Faulty used car

Pipx

Hi - bought a used car from a dealer 01/02/24. On 29/02/24 it cut out and wouldn’t restart. I called the RAC who eventually got it started and advised me to take it immediately back to the garage I bought it from. I did this, they checked it over and said they couldn’t find a problem. They increased the warranty to 12 months for us free of charge. And told us to bring it back if it happened again.
24/05/24 an “emissions fault” warning came up saying starting impossible in 750 miles. We contacted the dealer and they arranged for it to go into a garage they use. These guys checked it over, cleared the message, and gave it back to us saying “I’m not convinced there is nothing wrong with it, but you’ll just have to wait and see if it happens again”.
30/06/24 the emissions fault message came back on, and the starting impossible mileage had decreased to 350 miles. Contacted dealer who asked us to take it in for them to look at. He cleared the message, said it’s seemed fine and gave it back to us.
07/07/24 - emissions message has come back on and now we only have 150 miles left till starting impossible. 

Can anyone tell me what our rights are, if we have any, with regards to getting a refund? Thanks in advance

Alderbank

Apart from these messages does the car start and run OK?
What do you mean by 'refund'? Do you mean to keep the car and get some money back or do you want to reject the car completely?
What is the make and model of the car?
What's the mileage and what did you pay?
What kind of journeys do you do (short trips, fast motorway runs, etc.)?

Sorry about so many questions but the answers are necessary for us to tell you your rights and what you can reasonably expect.

Pipx

Thanks for your reply.
the car starts ok and runs ok - there is a funny engine smell that happens briefly about once a day, but other than that it is just the messages. 

Ideally I’d like to reject the car completely as from what I can gather in 150 miles it’s useless.
its a Vauxhall Grandland X Sport 2018.
we paid £10k for it 
mileage is around 80k
i mainly do short journeys 
thanks 

bazdvd

take it for a long motorway drive. Its the short journeys that is causing the problem.

Pipx

We’ve tried taking it for long motorway drives but that hasn’t helped - it’s just reduced the miles we have left more quickly!

Ayr_Rage

Is it petrol or diesel ?

Pipx

It’s diesel 

Alderbank

Some Grandland X diesels made between February and June 2018 are known have relatively high particulate emissions. This seems to be solved by a new diesel particulate filter or some control software to be updated.

I don't think that either a new DPF or a software update for a vehicle which has covered 80,000 miles is unreasonable and certainly not grounds, at that price and mileage, to justify rejecting the vehicle outright.

You need to consider those options first. Your warranty might not include replacing the DPF, particularly since you do mainly short journeys.

Ayr_Rage

What did the RAC technician say was the reason for the car cutting out?

What did they do to get it started?

With a six year old diesel vehicle doing only short journeys then the DPF is likely to be an issue at some time and you may have reached that point.

Does the vehicle have an AdBlue system and have you topped that up?

If you do top it up and the message does not go away then as @Alderbank has said, you may require a software update as the system is not recognising the addition of AdBlue.

Just use your search engine and you'll find more on the issue.