Garage has aquired car in a misleading way!

KimJongUn88

How do you know that it’s the garage selling the car? They may have sold it on as scrap and the buyer decided to fix it.

In any event, what happens to a car once you’ve sold it is none of your concern. 

DB1904

KimJongUn88 said:

How do you know that it’s the garage selling the car? They may have sold it on as scrap and the buyer decided to fix it.

In any event, what happens to a car once you’ve sold it is none of your concern. 

It's on "there" aka their Facebook page.

Herzlos

Ibrahim5 said:

It's funny that someone expected a garage to tell the truth. It doesn't work like that. Never has.

I'd hate to be as bitter and jaded as you are, life must be a real drag if you can't trust anyone.

Anyway, at the time the garage took ownership of the car, it was worth scrap value (£100) minus any outstanding labour bill. At the same point, once it was no longer in your partners possession that was her involvement with it done. It's slightly cheeky to claim to scrap a car than not, but I'm assuming she filled out the paperwork to pass it to a trader and not for it being scrapped.

So the garage took it off her to save her the hassle of disposing of it, and some time over the last few months restored it and have it up for sale. Maybe they've been letting a trainee work on it and acquiring parts for it as they went. Maybe they got the parts and worked on it with their free time. It's pretty much irrelevant anyway.

On the plus side, it's a car saved from the scrap yard and something that'll get someone about for a while.

Regarding the finance for both cars, it's pretty standard to roll any negative equity into the new deal. It's generally better to have car finance for £9k than to take out a £6k finance in addition to an existing £3k one.

The only thing worth doing here is looking at the paperwork to see what kind of interest she's paying on the finance, and see if she can refinance it at a lower rate and save some money there. But any action against the garage is a waste of time.

marky489

Thanks everyone for your feedback, much appreciated 👍

Ibrahim5

Some poor person will end up buying it. It will be sold as perfect condition, one careful owner, full service history. It'll be nothing but trouble.

Geodark

pinkshoes said:

It would have cost HER £4000 to fix, then as a private seller in its fixed state perhaps would have been only worth about £4000.

To the garage, their fixing cost is then parts only as they will do the labour bit for free.

But... £4000?? A basic google tells me a Kia Rio should be between £370 to £970 to get this done. 

https://car-doc.co.uk/timing-chain-replacement/

I think the garage really saw her coming, but it was up to her to go and get a quote elsewhere. She chose not to. That's life.

If she wanted, she could go back to the garage with some evidence and complain that they ripped her off. Perhaps even put it in writing and see if they would refund say £2000 as a good will gesture? They of course can say no...

And if they do say no? Then that's the advantage of social media. I'm sure a sob story in the local paper, or a factual review on their FB page or elsewhere saying how they told a vulnerable girl that the timing chain replacement would cost £4000, advised her to scrap the car by giving it to them, then later finding out what it should have cost... Lots of people (mainly women) that know nothing about car maintenance and repairs rely heaving on online reviews when making garage choices!

But it wasnt a timing chain replacment - it was a broken timing chain - two totally different things - so chances are there was a lot of other damage to the engine. 

theoretica

If the work would have cost her £4k and the dealer asking price after it was done was £5.5k then the car having basically scrap value seems right.  Which leaves the question of did the garage hugely inflate the quote for the work - but she had already had a broken chain diagnosed, and discussed the work with Kia - did these previous discussions give her reasons to think the quote was in a plausible range? 

motorguy

pinkshoes said:

It would have cost HER £4000 to fix, then as a private seller in its fixed state perhaps would have been only worth about £4000.

To the garage, their fixing cost is then parts only as they will do the labour bit for free.

But... £4000?? A basic google tells me a Kia Rio should be between £370 to £970 to get this done. 

https://car-doc.co.uk/timing-chain-replacement/

I think the garage really saw her coming, but it was up to her to go and get a quote elsewhere. She chose not to. That's life.

If she wanted, she could go back to the garage with some evidence and complain that they ripped her off. Perhaps even put it in writing and see if they would refund say £2000 as a good will gesture? They of course can say no...

And if they do say no? Then that's the advantage of social media. I'm sure a sob story in the local paper, or a factual review on their FB page or elsewhere saying how they told a vulnerable girl that the timing chain replacement would cost £4000, advised her to scrap the car by giving it to them, then later finding out what it should have cost... Lots of people (mainly women) that know nothing about car maintenance and repairs rely heaving on online reviews when making garage choices!

Thats when you replace it BEFORE it snaps.

Once its snaps it'll have done no end of damage, usually a new / replacement engine is the best option.

born_again

What's the betting the £4K quote was from  the Kia dealer (which would be in the right price range for a main dealer) & not the dealer that took the car off the lady?

ontheroad1970

Ibrahim5 said:

Some poor person will end up buying it. It will be sold as perfect condition, one careful owner, full service history. It'll be nothing but trouble.

I will leave you to answer the question: What do assumptions make?