Car from dealer not maintained. Any

WellKnownSid

MerlinV90 said:

However I do note comments about GDPR, and why these may be missing these days.

...

All stamps were Ford Preston, who after selling the car had never seen it again. The service schedule (as advised by Ford) was followed to 2013, and then nothing, that is if you were to go on stamps alone.

Best case scenario is the car was owned by a Ford technician and they 'borrowed' the stamp without booking the car in officially.  Worst case scenario is that it's a fake.

I would expect any second hand car I buy to come with a nice wodge of invoices.  The GDPR argument is just a load of complete bull.

Herzlos

MerlinV90 said:

For £50 it’s worth a letter to him via the small claims court, if only to make him sweat a little and maybe make him think about his poor moral standing in the future.

If he's a dodgy car dealer, it's unlikely you'll be his first time ignoring small claims courts. I understand your wanting to try and make some hassle for him, but you need to go in with reasonable expectations. The most likely outcome is you'll get an unopposed win in small claims court, he won't pay, and then you'll be under the threshold where you can get bailiffs to force him. He'll potentially just close "Dodgy Daves Discount Motors" with all liabilities and open "Dodgy Daveys Discount Motors" the next day.  You could spend a small fortune to try to make a point to someone who doesn't care.

Maybe he's been duped and isn't that dodgy, and he'll defend it in court, in which case you'll have a hard time proving he mislead you about anything or that he owes you anything.

Your time would be better spent trying to get your MP to do something about the underlying problems around dodgy car dealers.

Mildly_Miffed

Plus, of course, this isn't YOU - OP - doing any of this. This is your partner doing it. You have no dog in this fight, no contractual relationship with the dealer. You have nothing to claim for or against. She does.

How much time, effort, blood pressure does she want to put into chasing ghosts?

All of your objections here would have been easily avoided by the tiniest bit of pre-purchase due diligence, simply asking to see the paperwork.

force_ten1

the car may have been on a private plate for the first few years of its life 

car sold by Preston ford carrying AB59 XXX plate changed to a private plate so when you say have you ever serviced AB59 XXX they will not have a record of it as the service will be recorded using the new plate 

my car has a service book with the original reg on the first page and all services have been done under a different reg and the dealer would not necessarily link the two plates

Frozen_up_north

Interesting to see so much emphasis being placed on rubber stamps in a service book... More recent cars from the VW Group only have service history "on-line", there is no service book with the car. In addition, my Seat reports the mileage to the "cloud" all the time so VW/Seat know the miles covered in near real time.

There has been a lot of coverage of Chinese cars spying on the drivers, but European cars do the same!

Mildly_Miffed

Frozen_up_north said:

Interesting to see so much emphasis being placed on rubber stamps in a service book... More recent cars from the VW Group only have service history "on-line", there is no service book with the car. In addition, my Seat reports the mileage to the "cloud" all the time so VW/Seat know the miles covered in near real time.

We're talking about a 2009 car of a model launched in 2006.

Even then, that's lovely if the non-franchise garage have access to the dealer's system to log the history. But most won't. And, of course, if anybody+dog does have access, it's still not to be trusted any more than a stamp or paperwork.

born_again

Frozen_up_north said:

Interesting to see so much emphasis being placed on rubber stamps in a service book... More recent cars from the VW Group only have service history "on-line", there is no service book with the car. In addition, my Seat reports the mileage to the "cloud" all the time so VW/Seat know the miles covered in near real time.

There has been a lot of coverage of Chinese cars spying on the drivers, but European cars do the same!

Kia don't have online system. Stamp in book is king.

photome

born_again said:

Frozen_up_north said:

Interesting to see so much emphasis being placed on rubber stamps in a service book... More recent cars from the VW Group only have service history "on-line", there is no service book with the car. In addition, my Seat reports the mileage to the "cloud" all the time so VW/Seat know the miles covered in near real time.

There has been a lot of coverage of Chinese cars spying on the drivers, but European cars do the same!

Kia don't have online system. Stamp in book is king.

Maybe so but as the previous poster says if you have any of the VW group there is no such thing, yiu can get a print out though from a VW garage of all services carried out which arguably is better than a service  book with possibly faked stamps

Ibrahim5

Just because a garage has electronically added a record for a service doesn't mean that they have actually done one. LOL.

paul_c123

Ibrahim5 said:

Just because a garage has electronically added a record for a service doesn't mean that they have actually done one. LOL.

Normally it does though, there is no incentive for them to cut corners and in a main dealer, the service department is different to the sales department and cross-charge.