Dispute after buying a Car

ThePottery

Hi,


I have been involved in a dispute with a local garage regarding a car we bought for £8339 and I would be grateful for some legal advice. This is complicated by an additional cost of £549 for a 3 year warranty which I have been assured can be transferred.

In essence we part exchanged our old car for £1300 and bought the second hand dual fuel car. Within a couple of weeks it was into the garage because of an engine warning light. The warning light was reset but came on again a few days later and the car went back to the garage who reset the light again. The warning light has come on again and again and visits 3 and 4 resulted in replacement of an oxygen sensor and a split hose respectively. I did accept to book the car in with them for a further week-long visit and to turn off the LPG fuel system to try and identify the problem, which it appears to have done. I made the booking on provision that we could discuss alternative ways to resolve the problem (i.e. repair, replace with an alternative or refund of money). The garage have always said that they are confident in repairing the car but after 4 visits they have been unable to find the fault and fix it. The garage then offered a refund of an insulting £4000 for the car, half what we paid for it! At this point I lost all faith in their ability to understand the situation and was angered by their arrogance. I cancelled the week-long booking and I do not want any dealings with them in the future. I have needed to continue to drive the car due to work and family commitments and the warning light has not come on since the LPG fuel system was switched off, but the car refused to start for me last week and I had to call out the breakdown service!!

The garage have relinquished a little and have now offered £6500 for the car. The case that they have made for the reduction of the cost is that I have driven it for more than 5000 miles and have had nearly six months of motoring. I am disputing the revised price of the car as approximately £1300 seems extortionate for an additional 6000 miles that I have driven. It also seems a little odd that the £1300 is the part-exchange component of the deal. So the garage take the car and keep the £1300, which seems unfair to me!

I have not resolved the situation and I am constantly frustrated when the garage either ignore what has been discussed or change their take on things. I have met with them once but again this got me nowhere and have refused other meetings because of this. The garage have ended up changing the offer from a refund to an offer to buy the car back, not what I asked for in the first place.




At the moment I am seriously considering accepting the offer of £6500 just to have this over with, but fully intend to follow this up with a letter to both the dealership MD and the manufacturers MDs to make them aware of how I have been treated. Social media will also be used to warn people of the extremely low standard of service that I have experienced.

I have never been to small claims court before so dont know if I have a strong enough case, does anyone have any opinions?

Cheers

Mike

bod1467

If you want legal advice, see a lawyer. Do you have legal protection cover on your home or motoring insurance?

ThePottery

The advice that we have got so far has been conflicting and lawyers rates do not make it worth it in this case.

leespot

ThePottery wrote: »

The advice that we have got so far has been conflicting and lawyers rates do not make it worth it in this case.

If that is where you are at, then you have little choice but to take the offer if you want rid of the situation.

teabelly

If it's an LPG conversion not a factory option then you'll have nothing but problems. Dodgy LPG conversions are par for the course.

Who did the conversion in the first place? To fix any LPG related problems you need to take the car to a registered and pukka LPG specialist. A normal garage will not be able to deal with it.

If you paid for a 3 year warranty with this vehicle won't that cover any repairs or issues with it?

Push for more money returned. If the car has never worked reliably on LPG then they should be returning some of the excess fuel costs as well. I'd get a refund on the warranty too. Why would you buy another vehicle from them?

Talk to the citizen's advice consumer help line. It's free. They can also get trading standards involved too.

ThePottery

Thanks for the replies/advice. The LPG is a conversion and it was attractive at the time! The garage have not been able to deal with the problem so far but have said that they are confident they can fix it with the help of experts.

The offer of half the original cost for the car was completely insulting and have no trust/confidence in them now. Yes the warranty covers the repairs but it will probably break again at some point and the circle will continue. Last week it refused to start after being left for a couple of days but the garage weren't interested in hearing that. So, I don't want any more to do with them. They reckon the warranty is transferable between cars and garages so I have asked for legally binding evidence that the warranty can be transferred like this, they are working on that right now.

I have spoken to CA and TS but speak to someone different every time and get conflicting opinions.

I think I might take the money and run, it will probably cost them more than the £1300 in bad publicity anyway!

teabelly

Look around for suitable replacements. Whatever they offer you has to buy something similar to what that one ought to have been.

ThePottery

I have looked around and will have to down size because of the money lost, the garage don't give a damn about that! Its likely that they will have the car back, repair it, and put it on the forecourt again thus making another profit! They also took my old car as part-ex so probably made a small profit from that too! Good business but poor after-sales in my opinion.

Hintza

The garage wanted the car for a period of time, which would have given them the opportunity to do extended tests but you cancelled.

I think this was a big mistake, the garage have been working through a series of tests you really should have waited until they had had it for a week.

From what you say negotiations have now broken down and I suspect they will now play hard ball. You could be stuck with a lemon.

ThePottery

Yes in hindsight it probably was a mistake but I was angry with their arrogance! In any case whos to say that they would repair that problem and it would either come back or something else would go wrong. I would still be stuck with a dud which is constantly returned for repairs. I think I will probably cut and run and let them have the dud back.

Its good to talk this through with people remote from the problem.

ThePottery

oh, and they have had the car back 4 times, I have been flexible when they have asked that they might have it for more than a day, but they havent needed it for more than day each time