Bought faulty car from trader on autotradr

scotsbob

motorguy wrote: »

And you can back that up can you?

I suspect not.

I would have thought that the numerous posts on this forum about dodgy traders would back it up. Just use the search facility.

motorguy

scotsbob wrote: »

I would have thought that the numerous posts on this forum about dodgy traders would back it up. Just use the search facility.

According to the Office of Fair Trading, there are 3.6 million used cars bought each year in the UK, of which most are bought from dealers.

I would say there are probably 500 queries relating to a used car purchase on this forum per year. Of which probably 20% are unreasonable expectations by the buyer, 60% end up being resolved to the buyers satisfaction by the dealer, and 20% go unresolved.

So thats, say 100 posts on here altogether where the customer feels aggrieved.

So, 100 posts, against 3.6 million sales per year.

I'm making that as 0.003%.

So by using what you suggest as "searching this forum" does that fall into your definition of "most"?

No? Thought not.

Joe_Horner

Thing is, MG, it's like the "supermarket fuel issue" - no-one ever posts online about the times they fill up and the car uses the whole tank without any issues!

motorguy

Joe_Horner wrote: »

Thing is, MG, it's like the "supermarket fuel issue" - no-one ever posts online about the times they fill up and the car uses the whole tank without any issues!

Yes. Exactly.

Hence why its a bit silly to say "most dealers dont stand over their cars" - 99% of the time they do.

scotsbob

motorguy wrote: »

I would say there are probably 500 queries relating to a used car purchase on this forum per year. Of which probably 20% are unreasonable expectations by the buyer, 60% end up being resolved to the buyers satisfaction by the dealer, and 20% go unresolved.

Can you give a reference to support any one of those figures (most especially the third one)

No? Thought not.

Furthermore, to base your figures of complaints on this forum compared to all used cars sold in the UK is absurd. You are assuming that all used car buyers in the UK only complain here. You have not even included figure of almost 60,000 complaints to the OFT alone

Anyhow post your references up here so we can examine them.

musafir05

motorguy wrote: »

And you can back that up can you?

I suspect not.

Ofcourse hit the search button and enjoy the horror stories of traders who refuse or waste the customer's time because they do not wish or cannot afford a repair.

I hope it ends well for the thread owner.

motorguy

scotsbob wrote: »

Can you give a reference to support any one of those figures (most especially the third one)

No? Thought not.

My experience of almost 10 years on this forum, the bulk of which being on this motor forum would leave me to believe the figures are reasonably accurate - certainly more accurate than your "most dealers dont stand over their cars" statement, which is clearly silly.

A simple scan of the threads would tell you that those figures are roughly correct.

Even if they're not, plugging the 500 threads per year year in instead of 100 still only gets you 0.014%

scotsbob wrote: »

Furthermore, to base your figures of complaints on this forum compared to all used cars sold in the UK is absurd.

Thats what you told me to do? You made this BIG statement about how most dealers wont stand over their cars, and when pulled on it, you said to check the forums here?

So thats what i did?

And frankly i did it to show how ridiculous your posts were.

scotsbob wrote: »

You are assuming that all used car buyers in the UK only complain here. You have not even included figure of almost 60,000 complaints to the OFT alone

Anyhow post your references up here so we can examine them.

Complaints to the OFT run at approx 70,000 per year. Thats approx 1.86% of people have a problem that they complain about. Of those 70,000 around 30% go unrectified. So thats back to approx 0.08% of the time the dealer wont stand over the car.

Still way short of your "most" statement - and still before you take into account how a customers expectations are not what they're entitled to in law.

Frankly, go look it up. I did. I havent seen you produce ANY evidence to support your "most dealers dont stand over their cars" statement.

How about you produce some evidence around that? Instead of mouthing off about something you clearly know nothing about?

motorguy

musafir05 wrote: »

Ofcourse hit the search button and enjoy the horror stories of traders who refuse or waste the customer's time because they do not wish or cannot afford a repair.

I hope it ends well for the thread owner.

And can you produce any evidence that of the 3.6 million used cars bought each year in the UK, "most" dealers dont stand over their cars?

For every ONE complaint there is on here, theres roughly another 99 purchases that have no issues at all. I'll leave you to work out the percentages.

Even better - go down through 20 of those threads and see how many REALLY were down to the dealer to resolve, and how many times the dealer actually comes back with a satisfactory solution OR we dont hear from the O/P again, strongly suggesting it got resolved.

Joe_Horner

scotsbob wrote: »

You have not even included figure of almost 60,000 complaints to the OFT alone
.

The thing is, if we allow for half the 3.6 million sales being from traders (it's higher than that but I'm trying to make the traders look as bad as possible) even 60 000 out of 1.8 million sales is a remarkably small 3.3%. In other words, 1 complaint for every 30 or so cars sold - if you buy a used car every 3 years over a 90 year driving career, you may have one cause for complaint on average. And that's assuming that (a) every one of those 60k complaints are upheld and (b) they're all against different traders.

In practice I'd suggest (although can't be a*sed to hunt down figures) that a good proportion are found to be unwarranted complaints, and those that are upheld will often be in clusters against a particular cowboy trader.

So, while MG's figures may be slanted in one direction, yours are equally slanted in the other

motorguy

Joe_Horner wrote: »

So, while MG's figures may be slanted in one direction, yours are equally slanted in the other

In fairness, no not that slanted - i'm quoting from an OFT report.

"UK consumers buy 3.6 million second-hand cars from car dealers each year, spending £24 billion."

http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/676408/oft1217.pdf

(First line of the executive summary)

Re-calc your figures based on 3.6 million, and you're back to my figures.