Hi Chaps,
Does anyone know what the consumer rights are with buying a used car from a dealer? My mate has just bought a Audi, and it has developed a fault which is quoted by Audi at over £1000 to repair.
Where does he stand with the law? Can he claim through the garage? or return? or ask for a fix?
Cheers
Butty
When did he buy.
Was there a warranty.
How much has be driven it.
What is the problem with it.
How long ago did he buy it? - check the consumers direct website.
with secondhand goods they do not have to be faultless but in the expected condition for the age and price
he basically has the right to return, refund, replace but with caveats
There is an article on this in this months Car Mechanics mag, from the seller (indy dealer) perspective, and all the rights were with the buyer.
The garage should fix, otherwise contact local trading standards
jimc101
was the article as vague as the op ?
without knowing when it was bought , what it has covered since and the fault its not really possible to give a blanket answer ...
Will post up some more detail in a bit - just asked for additional info from the buyer, cheers for the replies so far - and apologies for the vagueness; just looking for a general idea at the moment on how to follow this
Trail Rat - The Op did say the car was just bought, so unless the OP's definition of 'just' is in a time frame of years, would take that to be with in the last few weeks.
If buying a used car from a trader, be it dealer or indpendant, it should be working, and as a consumer you have the rights to this, where it must be fit for purpose, in this case, with the limited info, it obviously wasnt, quoating from Trading Stadards 'Remember, used cars may have some faults, but they should not be excessive.' From Trading Standards
would consider £1000 to fix excessive
If buying from an individual, that different.
Depends.
Just a broad example...
Your mate bought a 2001 Audi A6 2.5TDI estate with 100,000miles for 2.5k.
Not much comeback - you have to take into account reasonable age/mileage etc.
Also if he paid underbook - could also go against him.
If its a 2005 A3 TDI for 7k and 60,000miles I'd expect the problem sorting.
There's always a chance he could get it fixed for £100 by an independent garage. VW quoted my mate £850 to fix something he ended up sorting himself for around £60.
I can't give info on the actual consumer rights as I'm not sure of the details but I did have a similar situation with a s/h car my wife bought - it was a few years ago now so I'm a bit vague on exact details.
Essentially the clutch went on the car after less than 5k miles and was going to cost the best part of 1.5k to fix. The car itself only cost us 5k. After a LOT of words between myself and the dealership manager I asked him if he was aware of a rescission - essentially I believed the car was not fit for purpose when bought, and had a seriously worn clutch (he had already mentioned a clutch would normally last up to 120k miles - the car had done 35k miles) and wanted to therefore return the car less an agreed amount for the mileage we had used. IIRC this is a defined term in consumer rights and has particular reference to s/h cars.
Either way it worked we agreed to pay £50 towards the repair as a token gesture and the clutch was repaired.
I should say it took a while before I 'threatened' to do this as I really saw it as the last effort but perhaps something to consider further down the line.
Either way good luck.
WOW. I could easily burn a clutch out within a day through bad habit/abuse, if not less. I'm amazed the dealership did that.
5,000miles later?!!
As others have said, you'll need to post more info first.
If he's had it a few days then he can have a word with his dealer. Depending on warranty and the response he receives, he could escalate to Audi's central Customer Service team (if they have one).
I had to do this on an AUC M3 bought from BMW Sytners. Dealer wouldn't play ball so I contacted my local BMW dealer who wanted 4 figures but suggested I contact CS ... which I did. CS immediately authorised local dealer to do the work and made Sytners foot half the bill. CS paid the remaining 50%. So I paid nothing and got everything sorted.
I used to work in the trade (4-5 years ago) and every used car HAD to be sold with a MINIMUM 3 months warranty.
Read the booklet, but be careful as a lot of stuff isn't covered.
Also, all cars needed to be inspected before sale. Ask to see the inspection report?
Hora - I've always viewed clutches as a 'wear and tear' item however I did play on the fact the car was a VW - a brand that sells itself on reliability.
