Advice please on a car purchased 2 days ago

letom

The problem you have is if it's trade and you pursue them the corporate entity might have no assets. You actually might prefer them to be a personal seller.

Buying from a personal seller gives you less rights however that doesn't mean you have none, the car still needs to be as advertised - a lot of people are missing this. I would find the original listing and save that down straight away. Presumably the advert will talk about the car being road worthy in some respect, it however is clearly not - given the issue at hand you'd have a decent claim the car is not as advertised.

If this were me I would go to land registry and see if the dealer owns the property you went to, if he does then you have personal assets to go after and can launch a claim in the small claims court. Even if he argued it's a trade sale, the threat of going to court and then having to justify to a judge why he sold a car that is clearly dangerous on top of him clearly straddling the grey area between trade and personal may convince a judge to side with you. The hassle of this and the fact he doesn't have a great defence to drive worthiness of the car is probably enough to push him to give you a full refund.

Another important question is how much this car cost which I don't think you've said. Are we talking £5k or £20k?

Mildly_Miffed

letom said:

The problem you have is if it's trade and you pursue them the corporate entity might have no assets. You actually might prefer them to be a personal seller.

Buying from a personal seller gives you less rights however that doesn't mean you have none,

We know that it's a different situation from either of those. The car was sold by an individual, operating as a sole trader, in the line of their business.

They cannot close the limited company. The liability is the full extent of their personal wealth.

Of course, that may still be less than zero...

Another important question is how much this car cost which I don't think you've said. Are we talking £5k or £20k?

It's a pre-2017 C3 or pre-2018 DS3... £5k would be top-end.

But that's irrelevant in this situation.

Grey_Critic

What is a the definition of **A Trade Sale** Do you only sell a product *Within Their Particular trade or do they sell to anyone - Is it Wholesale Only or can anyone buy. 

I wanted a new Kitchen Unit Door. When I approached the manufacturers outlet they would not sell to me - Trade Only.

Frozen_up_north

Grey_Critic said:

What is a the definition of **A Trade Sale** Do you only sell a product *Within Their Particular trade or do they sell to anyone - Is it Wholesale Only or can anyone buy. 

I wanted a new Kitchen Unit Door. When I approached the manufacturers outlet they would not sell to me - Trade Only.

Reading between the lines, the trader was being a bit clever and appears to have included the word TRADE in the hope they could avoid issues with a private buyer wanting a refund. Whether trading standards would see it that way is another matter.

Mildly_Miffed

Grey_Critic said:

What is a the definition of **A Trade Sale** Do you only sell a product *Within Their Particular trade or do they sell to anyone - Is it Wholesale Only or can anyone buy.

Legally, it's meaningless.

They want it to convey "Look, we know this vehicle is below our normal standard, and so we're not providing any warranty or any of our usual prep/protections" - but it CANNOT legally remove normal consumer protections. If they sell to a consumer, it carries those protections.

What it COULD do is mitigate them to a degree. Remember, the test is for reasonable expectations for goods of that age/relative price/apparent condition.
So if you had two apparently identical cars, one of which was prepped and priced as retail, one of which was "trade sale", then your expectations would be lower of the second. A court may well be less likely to agree with your claim for relatively minor faults.

Would that be relevant in this situation? No.

If they've sold to a consumer, they've sold to a consumer.

I wanted a new Kitchen Unit Door. When I approached the manufacturers outlet they would not sell to me - Trade Only.

Anybody can refuse to sell to anybody, so long as they aren't discriminating under the protected characteristics within the Equality Act 2010.

Ectophile

Frozen_up_north said:

Grey_Critic said:

What is a the definition of **A Trade Sale** Do you only sell a product *Within Their Particular trade or do they sell to anyone - Is it Wholesale Only or can anyone buy. 

I wanted a new Kitchen Unit Door. When I approached the manufacturers outlet they would not sell to me - Trade Only.

Reading between the lines, the trader was being a bit clever and appears to have included the word TRADE in the hope they could avoid issues with a private buyer wanting a refund. Whether trading standards would see it that way is another matter.

I think people are completely misunderstanding the word "trade".  Back in the days when cars were sold through small ads in the local newspaper, it was a rule that all traders had to say "trade" in their advert.  That way the buyers knew it wasn't someone selling their personal car.

It didn't mean that the sale was only to motor traders.

dustiebustie78

Sorry for the late replies. My mental health took a turn for the worse and it got a bit dark for a minute... However, moving on to answer your questions.

- I paid via bank transfer. That's all he accepted - cash or bank transfer.

- Car was £3000.

- He advertised as a trader/dealer with a garage, has a website and everything but trades from his house.

- He advertised the car with full service history - which turns out to be a4 sheets of paper with dates, milage and work the car has had done at MOTs. 

- I also suspect it has a dodgy MOT as it wasn't due until December 2025, yet it had a clean bill of health 7 months early in May.

I told him I would take it further, he said he had booked the car in on my behalf and said "at this point, this is the best we can offer you, if you are unhappy and feel you need to follow any other cause of action, then please do so. Let's continue to work together to overcome this issue".

I have emailed again rejecting the car. I will report to trading standards tomorrow and it looks like I have no choice but to take him to the small claims court. I contacted auto trader and have a copy of the ad where it specifically states full service history, I have a screenshot from the citroen website where it specifically states that the car should not be driven because it can cause serious injury or death. Legally, I don't think he has a leg to stand on, but as ever, I am always grateful for your thoughts and opinions. 

jimjames

dustiebustie78 said:

- He advertised the car with full service history - which turns out to be a4 sheets of paper with dates, milage and work the car has had done at MOTs. 

Many recent cars have no service book and all servicing is recorded online so paperwork recording that info could well be a record of the service history unless you have any reason to believe it isn't correct.

dustiebustie78 said:

- I also suspect it has a dodgy MOT as it wasn't due until December 2025, yet it had a clean bill of health 7 months early in May.

Often a trader will get an MOT done before selling so that it has a full 12 months. Doing that doesn't mean it is dodgy if it was done only 5 months after the previous one. Nothing in your post has mentioned any mechanical fault that would indicate an issue with MOT. Again unless you have evidence to prove it was dodgy it's likely it was fine. 

Goudy

What are you going to take the dealer to the small claims court for?

You bought a car from them that the manufacturer has recalled due to a manufacturing fault.
The manufacturer is responsible for the repair, not the dealer.
Unfortunately the manufacturer is obviously struggling to fix all the cars under the recall in a timely manner.

Even if the dealer wanted to help you with the repair. If the manufacturers network of dealers can't fix it yet, what chance have they?

Yes there could be a hint of underhandedness, in fact it's illegal for them to sell it with an outstanding recall, but all they'd say in court is the didn't know about the recall.

This may or may not be believable,  but you didn't know either at the time.
Chances are the court will look at it the same way. They are a used car dealership that I presume deals in all used makes and models and not a main agent for the manufacturer. You can be certain the manufacturers dealer network knew about the recall, but everyone else? I don't think you could say it was more than probable the used car dealer knew.

I think trying to go down the court route is only going to add more stress to your life and by the time it got there, the dealer network would more than likely have repaired it anyway.

Unless you can get them to take it back, swap it for another car of the same value or loan you a car in good faith, I think you're stuck with it until the manufacturers dealer network can repair it.
 

dustiebustie78

It didnt come with any service history despite saying on the ad that it came with full service history. Theres no information to say it's online either and iv looked online to see if I could find anything regarding any service history and there is nothing.

When you list the car on auto trader, it comes up that the car is on an open re-call. there's no way he didnt know.