Faulty car, Section 75, Court action, Help!!

LisaandMatt

Hello all. Ive got some great advice searching this forum over the years but now need to ask you good people for some help and moral support.

I will try and keep this as brief as possible but could go on for a bit as its getting a bit complicated.

My husband and I found a car we wanted to look at on an ebay ad posted by a local car dealer. Went to look at it, small test drive then decided to go ahead with the purchase.
02/06/16 Car purchased, £995 as part exchange for our old vehicle and £2500 on credit card.
03/06/16 Hubby used car for work, all seemed fine but was a short local trip.
Didn't use the car over the weekend of 4 and 5 June as we were away and used my car.

06/06/16 Hubby on longer trip, when accelerating car cut out (on a fast busy A road!!!) Got it going again and was fine for rest of the day. We were concerned but he decided to use the car the next day to see if it happened again.

07/06/16 Hubby off to work again, cut out twice. That evening we emailed the dealer to say what had happened and would be returning the car the next day for a refund under Consumer Rights Act 2015. No reply from dealer.

08/06/16 Car cut out again so Hubby called AA for rescue. AA diagnosed the fault and said he would follow Hubby home to make sure he got there safely. Car cut out again with AA behind. AA man said same fault again and gave us breakdown report with the diagnosed problem explained. Hubby rang dealer as we still had had no contact from him and managed to arrange to take the car back. The dealer would only say he would look at it.
Under CRA I knew I was entitled to a refund and as it was paid on my card I went along so they could action it. All dealer would say was that we couldn't return it we had to give him the chance to repair. We are well within 30 days so that was his first dodgy comment.
I said that under CRA we are entitled to return a faulty product within 30 days for full refund. If it was after 30 days and before 6 months he has the option of offering repair, replacement or refund. He went very quiet for a moment then started blustering saying that he doesn't, he doesn't deal with legal side of things, his partner does. We were going round in circles for a while. He insisted he didn't have to refund. He didn't want to see AA report and said he would get it inspected by his own mechanic. We felt this was reasonable but would still only accept refund and nothing else. He offered us the car he was in as a courtesy vehicle for a few days as we might like it and want to do a swap and that it would be fine for us to use it on his trade plates, sooo not legal, so we refused that too.
We ended with us saying he can inspect it but wanted contact from his business partner asap regarding getting the refund. As we had officially rejected the vehicle and knew we could not drive it after doing so we had to leave the car there. We gave him one set of keys so he could do his inspection.

09/06/16 Hubby texted dealer for an update, all we got back was that it was in the workshop so we asked about talking to his partner about refund. All he would say was it is being inspected and his partner would contact us shortly so we waited.

10/06/16 As you can see getting any info from these people is going to be tricky. My hubby lost patience and so did I at the dealer refusing refund no matter what so I called credit card to get ball rolling on Section 75. Hubby also left negative feedback on ebay (bad move but we were getting nowhere)

Within a couple of hours of the negative feedback being left the dealer texted Hubby saying they wouldn't refund us until we removed negative feedback. Hubby said we would request it removed once full refund was received or the return of our old car plus the £2500. No reply.

11/06/16 I receieved an email from the business partner early in the morning finally admitting the fault has occured twice while they have had it back (despite them saying it was sorted the day before) so they had agreed to refund us but only if negative feedback was removed (surely they cant bully us like that) The email went on but ended with them saying if we didnt remove it they would begin legal proceedings on monday morning (today). I responded with an email again stating our rights under CRA and would only be willing to accept a full refund and that once that had been received we would happily agree to the feedback being removed but not before as it took us leaving the feedback in the first place to get them to admit there was a fault and offer a refund.

Today 13/06/16 Hubby got another text saying they had started legal proceedings. The thing is we have no idea what they are going to take us to court for??? They have the car AND our money as we haven't had the paperwork from the credit card company yet to apply for a refund from them. We can only think they want to go to court to force us to remove negative feedback despite them supplying a faulty car and refusing a refund even though we will remove it if we get the money back from them???? If we have to claim back under section 75 there's no way I'm removing it!!

The email I received on 11/06 was signed with the name of the business partner like this "XXXXX XXXXXXXX Q.C." Now to me that looks like he's trying to say he is a QC like a barrister (Queen's Council) Hmmmm seems a bit like scaremongering to me. I have emailed the Solicitors Regulatory Authority to ask for advice about this person as doing a Law Society solicitor search only brings up one result of the same name and its an associate for a firm in London not a used car dealer 80 miles away!! Plus the email was sent from the dealers email with no Law Firm details etc. They did write at the top "Without Prejudice" maybe to make it more official looking.

It all reeks of bullying and scaremongering and I wont be scared and bullied out of claiming what I am legally entitled to!!!

Oh also on 10/06 the dealer said our old car has been sold so we couldn't have it back but it's up for sale on their website today.

I am so very sorry for rambling but I cant really condense it any further. texts have gone back and forth as we are insisting on written communication only but the above is the gist of it. We're entitled to refund (confirmed by citizens advice) they kept saying no until feedback left then offer a refund but only if its removed!!! Now allegedly we're being taken to court for.......something we can't figure out :wall:

Any insights/help/advice/anything gratefully received

keithdc

Just remove feedback and get refund.

