Used car broken down with major fault after only 4 months. Dealership being extremely awkward.

ColonelChunk

In England. Tl:Dr at the end.

My brother and sister in law bought a used car from an official Nissan dealership mid December 2023. On Saturday it broke down, turns out the gearbox has failed completely. 

I have done some research on this, so I know that under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, the fault is assumed by law to be pre existing, and as such the dealership has the onus to prove otherwise, and if unable to do so have a legal obligation to repair the car and failing that, must offer a refund (minus reasonable deductions for the time the car has been operating).

Predictably, they have demanded that my brother return the car to their dealership at his own expense (it's quite a distance from his home), despite at point of sale clearly stating that the car could be serviced or repaired at any Nissan dealership, and that in addition he must pre approve an expense of £680 for a diagnostic to be undertaken. Then it would he at the sole discretion of the dealership to determine if the fault was covered by their warranty or not. Note, they state their warranty, offered at sale, not the Statutory warranty guaranteed by law. 

He has phoned his local Nissan dealership to discuss the situation, and low and behold, they only quote a fee of £100 for the diagnostic. Imagine that. 

I'm looking for help in what the next steps he must take are please:

Can the dealership demand he pre approve the diagnistic expense? Is there any avenue regarding the obviously staggeringly inflated price for the diagnostic fee? 

Is the onus not entirely on the dealership to rectify the problem? 

I get the strong impression they are just playing silly buggers in the hope of scaring him off, of disuading him from persuing it further. 

How does he escalate this? I am unaware of there is an ombudsman that covers these issues or not.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks. 

Tl:dr: Other's used car owned for less than 6 months has developed major (very expensive to fix) fault. Dealership are giving him the run around instead of meeting legal obligations. Looking for advice on how to proceed. 

MattMattMattUK

ColonelChunk said:

In England. Tl:Dr at the end.

My brother and sister in law bought a used car from an official Nissan dealership mid December 2023. On Saturday it broke down, turns out the gearbox has failed completely. 

I have done some research on this, so I know that under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, the fault is assumed by law to be pre existing, and as such the dealership has the onus to prove otherwise, and if unable to do so have a legal obligation to repair the car and failing that, must offer a refund (minus reasonable deductions for the time the car has been operating).

Predictably, they have demanded that my brother return the car to their dealership at his own expense (it's quite a distance from his home), despite at point of sale clearly stating that the car could be serviced or repaired at any Nissan dealership, and that in addition he must pre approve an expense of £680 for a diagnostic to be undertaken. Then it would he at the sole discretion of the dealership to determine if the fault was covered by their warranty or not. Note, they state their warranty, offered at sale, not the Statutory warranty guaranteed by law. 

He has phoned his local Nissan dealership to discuss the situation, and low and behold, they only quote a fee of £100 for the diagnostic. Imagine that. 

I'm looking for help in what the next steps he must take are please:

Can the dealership demand he pre approve the diagnistic expense? Is there any avenue regarding the obviously staggeringly inflated price for the diagnostic fee? 

Is the onus not entirely on the dealership to rectify the problem? 

I get the strong impression they are just playing silly buggers in the hope of scaring him off, of disuading him from persuing it further. 

How does he escalate this? I am unaware of there is an ombudsman that covers these issues or not.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks. 

Tl:dr: Other's used car owned for less than 6 months has developed major (very expensive to fix) fault. Dealership are giving him the run around instead of meeting legal obligations. Looking for advice on how to proceed. 

What warranty did the dealership offer, is it stull under Nissan original warranty? How old is the car? Is it automatic or manual? Remember that the CRA does not automatically say that every fault is the fault of the seller, especially on a second hand vehicle. They are not able to misrepresent a vehicle and must be fully honest about any issues, but if say it is a 5+ year old car then I think you would very much struggle to pin a gearbox failure on them, equally if it is two years old then it is still within warranty and it would be unreasonable (CRA relevance) for a gearbox to have a life of only two years.

ColonelChunk

That's for replying.

Car is 5 years old (17 reg), however the mileage on the car is only 34,190, and my brother has driven maybe 1000 of that total. That's less than 7k miles per year on prior owner, so pretty low mileage count and I can't see that being reasonable for such a fault to develop. 

Add to that, the breakdown technician that came to tow his car (who coincidentally used to work for a Nissan dealership) said it was not the gearbox but the clutch that has failed (I wasn't aware of that initially and I've edited my initial post to clarify this). 

The warranty offered by the dealership doesn't cover the clutch. However, they are insisting on this diagnostoc of the full gearbox system, and charging £700 to do so, before they decide if they will repair. Does that not contravene the statutory warranty offers by CRA? 

My followup question is, I guess, can they even demand to charge that fee? If, as already noted, another, closer Nissan dealership has quoted the exact same diagnostic at a fraction of the price?

