Second hand car - able to return?

happyfeet12

Hi,

On Tuesday I purchased a second hand VW Scirocco from a dealer. The car was described as in working order, had passed an MOT on 22 February and looked good and well. I paid nearly 9k for the car and travelled 3 hours on the train to collect it.

On the drive home, I noticed that the steering wheel wasn't quite centre when driving in a straight line but thought it may just be that I was on an uneven road or something. I emailed the dealer to query whether getting this realigned would be covered under warranty (as it had only been a day!) and he said it wasn't as it wasn't a fault (fair enough I suppose).

I took the car into a tyre garage today to get the alignment/tracking done and paid for this however it took several attempts for them to be able to get it correct and commented on how badly misaligned it was. I was speaking to the mechanic about the situation, explaining it was under rac warranty etc. Whilst the car was up on the ramp, he noticed that on the rear bushes one of them had snapped completely and the other was ready to snap any day now. He also noticed that there was some oil leaking from one of the rubber tubes somewhere.

To be honest it hasn't been a very good experience so far with this car and I was wondering if those problems were enough for me to reject the sale of the car (by law) and request that the dealer takes it back and provides a full refund?

Any help would be greatly appreciated and please feel free to ask me any questions.

glentoran99

I don't believe you can force a refund but you can get it repaired

turbadiesel

I knew a guy who bought a second land rover defender with a three month warranty on it, his mate was a lorry mechanic and they put it up on the ramp at his work and he checked the whole vehicle over with a fine tooth comb. Turned out there were multiple things wrong with it, in excess of £2k worth of work! He took it back and listed all the defects with the land rover and the garage sorted it for him. These included worn suspension components and leaks.

Its a pity you are quite far from where you bought it. Although I would say that an off centre steering wheel is a fault! there is something that is causing it and its been proven to be the alignment which is shockingly out. Dealers annoy me...

My dad bought a car about three hours away from us and he noticed a fault with the brakes, he had to get it sorted at a local garage and he spoke to the dealer he had bought the car from. He sent them a copy of the invoice for the work and the dealer paid him back in full with a cheque.

Just out of interest do a MOT history check on the .gov.uk website, its free and will tell you the vehicle history going back to 2005 (thats when the govt went digital with mot history) its also good to check your odometer readings match to what the car says!

Leaks are faults and so are worn bushes. I would not accept anything less than these to be repaired by the dealership you bought the car from. Or a full refund if the work is done elsewhere.

arcon5

What bushes? Snap??
Alignment isn't a fault if it's just off centre, still functions exactly as it should.
Probably cheaper to have it done anyway than travel 3hrs for them to do it