Garage Made a mistake when purchasing car

moneysaver

Hi ,
I wonder if anybody has any legal advice on this one.

A friend of mine purchased a car from a main dealer, on the day he looked at the car he agreed a price of £6500. He then traded in a car for £500 against it, so balance owed was £6000. When he went to pick up the car days later & to pay the balance the invoice only showed £5000. So he promptly paid it & left with the car.
One week later the garage is now on the phone admitting the error & looking for the £1000 that was missing on the invoice. He has an invoice in his house which says the car is fully paid so how would he stand legally on this, it is in England if that is any difference.

Thanks
Moneysaver

Stink_Pod

Well as you would expect..... it depends.... If he signed a sales order form confirming the part-ex details and the balance he was going to pay then he may be liable. If the T's&C's on the invoice say that title to the goods does not transfer until paid in full, then he could be on a sticky wicket if the dealership were to go legal. Finally, there could also be complications if he financed the car through the garage - I'll go into these if this is the case.

IMHO there will be someone at the garage that will be being hauled over the hot coals right now. In my experience the salesperson will foot the cost of this loss, not the garage as they're generally measured on profit(or loss) made. Cars costing £6500 do not have £1k profit margin in them so the car will have been sold at a huge loss.

I suppose it is how his conscious feels, perhaps an agreement to pay £500 to them and both parties accept that a mistake was made. Easy for me to say, I know, but at the end of the day it was a mistake and he was prepared to pay £6k, he can feel happy that he got an additional £500 discount. Just my 2p's worth, don't shoot me!

moneysaver

Thanks for the info, there was no credit agreement, the car was paid in full at the time of collection.


Moneysaver

paulh84

a similar thing has happened to my parents recently (see http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=69682)

After speaking with one of my law tutors this morning I found that because we were never aware of the mistake when the agreement was made then we could not be liable to pay the additional money that they were after.

In your case though because your friend agreed orally with the garage on the price he was therefore aware of the shortfall and declined to highlight the error, so could be liable for the additional cost.

My dad often deals with people for collection of outstanding debts. He once told me of a gentleman who requested a letter with his outstanding balance. My dad, when writing the letter, had made a mistake showing a lower figure than what was needed to repay the balance. My dad forwarded a second letter to the gentleman highlighting the mistake.
The gentleman refused to pay and the case was taken to court, my dad won the case.

Stink_Pod

paulh84 wrote:

because your friend agreed orally with the garage on the price he was therefore aware of the shortfall and declined to highlight the error, so could be liable for the additional cost.

This would concur with my understanding, which is why I asked if he had signed a sales order form, detailling what had been agreed. Verbal agreements are much harder to enforce, unless he bought from a dealership that has desk based voice recording equipment - yes they do exist, have a look when you next visit one of the car supermarkets, such as Motorpoint.

As I said earlier, I personally would try to get a compromise and offer to meet them in the middle.