Furthermore, would not the clutch have been something that the dealership could have been aware of before they sold the car? 

My knowledge on this is, frankly, quite limited, but do they not perform inspections of used vehicles to begin with at the point they purchase them from the previous owner?

Thanks for your help. 

ColonelChunk

OK, I was going to edity inital post to clarify the clutch/gearbox point but seems I can't edit it. 

Ayr_Rage

Clutches are wear and tear items and could easily fail at that mileage if driven badly.

Impending failure is not something the seller can foresee and as your relatives have been using it for 4 months without issue then proving a fault on delivery is going to be very difficult.

To have any chance of a claim the garage will have to take out the old clutch and see if the failure was due to a faulty part and not just normal wear and tear.

Mildly_Miffed

A clutch that's failed because of a manufacturing defect would be covered by warranty.
A clutch that's failed because it's simply been prematurely worn out by bad driving would not.

The only way you can tell is to remove the gearbox and look. That takes hours of labour, and that's the cost that he's being asked to approve. If the clutch is covered by warranty, he won't have to pay for it.

Consumer rights legislation allows for reasonable expectations from used goods, appropriate to their age, previous use, and apparent condition. Is a worn clutch on a 7yo car with 34k reasonable? It certainly isn't unexpected.

Can you get it done at a different dealer? That depends. What does the warranty paperwork say?

MattMattMattUK

ColonelChunk said:

That's for replying.

Car is 5 years old (17 reg), however the mileage on the car is only 34,190, and my brother has driven maybe 1000 of that total. That's less than 7k miles per year on prior owner, so pretty low mileage count and I can't see that being reasonable for such a fault to develop. 

In many wages mileage is irrelevant to a clutch, someone who is bad at changing gear, rides the clutch at lights/in slow moving traffic on hills etc. will kill a clutch a lot sooner than a good driver, especially a good driver who does mostly motorway driving. 2017 was seven years ago...

ColonelChunk said:

Add to that, the breakdown technician that came to tow his car (who coincidentally used to work for a Nissan dealership) said it was not the gearbox but the clutch that has failed (I wasn't aware of that initially and I've edited my initial post to clarify this). 

Clutches are consumables, they just have a very long consumption time.

ColonelChunk said:

The warranty offered by the dealership doesn't cover the clutch. However, they are insisting on this diagnostoc of the full gearbox system, and charging £700 to do so, before they decide if they will repair. Does that not contravene the statutory warranty offers by CRA? 

It does not. There is no "statutory warranty" in the CRA.

ColonelChunk said:

My followup question is, I guess, can they even demand to charge that fee? If, as already noted, another, closer Nissan dealership has quoted the exact same diagnostic at a fraction of the price?

If it is not part of the warranty then they can set their fee at whatever they want it to be and the consumer has a choice whether they purchase that service there or not. You could ask them, attempt to negotiate etc. I would also find a few different costs for getting the clutch replaced elsewhere. 

ColonelChunk said:

Furthermore, would not the clutch have been something that the dealership could have been aware of before they sold the car? 

When they sold it the clutch worked, they would have had no idea that the clutch may fail 7k miles later, generally it only becomes obvious if a clutch will fail in the next dozen to few hundred miles (slipping, difficult to change gear, making weird noises) and they can just fail with no prior warning.

ColonelChunk said:

My knowledge on this is, frankly, quite limited, but do they not perform inspections of used vehicles to begin with at the point they purchase them from the previous owner?

They do inspect vehicles, but the clutch is a sealed unit, they will not remove it from the vehicle and disassemble it to see what condition it is in. They would check it worked through the gears, that it was smooth etc. but that would also be obvious to anyone who test drove the car as well. They would also check diagnostics, but again a clutch fault would have triggered the engine warning light. 

I think this is just an unfortunate case of bad luck. As the car is out of general warranty and the specific warranty that was offered upon sale excludes the clutch I would suspect the best option is to get the car repaired an an independent garage, they will likely charge around £500-1,000 (unless the car is a GTR, in which case 2-3 times that), cheaper than the diagnostic test that will almost certainly just tell them "Clutch failure". The independent garage will also likely look at and assess the car for free, as well as giving you a much cheaper price than a main dealer. 

ColonelChunk

Thanks to all for your replies and guidance, it's much appreciated. Apologies for pants spelling and errors, on mobile so don't always spot typos etc I've made. 

Also, I cannot manage simple addition today it seems 😅. 2017 was indeed 7 years ago.

Thanks again to everyone, I'll pass along the info and my brother and sister in law will have to decide what the best course of action to take is. 

forgotmyname

£100 to plug a code reader in and say yeah it's faulty..    £680 to inspect it properly and find the actual fault with a view to
repairing it.