Scammed by used car dealership?

beakysian

Thank you everyone and apologies for being a muppet and chopping the labour/VAT/total off the invoice. I'm at work now so can't lay my hands on the paperwork but the total paid was £945 in the end. Based on arcon5 and beenthroughitall's suggestions it does look like they've added a comfortable mark-up to each part and labour is £50/hr+VAT which topped up the total.

Obviously I'm gutted to be taken for such a mug as this has cost me my only savings and I'm back to square one so I appreciate your helpful suggestions. A very hard lesson learned and I'm already on the case for local recommendations for future work.

BeenThroughItAll

beakysian wrote: »

Thank you everyone and apologies for being a muppet and chopping the labour/VAT/total off the invoice. I'm at work now so can't lay my hands on the paperwork but the total paid was £945 in the end. Based on arcon5 and beenthroughitall's suggestions it does look like they've added a comfortable mark-up to each part and labour is £50/hr+VAT which topped up the total.

Obviously I'm gutted to be taken for such a mug as this has cost me my only savings and I'm back to square one so I appreciate your helpful suggestions. A very hard lesson learned and I'm already on the case for local recommendations for future work.

The important thing is that you're open minded about it. I'm afraid it's all too easy to blame a supplying dealer, when as pointed out above the car they supplied had six months' MOT when sold; they're more likely to be car sellers than car mechanics in many cases.


Ultimately, when you're buying a car at that end of the market, due diligence on the purchase really comes down to the purchaser - if you don't know enough to be confident in condition it's important you find someone who does.


In this case, all that's happened is that you've bought a car which has some wear and tear on it. It happens - and that's OK; but you do seem to have paid a lot for those issues to be fixed and that's unfortunate. I'd say the garage you've used has made a good return on that work, but that doesn't necessarily make them dishonest - just profitable - although I'm sure the costs could have been reduced somewhat if they'd chosen to.

beakysian

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

The important thing is that you're open minded about it. I'm afraid it's all too easy to blame a supplying dealer, when as pointed out above the car they supplied had six months' MOT when sold; they're more likely to be car sellers than car mechanics in many cases.


Ultimately, when you're buying a car at that end of the market, due diligence on the purchase really comes down to the purchaser - if you don't know enough to be confident in condition it's important you find someone who does.


In this case, all that's happened is that you've bought a car which has some wear and tear on it. It happens - and that's OK; but you do seem to have paid a lot for those issues to be fixed and that's unfortunate. I'd say the garage you've used has made a good return on that work, but that doesn't necessarily make them dishonest - just profitable - although I'm sure the costs could have been reduced somewhat if they'd chosen to.

Thank you for such a reasoned response. The place it came from are also an auto shop but too far from me to use regularly. They carried out some work under warranty. I don't think the garage I used this time has fiddled anything but they seem to have ordered pricey parts and/or made a nice profit. In their defence they worked after hours to return my car to me and did tracking for free when they saw the stress I was under. I think I have to file this under 'one of those things' and learn from it.