Dealer PX my car for 10 times its worth

AdrianC

The only important figure is the cost to change. It's cost you £10,500 plus your old car.

He must've been flying a serious kite at £15k...

EdGasketTheSecond

If it is all signed; then the deal is done. It's their loss.


Look at it the other way. If you had signed for a car for 15K and then found out it was probably only worth £10K would the garage happily return £5K? Not on your nelly.

Car_54

EdGasketTheSecond wrote: »

If it is all signed; then the deal is done. It's their loss.
.

It;s not that simple.


"A unilateral mistake is one made by just one of the two parties to a contract. The law is well settled, though its application is not always easy. If one party has made a mistake as to the terms of the contract and that mistake is known to the other party at the time when the contract is being formed then the contract is not binding (or perhaps more accurately it can be said there never was a contract). This is because the parties have not made an agreement. For that to happen they must be of one mind"

http://www.saplaw.co.uk/litigation-articles/209-the-law-about-mistake-in-contract

EdGasketTheSecond

But how do you prove 'that mistake is known to the other party'? The OP could argue he thought it a reasonable offer in the circumstances i.e. buying an overpriced car from a dealer and being offered a sweetener, like with the scrappage schemes, to seal the deal.

Car_54

EdGasketTheSecond wrote: »

But how do you prove 'that mistake is known to the other party'? The OP could argue he thought it a reasonable offer in the circumstances i.e. buying an overpriced car from a dealer and being offered a sweetener, like with the scrappage schemes, to seal the deal.

Well, in the very unlikely event that it went to court, it would be for the judge to decide whether that argument was convincing.

Kim_kim

Car deals do give part x values in excess of what the car is worth to secure a sale - obviously they absorb it into the profit they make on the sale.
If that was me, I’d have assumed this is what happened.

Clive_Woody

Car_54 wrote: »

It;s not that simple.

"A unilateral mistake is one made by just one of the two parties to a contract. The law is well settled, though its application is not always easy. If one party has made a mistake as to the terms of the contract and that mistake is known to the other party at the time when the contract is being formed then the contract is not binding (or perhaps more accurately it can be said there never was a contract). This is because the parties have not made an agreement. For that to happen they must be of one mind"

http://www.saplaw.co.uk/litigation-articles/209-the-law-about-mistake-in-contract

The car dealer had the opportunity to examine the car and apparently declined and made an offer based purely on the registration details. It would be difficult to prove he did not view the car, but this seem more a case of negligence than a mistake in entering values into a system.

Not sure if Caveat emptor would be more applicable and this would be considered a tough lesson for the dealer.

Mercdriver

Kim_kim wrote: »

Car deals do give part x values in excess of what the car is worth to secure a sale - obviously they absorb it into the profit they make on the sale.
If that was me, I’d have assumed this is what happened.

If it was say £500 or 10% overvalued, there would be no disagreement as the purchaser could not be expected to know any different. The OP, however is aware, and you can tell from the title of the post and the tone of the post that he is aware that the amount is unusually high and therefore an obvious error. The OP would very likely lose in court if they decided to enforce the contract.

Clive_Woody

Mercdriver wrote: »

If it was say £500 or 10% overvalued, there would be no disagreement as the purchaser could not be expected to know any different. The OP, however is aware, and you can tell from the title of the post and the tone of the post that he is aware that the amount is unusually high and therefore an obvious error. The OP would very likely lose in court if they decided to enforce the contract.

Unless the OP has deliberately mislead the car dealer then surely the onus is on the dealer to at least bother inspecting the car they have offered £5k for, to confirm if it worth that much to them.

I appreciate Caveat emptor is normally discussed in different circumstances, but it seems applicable here. It sounds like the sale was completed and the buyer (car dealer) failed to carry out satisfactory checks before completing the deal (buyers remorse).

There are plenty of tales of woe on here from folk who bought cars and then carried out an inspection afterwards, only to find problems, leaving themselves little recourse to claim a refund.

Mercdriver

Not when the error is obvious as is patently clear by what the OP has said. There is a world of difference between 500 and all 5000. He was aware of the error and yet failed to speak up. I'd say that was deliberately misleading. His acceptance of the contract knowing that there was an obvious error is by its very nature misleading.