Sold a car based on lies

maninthestreet

If the cats were missing since you bought it in April, why did the engine management light only come on last week?

wesleyad

How did previous owner get it through MOTs? Keeps swapping them in and out? I know people do this with reg plates and lights but seems extreme for a cat.

tacpot12

You don't need a solicitor. Which? magazine have a tool to help draft a letter to the dealer. See:

https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-rights-act

If you quote the correct law, be specific about the damage, and offer ADR it will scare the dealer as much as a solicitor's letter, which is probably not much. The one thing a solicitor's letter will do is tell the dealer that you can afford to go to court.

The dealer might start to pay attention when the court paperwork arrives...

Shagger

a.turner wrote: »

What do you want to happen?

I want a local garage that I trust to re-fit a pair of OEM cats, as should have been on the car when I bought it, and then for the place I bought it from to pay the costs.

Shagger

k3lvc wrote: »

Seriously ?? You paid £15k for an M3 from a (presumably back street) dealer and didn't even get it up on ramps to have a look.

Your £300 to fit cats is likely to either involve nicking them off another car or fitting empty ones and disabling the light.

If other than that the car is legit then I'd be taking it on the chin and taking it to a specialist to sort out

It wasn't a "back street" dealer. It was an independent garage but one with about 60 cars of stock, many of which were worth upwards of £25k and a few worth between £60k and £100k. They also had a lot of (apparently legit) positive reviews, a big main site and a separate secure compound. I had no reason to suspect anything was wrong with the car or the dealer, especially as it was sold with a warranty. Even if I'd got it up on ramps, any issues could all well have been covered by undertrays etc anyway, but to be honest I don't know of anyone these days who'd insist on that. Even if you pay for an RAC inspection they don't do that.

I agree that £300 to replace the cats is dodgy, and in fact now I've had to approach them with this issue, the appalling attitude in general makes the whole outfit look dodgy. But as is often the case, you only see the true colours of places like this when you've got a problem that's going to cost them money.

Shagger

pinkshoes wrote: »

Ok, so it's a high maintenance car we're talking about here...

Buying something like this, you really should have had a good look before buying, particularly underneath. Obviously hindsight is a marvellous thing...

First of all, you need to quantify your loss. How much is it ACTUALLY going to cost you to get it re-fitted?

You then need to send a letter before action to the garage, asking them to either fit the Cat converter, or pay £X for you to have it fitted elsewhere. (send with proof of postage giving them a timeline to respond by in writing).

If it went to court, the outcome would be based on probabilities.
Has the garage put their contradictive statements in writing? If so, good!

But the court would want to know why you would buy such a car without basic checks. It is quite common for people to remove the Cats on M3s, so I would have thought someone buying one might know such a thing and check... You would therefore need to plea naivety.

Next time when spending so much money on a car, take a car geek with you!!

(I'm married to a car geek, hence I know a fair bit.)

I had a very good look before buying, but when a car is advertised as being unmodified by a seemingly reputable trader, and it's passed its MOT (including emissions test) 6 days prior to me buying it, why would I have any reason to think it'd been de-catted/want to check it on ramps unless I thought the trader was deliberately lying? And if I had any reason to think they were lying, I wouldn't have bought the car from them.

As far as I'm concerned, that's the bottom line here. They lied. I don't think it makes me naive for believing their lies/not questioning everything they told me. Whenever you buy a car, even a new one, you're putting your faith in someone else's honesty to some degree.

In terms of cost, I'm going to get a quote from a trusted local garage tomorrow but from the quick look I've had I'd expect maybe £1,000 or probably double that if they use genuine BMW parts, as they're typically horrendous.

Presumably somewhere is a stored copy of their Autotrader advert which will prove that there was no mention of a decat, but how I could access this I don't know.

Shagger

maninthestreet wrote: »

If the cats were missing since you bought it in April, why did the engine management light only come on last week?

The light actually came on within a couple of weeks, but when I took it in for diagnostics the garage said that cat errors on older cars can be false alarms and the best thing is to clear them and wait to see if they come back. If so, it's a genuine issue and should be investigated.
Since then the car has hardly been driven (it's not my daily driver, just a weekend/fun car).

Shagger

wesleyad wrote: »

How did previous owner get it through MOTs? Keeps swapping them in and out? I know people do this with reg plates and lights but seems extreme for a cat.

He could well have done, as from what I've read it's quite common for people who have access to ramps to just swap them in and out. I think it's only a half hour job if you can get good access to the underneath of the car.

What I really want to know is how it got through its most recent MOT, because that was done by the dealer I bought it from not by the previous owner. I know they took my car in as a part-ex so I suspect they only realised it had been decatted when the deal had been done, they knew it'd be expensive to fix and so they falsified the emissions test results to get it through the MOT. Why else would they try to lie about who did the MOT, or lie and say that when the MOT was done there were definitely cats fitted?


I wish I'd recorded the phone call because the guy was just constantly lying and contradicting himself. At first it was "Well you knew it was decatted because it was on the advert", then when I reminded him that Autotrader adverts might be saved somewhere it was "Well we didn't do the MOT so we've been lied to", then when I told him I had proof they'd done the MOT it was "Well the MOT place must be lying so take it up with them", then it was "You must have taken the cats off yourself", then finally it was "No it's got a sport cat fitted instead of the standard one, so it looks different. It'll still pass its MOT".

Ectophile

pinkshoes wrote: »

But the court would want to know why you would buy such a car without basic checks. It is quite common for people to remove the Cats on M3s, so I would have thought someone buying one might know such a thing and check... You would therefore need to plea naivety.

I can't imagine the average member of public, buying a car, having a set of ramps, or even to knowing what to look for if they did.


The seller is a trader who is assumed to know all about cars. The buyer is an ordinary consumer.

k3lvc

Ectophile wrote: »

I can't imagine the average member of public, buying a car, having a set of ramps, or even to knowing what to look for if they did.


The seller is a trader who is assumed to know all about cars. The buyer is an ordinary consumer.

But this isn't your average runabout - it's a high performance saloon that's likely to attract an enthusiast/specialist and needing significat research before purchase.


Dropping £15k on something that could have spent it's life on a track would generally warrant more than a cursory glance at it's bodywork