mega_stream

The car's got the problem, not the dealer
(Well he may have if I get my way )

If I bought a car from a dealer, and find that its got a pipe that's not connected to delibratly "hide" a sensor problem where do I stand in terms of getting him to fix it?

I took the car back last week (before I knew the pipe was disconnected) to complain the car was running rough on idle, I also showed him errors stored in the ECU.

He said straight away, I'm not paying for that to be fixed, if you don't like it I will give you your money back

Is this all he needs to do? offer me a refund?, or am I entitled to getting it fixed at his cost?
I have got Warranty Holding's cover (for what its worth ) , but strictly speaking according to the small print they don't cover for faults that existed when the car was purchased.

I want to keep the car, I'm just now peeved that I've found this pipe not connected-when it's connected there's no denying a problem somewhere as the car stalls?

Any legal experts out there can offer some advice?

pslewis

Take your money back - dont go any further - its all he has to do I think?

Pete

IanW

John,

YHM

Ian

robby

if you re-connect the pipe so the problems showing you can take the car to another garage who deals with warranty holdings and get them to fix it under warranty, they wouldn't know the problem was there when you bought it (not if you don't tell them)

marty_t3

Had a similar prob with mine. I took the car back with a problem that the dealer deliberately covered up from me (though he denies it).

My car came with a warranty and the dealer was happy to get the repair done under the warranty as he had already signed the warranty paperwork saying he had inspected the car and it was fine. This was fine with me too as the repair is getting carried out at a warranty approved garage at no cost to me.

Only downside is a few days inconvenience without the car and i won't be using the same dealer again. On the upside i know the repair is being done correctly and the replacement part also comes with a warranty.

Legally, the dealer must either replace the car or offer you a refund if it was sold to you with a fault that was not obvious to you at the time. The difficult part is proving it. I called the CAB and they pretty much told me it's his word against mine as the "fault" was only ever mentioned verbally. I even had 2 witnesses to back up what was said about the car at the time but as they were not classed as "independant witnesses" they were no use should i decide to take it to court. Hence, i took the warranty route.

[Edited by marty_t3 - 11/24/2002 6:58:18 PM]

Nathan L

MS

Some really good advice here mate.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/asktheexperts/cars

Hope you get it sorted as it's a lovely car.

Nathan..