Just discovered car dealer lied about Cat D status

jamiewakeham

Afternoon, all. Could use some advice here.

I bought a Skoda Yeti in April 2014 from a dealer, paying £9700 for it, which I think was fair market price. At the time I asked the dealer if he had completed an HPI and write-off check, and he told me to my face that he had. Like an idiot I believed him and didn't carry out my own check.

I've decided to sell it. I had some interest at £6000, and just in case that fell through I took it to We Buy Any Car to get a quote. They told me it had been declared Cat D a few months before I bought it.

I have declared the Cat D status to the potential buyer. He is still happy to buy the car, and we're now about to agree at £3800. I don't know what happened to make it a Cat D - the salesman at WBAC had a good look over it for me and said he could find evidence of repainting and filler all the way down one wing, so his opinion was that it was a long scrape all along one side. Given the uncertainty about exactly what its history might hold, I think that's probably now a fair price - it seems a well repaired Cat D generally commands about a third less than an unblemished car?

My question is what action I might be able to take against the dealer. I have no direct evidence that he lied to me, but OTOH his invoice does not mention the Cat D status and the WayBack Machine records the original advert not mentioning it either. The fact that I paid market value for it must support my side too, I guess.

I understand that a trader is compelled to disclose Cat D status. I suspect if I tried to take him to the small claims court he would simply say that he had...

Any thoughts? I'm not sure what the right recompense might be - a third of what I paid, on the basis that I overpaid for a Cat D car? Or my losses on resale, which would be roughly a third of what I could have sold it for had it not been Cat D.

Cheers
Jamie

custardy

Have you run your own check?
In reality,you have no proof what the dealer did or didnt say.
I would contact the dealer before selling the car in case they offer a buyback deal, since you have the ad.

angrycrow

Not trying to defend the dealer but if the date of the accident was only 1 or 2 months before you bought it, it is possible that the cat d marker may not have been on it at that time.

Not unheard of for somebody to have a accident and claim against the third party insurers submitting an engineers report stating cat c or d. Insurer disputes liability and car owner disposes of the salvage. Car is purchased repaired on the cheap and passed to the dealer already repaired. Dealer checks hpi and finds car clear, sells car on in good faith. Insurer then admit liability pay previous owner and enter the car on miaftr unaware it has been sold on. Hpi will now show the car as a write off from date of original accident. New seller looses value and dealer unfairly gets branded a dodgy dealer. Miaftr should show the date the claim was logged on miaftr as well as the date of accident but as it is a restricted system not sure how you would check.

jamiewakeham

Thanks, both. I have yet to run my own check (although trying the sell-it-on-Autotrader trick it comes straight up as Cat D). If I remember correctly the difference between the date it was shown as becoming Cat D on WBAC's report and the date I bought it was about five months, but I'll need to commission my own check to confirm that. Is one of these £3 checks considered accurate, or do I need the £15 job from the RAC?

I will contact the dealer to give them the option of buy-back (I guess the idea behind this is they'd buy back at the non-Cat D market price of about £6000, and then have to sell on at the true Cat D price*) but I am fairly certain they're going to tell me where to stick it.

Cheers
Jamie

* or shift it onto the next unsuspecting sap like me...

scotty1971

What are "wayback machine records"?

Nobbie1967

If the dealer truely did a HPI check and it came back clear, then they can claim against the HPI indemnity insurance. A dealer friend of mine had to do this last year.

pelo_2

When the log book was changed to your name, didn't it say on the bottom that it was previously written off?
Mine does.

BeenThroughItAll

pelo wrote: »

When the log book was changed to your name, didn't it say on the bottom that it was previously written off?
Mine does.

Category D write offs are NOT RECORDED ON THE V5.

pelo_2

Are Cat C?
I was told mine was catD but it says
"THIS VEHICLE HAS BEEN SALVAGED BECAUSE THE ESTIMATED COST OF COMMERCIAL REPAIR WAS MORE THAN THE VALUE OF THE VEHICLE"

Tothepoint.

pelo wrote: »

Are Cat C?
I was told mine was catD but it says
"THIS VEHICLE HAS BEEN SALVAGED BECAUSE THE ESTIMATED COST OF COMMERCIAL REPAIR WAS MORE THAN THE VALUE OF THE VEHICLE"

They must be if cat D's aren't and it says that on your V5.

pelo_2

Yeah, I know and trust the garage that fixed the car up for the bloke so I'm not really bothered, I'll just be running it into the ground anyway, doubtful I'll be selling it on as it simply isn't worth much.