Cat D non disclosure Mis-sold car from garage

juicylucym

I bought a car in 2018 from a used car dealer garage for £3000, less than 18 months later we decided we needed a bigger car and when we tried to part-exchange at another garage they could only offer £500 as it had 2 previous Cat D write offs. 

These weren’t disclosed to us at the time of purchase and the car was eventually scrapped. Do we have a claim against the garage? 

DullGreyGuy

No, you've left it too late. You had 6 years from the alleged breach

LightFlare

Arguably the seller was making a profit of ~500-1000.

The purchaser would be looking at the same.

500 whilst a little low doesn’t appear to be too off the mark.

As mentioned though- 6 years is the limit.

What happened to the car after the 500 offer ?

Nobbie1967

The 6 year limit starts when the claimant becomes aware of the issue, so should be in time if started quickly. However a car bought for £3k from a dealer and sold to a dealer 18 months later for £500, the actual loss from it being Cat D will be minimal. What age and model was the car?

Car_54

OP, why has it taken you four years to ask the question?

DullGreyGuy

Nobbie1967 said:

The 6 year limit starts when the claimant becomes aware of the issue, so should be in time if started quickly. However a car bought for £3k from a dealer and sold to a dealer 18 months later for £500, the actual loss from it being Cat D will be minimal. What age and model was the car?

No, the 6 year time limit starts from the breach of the contract. In certain cases where there is the tort of negligence there can be an additional 3 years from the "date of knowing" (based on when they reasonably should have known and not necessarily when they did know) but there is still an overall 15 year cap outside of injuries. 

daveyjp

You don't need permission to make a claim, the courts decide whether it is valid or not based on the evidence provided.

A claim can take years so you need to be minded that once you start you need to be determined to finish.  A defendant such as a garage may just offer you a few hundred quid to go away, but they may just ignore, you 'win' in court and they continue to ignore.  Then what?

Arunmor

Prove the dealer that sold the car knew about it being a Cat D.

Herzlos

Arunmor said:

Prove the dealer that sold the car knew about it being a Cat D.

The onus would be on the dealer to know. However the OP would have to prove that they weren't told it was cat D either by the dealer or in the listing. They'd then need to prove that there was a quantifiable loss come trade in attributed to it being cat D.

The dealer is unlikely to have kept any details after 6 years and could easily say it was sold and priced as a cat D.

The loss is likely negligable too. We don't know anything about the car, but a £3k car probably had a trade in of under £2k the day it was purchased. 18 months later it could easily be under £1k so claim could be for under £500.

Even if it could be proven that the original dealer lied and the buyer dealer was giving fair prices, it's unlikely to be worth the hassle of pursuing now given then slim chance of winning and the low payout.

Nasqueron

daveyjp said:

You don't need permission to make a claim, the courts decide whether it is valid or not based on the evidence provided.

A claim can take years so you need to be minded that once you start you need to be determined to finish.  A defendant such as a garage may just offer you a few hundred quid to go away, but they may just ignore, you 'win' in court and they continue to ignore.  Then what?

Keep in mind that a correctly applied time bar would prevent any action and it would never get to court. A lawyer might happily take your money but they would be well aware that the legal time bar prevents any action taking place and they would be laughed out of court for trying to ignore that

born_again

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6569122/mis-sold-gap-insurance#latest

Where there is a blame there is a claim 🤣

In both cases, how is this croping up now?