Buying a car from a dealer – an essay of despair

[fiatdaft]

Dealers cannot sell cars sold as seen.

[scooters]

all right then -the trade in to clears which are effectively sold as seen

[fiatdaft]

A dealer must provide a warranty on all used cars,thats why you don't really see trade in to clear cars due to consumer rights.Thats why auctions are full of the dregs.

[cort16]

'tis true. Any car a dealer sells to the general public is a minefield. I think they used to be able to get away with "sold as seen/sold for spares" but that's not the case anymore.

There's a couple of trade centres around this way that sell really ropey looking old PX's from their main dealership for 500 quid or so and always wondered how the dodged it when one explodes as it's driving out the gates.

[fiatdaft]

They can't,they probably just give the punter the cash back or another motor.There is no such thing as sold as seen from a car dealer anymore.Any fault that shows up within 6 months is down to the dealer to fix.

[messerschmitt owner]

there is reasonable expectation though. I would reasonably expect a £2500 or more car to come fault free and be fault free in its initial few months of ownership.

 

I would expect a £500 banger to need the same spent on it again (by me) to get it in decent nick.

 

I would also expect me to be the last ever owner of a £500 banger, and consider myself lucky to get a year plus out of it.

[scooters]

seems this is lost on a lot of dealers - ebay is always full of 'sold as seen' cars

[cort16]

I recon they say it in the hope the customer believes it and doesn't came back when the engine falls out.

[Spottedlaurel]

Interesting read there Garethj, glad you got something good in the end.

 

I bought my current everyday Camry 2.2 Estate from a dealer. It was up in Leicester, so Rootes_Arrow John went and had a look for me. On the basis of his description and photos we agreed a price, l paid a deposit and a few days later I jumped on a train to collect it. It was clearly just a freshly valeted trade-in that had come to them from a main dealer, but the dealer did everything they said they would do, picked me up from the station and I was happy to hand over the remainder of the £635 purchase price to him. So, there are good ones out there.

[Station]

My dad used to buy cars from dealers, and not one was as described and all on them were hiding faults.

One didn't even have water in the engine. My dad only works one mile down the road so never noticed by the time it got to temperature. The headgasket was shot and only realised when I noticed and put some water in and got billows of steam.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Nice buy. The 6 speed gearbox arrived around 2001, plastic finned sump and Mechatronics meaning that the ECU is inside the gearbox and fitted to the valve body. The filter is integral with the sump, around £150 plus the special synthetic oil. If it's not leaking oil or misbehaving, I'd leave it alone.

 

The Jaguar V6 is Ford based but has a lot of different bits in it. It's got more in common with the Lincoln version than the Mondeo.

[messerschmitt owner]

The 6 month rule isn't as clear-cut as people make out, it's a 6 months on a fault which the dealer cannot prove did not exist on sale of the car. Obviously as the car does more miles, it would be harder for the customer to argue that the fault existed at point of sale (especially if there's some "100 point check" type document, which are done equally for the dealer's benefit). Then if it ends up going through Trading Standards, they're actually surprisingly fair about the whole thing and actually take age/mileage/price into consideration. Contrary to popular belief, they're more interested in prosecuting clockers and suchlike than giving some dealer a hard time over a sticky electric window on a cheap Astra.

reasonable expectation!

[Micrashed]

Shiteists are probably a lot more pragmatic about faults on a used motor than "Joe Public" who wants a fault free, brand spanking new car with unused ashtray for £299.99