or cc protection if things go wrong. That would be more of a concern to me.

And no, it doesnt make the sale illegal.

Notmyrealname

annatdavies wrote: »

Everytime i have bought a used car in the past the dealer has gone and taxed the vehicle on the day of sale as it is illegal to drive the car untaxed. They will not be doing this. Does this make the sale illegal? or give us option to get our deposit back?

No. It merely makes you responsible for taxing it. The dealers who have done it in the past have done it as a courtesy.

KTF

McKneff wrote: »

Pick the car up and either give them a cheque or bank transfer or credit card.

A debit card would be better as they wont release the car until the cheque has cleared and will probably charge extra for using a credit card.

Most places are quite happy taking the balance via a debit card as this is the same as 'cash'.

TrickyWicky

Notmyrealname wrote: »

No. It merely makes you responsible for taxing it. The dealers who have done it in the past have done it as a courtesy.

Exactly. This is a case of having more money than sense I think. The op is used to buying expensive cars where they throw in the tax to sweeten the deal and has now found the one dealer who won't and doesn't like it and wants to grumble.

When you can afford £5k+ for a car, the road tax is peanuts in comparison so why turn to the internet and ask if you can accuse the dealer of an illegal sale?

annatdavies

Please read my message properly before being so rude. We certainly do not have more money than sense, nor do we expect the dealer to PAY for the tax!! In every purchase of a used car I or my family/friends have ever made, the car has been taxed by the dealership, using the money I have paid them for the tax, so that the car can be legally driven out of the showroom/used car garage/other on the day of collection. Ichallenge you to find a dealership or garage who sells cars, other than this one we have encountered, who will sell you a car and then expect you to drive out of the garage on to the public roads without tax on the vehicle. Of course we know the liability to pay for and get the vehicle taxed falls with us- that is why we did not get the car today! Advice from the police is that if we had been caught following the dealers advice we would have been fined and prosecuted for driving without tax and for not displaying a valid tax disc. Normal procedure is that the customer goes to collect said vehicle. Customer produces insorance cover note to seller of vehicle. Seller of vehicle takes v5, MOT and insurance cover note to local tax office or post office and taxes car with money from customer. Customer then drives their purchased car away from seller legally. Please....correct me if i am wrong!
Oh, and the purchase is not an illegal matter, or money laundering etc, it is a matter of it being easier to withdraw cash from partner's savings account quicker than transferring money over the bank holiday period. Again...correct me if your bank has been open every day for the past ten days.
I am not saying the sale is illegal...I am saying that their advise to drive away an untaxed car would be illegal. Again, please feel free to correct me and the police if this is wrong.

annatdavies

TrickyWicky wrote: »

Exactly. This is a case of having more money than sense I think. The op is used to buying expensive cars where they throw in the tax to sweeten the deal and has now found the one dealer who won't and doesn't like it and wants to grumble.

When you can afford £5k+ for a car, the road tax is peanuts in comparison so why turn to the internet and ask if you can accuse the dealer of an illegal sale?

I bought a car for £1500 and the dealer went and got the tax from the local post office with the money i had paid them for the tax.

McKneff

Oh, and the purchase is not an illegal matter, or money laundering etc, it is a matter of it being easier to withdraw cash from partner's savings account quicker than transferring money over the bank holiday period. Again...correct me if your bank has been open every day for the past ten days.

The bold bit really doesnt make sense, how can it be easier to get your coat on, toddle off down to the bank, physically withdraw £5k or so, go allthe way home, apart from the risk of carrying that much money around with you than
sitting at your computer, pressing a few buttons to transer funds from one account to the other and then pay by debit card. You dont need a bank to be open at all.

As far as taxing the car, I agree with you, any car that we have bought it has always been taxed for us befoe we drove it out.

TrickyWicky

annatdavies wrote: »

We certainly do not have more money than sense, nor do we expect the dealer to PAY for the tax!! In every purchase of a used car I or my family/friends have ever made, the car has been taxed by the dealership, using the money I have paid them for the tax, so that the car can be legally driven out of the showroom/used car garage/other on the day of collection.

Well in your opening post you've made no mention of paying for the tax only that the dealer has said they won't tax it. The logical conclusion is that you were expecting them to stump up the road tax. However I apologise if I've caused you any offence however had you mentioned that you were prepared to pay for the tax instead of just wording it all to make the dealer sound unfavourable then this conclusion might of been avoided. You have explicitly asked "Does this make the sale illegal?" as if you're trying to put the dealer down for not meeting your demands. You've not mentioned anything about agreeing the tax with them, only that you turned up with the cash to buy the car with cash and they wouldn't tax it or sell it for cash and how can you get your deposit back.

Happy new year