Car dealer Claiming our trade in had 'old fault' retrospectively

yat360

Hi all,

I hope this is the right forum for this.

We bought a second hand car from a dealer and we traded a car in against it. I have it in email, from the dealer, that everything worked fine with particular reference to the air conditioning (I didn't check the air con and some of the other things when I went to see the car) so I wanted it in writing before I actually bought it; the dealer is about 1 hour away from where we live.

We knew the air con was working on the way back from picking the car up (it was an evening) and thinking it was a simple regas issue we took it to Kwik Fit. They confirmed it was a mechanical fault, probably the compressor.

Via email (I wanted to keep a trail of correspondence) I agreed with the Dealer I would take it locally to confirm what the problem was and take it from there.

Anyway, to cut to the chase we discovered there was a mechanical fault with the air conditioning; it was certainly not working. The garage also gave the car a quick check over and they discovered a cracked spring. The garage I took it to were only informing me of the problem as I had told them we had just bought it and it was under guarantee. Remember, this is just days after picking the car up. The dealer, according to their own website, carry out a '38 point vehicle PDI'. Despite this, they didn't know the air conditioning wasn't working and didn't notice a cracked spring which actually made the car unroadworthy when they sold it!

I asked the garage for a quote on the repairs so I could give the dealer an idea; it was in excess of £400 for the repairs. Again, via a long drawn out discussion via email, the dealer agreed that we could take it locally but they only agreed to contribute £130 as this would be the cost to them if they did the repair. I was told, for the first time, that their 3 month guarantee only covers engine and gearbox and this really was a gesture of good will! I'm not unreasonable and we said fine. We just wanted to move on. We got the work done locally and sent the original invoice as evidence.

We waited over month and received absolutely nothing. Today I emailed them and asked when we could expect the cheque. To our complete surprise they emailed and said they had sent us a letter some time ago and we hadn't responded. Apparently, when they drove our traded in car 'for the first time' they discovered a fault with the auto gearbox. They sent it to a 'gearbox specialist' who apparently advised it was an 'old fault'. The car was faultless when we traded it in and we had owned it for over six years. No fault was ever apparent and neither was it when the dealer inspected it as part of the trade-in process.

I don't know the content of this letter as the guy who sent it is on holiday. I have asked for an electronic copy. I know they must have used our old car almost immediately as it was put onto their website the next day with pictures clearly showing the car had been moved in order to take the pictures. I was liaising with the dealer for a week after we traded it in and they never mentioned it even though, according to the email today, they noticed the fault the 'first time they tried it'!

I suspect best case scenario they are using the 'fault' as a bargaining tool so they don't have to pay us. Worse case they may try and demand money from us for the repair of the gearbox 'fault'. Can they do this when there was no 'fault' when we traded it in but one apparently surfaced after we raised issues with the car we bought off them?

My wife and I are a little stressed with this. We had to put three new tyres on the car as well as they were close to the legal limit. It has cost us an awful lot of money for a car we have only just bought!

colino

Unfortunately while trader is very shady, you've let him off the hook on several occasions, not taking it back, getting it repaired and then looking for a partial refund. Get focused, forget about the invisible letter and decide if you want to spend time and energy on this reclaiming all of your out of pocket expenses through Small Claims or writing it off to experience.

yat360

..sorry, that should say we knew air con wasn't working on the way back from picking it up!

yat360

True Colino. Thought we were just being reasonable though.

spacey2012

One was a private individual, one was a trader, one is bound by legislation one is not.
can you guess which one has to fix which car .
3 marks.

yat360

Thanks Spacey. We keep telling ourselves that. Still a little worrying though.

harveybobbles

From a dealers point of view here, I can see why they are contributing £130 as at the end of the day YOU chose to go to that perticular delaer knowing full well he was an hours drive away should anything go wrong.

Yiou should have taken it back to them really and asked for a loan car - or even your old car to use.

Kwik Fit will always find something wrong - they will even say a brand new car on the production line has worn tyres and leaking shockers..

The fact your PX "has a fault" isnt your problem as the dealer should have satified them selfs that the car was ok - we always take PX's for a drive upto 70mph and give it a quick check over for this reason.

yat360

harveybobbles wrote: »

From a dealers point of view here, I can see why they are contributing £130 as at the end of the day YOU chose to go to that perticular delaer knowing full well he was an hours drive away should anything go wrong.

Yiou should have taken it back to them really and asked for a loan car - or even your old car to use.

Kwik Fit will always find something wrong - they will even say a brand new car on the production line has worn tyres and leaking shockers..

The fact your PX "has a fault" isnt your problem as the dealer should have satified them selfs that the car was ok - we always take PX's for a drive upto 70mph and give it a quick check over for this reason.

To be honest, I don't have any issues re the £130 contribution as it was our choice to take it locally. We only did this after the dealer agreed we could and his contribution was to be £130. What disappoints me is that he said the air con worked and the car also had a cracked spring which meant the dealer sold it in an unroadworthy condition. Kwik Fit were correct though; the compressor was faulty which was confirmed by the garage I took it too. Also it was only when I made him aware of the faults did the dealer provide any detail of their warranty which happened to be gearbox and engine only. The £130 was merely a gesture of goodwill as I had only had the car for a 'short time' i.e. over the weekend.

The dealer didn't even bother to take it for a test drive....I had to voluntarily switch the engine on to try and make him interested but he just walked around it and put his nose into his Glass' guide or whatever they call it. Very bizarre. Every previous car I had traded in has always been drive tested by the dealer.

The irony is that we decided to trade it in and get less for it as we didn't want any hassle if something did happen with the car further down the line; I've read so many stories on the forums.