LisaandMatt

The dealer has been quite unpleasant throughout this whole thing. Time and time again they have refused a refund and are now threatening some sort of court action if we don't remove the feedback. Why should we? We're entitled to a refund and if they do we'll remove the feedback so what's stopping them refunding seeing as they are the ones in the wrong.

From previous experience with ebay they say that feedback can be removed once a dispute has been resolved. It clearly hasn't been and to be honest we don't believe the dealer after what they've already tried.

If anyone could see in my post what they could be taking us to court for I'd be really grateful. Surely no judge or ebay would say we have to remove it if we haven't received a refund and that our offer of removal after refund is not acceptable. I believe that even if we refused to remove it after refund ebay can overrule and do it themselves???

pinkshoes

Get them to put it in writing that they will give you a full refund within 48 hours if you remove the neg.

Othewise send your own letter before action giving them 14 days to refund in full.

shaun_from_Africa

keithdc wrote: »

Just remove feedback and get refund.

Why should they?
For a start, there is no guarantee that removing the feedback will result in any refund and secondly, feedback is there for a reason and that reason is to advise other ebay users of what they may face when dealing with a particular seller.

OP,
provided that what you wrote in the feedback was factually correct and provable, I wouldn't worry too much about any legal action.
Libel cases can be very expensive and it's probably all bluff from the seller and their "QC"
Ask yourself. What are the chances that a qualified Queen's councillor be working as a car salesman?
Libel cases (if this is what they are going to try) can't be heard as part of the small claims process in the county court so to go from talking about starting a case to actually getting the paperwork process completed will probably take a fair time so I very much doubt if they have managed this today.

Just forget about communicating with them any more and await the S75 paperwork and follow through with that.

LisaandMatt

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

Why should they?
For a start, there is no guarantee that removing the feedback will result in any refund and secondly, feedback is there for a reason and that reason is to advise other ebay users of what they may face when dealing with a particular seller.

OP,
provided that what you wrote in the feedback was factually correct and provable, I wouldn't worry too much about any legal action.
Libel cases can be very expensive and it's probably all bluff from the seller and their "QC"
Ask yourself. What are the chances that a qualified Queen's councillor be working as a car salesman?
Libel cases (if this is what they are going to try) can't be heard as part of the small claims process in the county court so to go from talking about starting a case to actually getting the paperwork process completed will probably take a fair time so I very much doubt if they have managed this today.

Just forget about communicating with them any more and await the S75 paperwork and follow through with that.

Thats what I thought about the court action libel/slander or similar but as we wrote about them refusing refund on faulty product it is true so they wouldn't win anyway!! At least it's
highly unlikely.

I just don't trust them to actually refund us no matter what we do, the QC being a car salesman in his spare time (or vice versa) did make me chuckle. The lady in the dispute resolution team for my credit card was nice. I did have to explain several times that the other £995 was a part exchange vehicle (took her a while to understand) but we have an invoice for the full amount paid £3495 not just the £2500 paid on card so that should be enough shouldn't it? The card is liable for the full amount not just what's on the statement. At least that's my understanding of the Consumer Credit act (above £100 but less than £30,000 even if only part payment on card).

shaun_from_Africa

LisaandMatt wrote: »

The card is liable for the full amount not just what's on the statement. At least that's my understanding of the Consumer Credit act (above £100 but less than £30,000 even if only part payment on card).

That's correct.
Under S75, the credit supplier can be held liable for more than the credit that they supplied. In fact, they can be liable for more than the total price of the goods if the breach of contract has caused losses in excess of the price of the goods.

LisaandMatt

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

That's correct.
Under S75, the credit supplier can be held liable for more than the credit that they supplied. In fact, they can be liable for more than the total price of the goods if the breach of contract has caused losses in excess of the price of the goods.

Loss of earnings? For the days that my husband wasn't able to get to a clients. We are both self employed but we could ask the client if they would be willing to make a statement saying we weren't able to get there?

shaun_from_Africa

LisaandMatt wrote: »

Loss of earnings? For the days that my husband wasn't able to get to a clients. We are both self employed but we could ask the client if they would be willing to make a statement saying we weren't able to get there?

Not a good idea to mention this.
S75 is part of the Consumer credit act and if your credit card company think that the car was being used for business purposes, they may well try to use that as a reason to refuse the claim.

LisaandMatt

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

Not a good idea to mention this.
S75 is part of the Consumer credit act and if your credit card company think that the car was being used for business purposes, they may well try to use that as a reason to refuse the claim.

Ah ok, I suppose we'll have to write that off then! Luckily we have been able to get use of another vehicle until we get another car that he can use to get to work so we haven't lost too much!

Any idea how long an average S75 claim takes? Or am I asking how long a piece of string is?

shaun_from_Africa

I've only every made one S75 claim and that took a couple of months to resolve.
However, one of the reasons it took so long was that my CC company asked me to provide a written statement from an independent company detailing the fault with the goods in question and this took me a while to get.
As you already have the AA report, it might well go much quicker for you.