I could also show that the car had not been mis-used as in my opinion if you can burn out a clutch in a day then you are at fault not the clutch. I had FSH from my wifes previous car and my car both of which showed that after 130k and 94k miles respectively neither of the clutches needed replacing therefore the fault must have been with the car (it may have helped that both of the previous cars were VW's too so the mnanager couldn't claim it was different manufacturers/designs).
As I said though that was my experience it took lots of talking, writing and hassle over about six months so it may just have been for the sake of a few hundred quid for parts and the labour it was cheaper for the dealership to do the work and get rid of me!
Happened to me.
The dealer tried to fob me off numerous times. Had to start court action, though he still kept claiming it was my fault for driving it incorrectly. After around 6 months he just gave up sent me a cheque.
Mine was sold with a warranty too. I think the dealers believe this means they have no further responsibility but they do. The warranty has numerous specific exclusions, clutch is usually one, and another is that it won't cover conditions that existed when the warranty was taken out (i.e. when you bought the car).
I would say that yes, you can get money back if you are sold a dodgy car, but it can be a bit of a pain. In my case I had to go as far as court action, which was a hassle, but actually quite easy and cheap. I vaguely posted about it at the time, but now it is a matter of public record and I can post about it without worrying about the court case, here's the full story (probably mainly for my therepeutic benefit rather than anyone else!)
So, I had a car I bought from Derby Car Centre, a mid sized second hand car dealer in Derby, UK, who for obvious reasons I would not recommend anyone buys a car from (see below).
After less than a month of driving, it had some problems, and it turned out that these were due to a deliberately concealed engine fault - the engine management fault warning light had been taped over inside the dashboard to conceal this(!).
The worst thing is that when I test drove it before purchase, the light was lit, and I noticed it, after which they said they'd see if they could fix it. Rang me up the next day saying it was just something (some car thing, I dunno), and was all fixed, and I test drove and the light wasn't lit.
So I had the fact that this light had been showing, and the fact a repair had been done which they'd put in writing on the invoice. So essentially I had a ton of evidence showing that the car had been deliberately tampered with while in their care.
Despite all that, when I discovered it, they absolutely refused to take back the car, and was left carless for a good few months. In the end, I took them to court, at which point after much delaying, they put in a supposed witness statement, saying that they were coming to court to defend themselves. Then they didn't turn up to the court hearing, so not surprisingly it went against them. A week after that, lovely high court bailiffs popped over to see them with a debit card machine and persuaded them to part with all my costs (insurance, tax, cost of the car) plus bailiffs fees, court fees, which cost them something close to 3 grand, for a car that originaly cost £1800!
Funniest thing was that once they'd paid up, while I was waiting for the money to clear into my account, they hassled me loads about getting hold of the car. Which I notice almost 4 months later is still on their forecourt for sale at a suspiciously low price!
(http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2002-NISSAN-ALMERA-1-5-S-/190586122296?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item2c5fd17038 in case anyone is interested!)
It probably helps that my wife is a lecturer in law, so I wasn't desperately scared of the legal stuff - funny thing about that is that I mentioned this, and that I was completely aware of the law on rescission due to fraudulent misrepresentation etc. when I went it to ask for a refund the first time; not only were they very threatening and also generally ill informed and wrong about their rights, but one of them said to me "If your wife is a lawyer, then I'm Father Christmas", if I ever meet him again I guess I'll take the santa hat (and say thanks for the early christmas present of two and a half grand!)
Just as an aside to joemarshall's post - the dealer I dealt with was totally unaware of rescission too and this was at a major VW garage in a large city. His orginal attitude of 'its a second hand car not a new one' soon evaporated when I showed him the details on rescissions in the online information available through one of the trade bodies that the garage was a memeber of.
Oh and while I remember it that was the other thing I did early on - I checked what trade bodies the garage were signed up to and drafted letters to all of them stating exactly what had happened. I then showed them to the manager and asked if he'd like to comment before I sent them off.....
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