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private car bought - advertised with sevice history

i bought a local car privately with advertised service history and paid full asking price as service history and car appeared good to my eyes. Two days later entire service history turned out to be faked, i suspect seller bought the car with fake history. Now trying to arrange face to face meeting with reluctant unaccused busy seller to explain i would have paid significantly less or walked away. The car is sub £2000 category.
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Comments

  • Quiet_Spark
    Quiet_Spark Posts: 1,093 Forumite
    Unless you can prove the vendor knew the service history was fake, it will be a case of caveat emptor.
    Understeer is when you hit a wall with the front of your car
    Oversteer is when you hit a wall with the back of your car
    Horsepower is how fast your car hits the wall
    Torque is how far your car sends the wall across the field once you've hit it
  • forgotmyname
    forgotmyname Posts: 33,007 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    How long had the previous owner had the car? Any fake stamps or receipts in their ownership?
    Censorship Reigns Supreme in Troll City...

  • motorguy
    motorguy Posts: 22,623 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Unless you can prove the vendor knew the service history was fake, it will be a case of caveat emptor.

    This. Most likely anyway.

    Unless you can show the seller faked it.
  • DUTR
    DUTR Posts: 12,958 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    i bought a local car privately with advertised service history and paid full asking price as service history and car appeared good to my eyes. Two days later entire service history turned out to be faked, i suspect seller bought the car with fake history. Now trying to arrange face to face meeting with reluctant unaccused busy seller to explain i would have paid significantly less or walked away. The car is sub £2000 category.

    How old is the car? Just having plenty of receipts over the time of ownership is often sufficient, as long as the service things were done, I'd never be offering full asking price in any instance.
    As long as the car is running fine then put it as a learning point.
  • AdrianC
    AdrianC Posts: 42,189 Forumite
    Eighth Anniversary 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    How do you know the "entire history was fake"?
  • colino
    colino Posts: 5,059 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Frankly with eBay allowing everyone and their dog to advertise and sell blank service books and "dealer" stamps, a FSH is worth nothing unless it is backed up with receipted invoices or you check on the manufacturers database that it is genuine.
    While a trader has been prosecuted for supplying such a car (are they expected to query every service item) your pretty unlikely to be able to prove this vendor was the forger or they are anything more than an innocent in the chain.
  • techspec
    techspec Posts: 4,464 Forumite
    I sold my car to a local garage with NO service history.

    The next day it was on sale with a FULL service history.

    They are all at it - that's why i just go for cheaper cars now with no history. 18 years trouble free motoring too :-)

    My current car was not advertised with any service history when i bought it 4 years ago on Ebay. Yet in the glove box was evidence it had only missed one full service.
  • techspec wrote: »
    I sold my car to a local garage with NO service history.

    The next day it was on sale with a FULL service history.

    I hope you reported it to trading standards.
  • SunReader
    SunReader Posts: 210 Forumite
    I sold my car to a local garage with NO service history.

    The next day it was on sale with a FULL service history.

    They are all at it



    yes, probably clocked too. (although there are ways of finding a lost service history, via a main dealer, if it was actually done)
  • jimjames
    jimjames Posts: 19,117 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    SunReader wrote: »
    I sold my car to a local garage with NO service history.

    The next day it was on sale with a FULL service history.

    They are all at it



    yes, probably clocked too. (although there are ways of finding a lost service history, via a main dealer, if it was actually done)

    Bit more tricky to clock now as MOT history is electronic so you can't just lose an inconvenient MOT record.
    Remember the saying: if it looks too good to be true it almost certainly is.
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