Sellers that fail to supply details of cars issues.

[Ahbefive]

Just browsing autotrader for cars as you do. Come across a car that looks well priced and the ad doesn't point towards it bring a moneypit.

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/2017...

Then you check the m.o.t history (which many people don't know is possible).

Just wow.

And no, I'm pretty sure that the seller wouldn't have sorted these items and then listed it at such a reasonable price. People are aholes sometimes.

I'm a bit surprised that a car can pass an m.o.t with so many advisories.

[Petrolhead_Rich]

In all fairness, there's nothing there that points to poor maintenance or a defect, and all would be normal wear and tear for 15years/90,000miles

Corroded springs and play in bushes are something of an opinion anyway, one MOT tester will put it to cover themselves, another won't bother on the basis that all springs have some surface corrosion on! likewise with the CV Boot, might be cracking up, but hasn't split?

The MOT check is a useful tool and does show how the owner looks after their car, if every year its failing on bald tyres and blown bulbs then you know it's not even being vaguely looked after, but a few advisories for rusty springs on a 15 year old car wouldn't alarm me!

wonder if the MOT was done at a main dealer? Oh yes sir, you just need about £5k worth of work, luckily for you we're a bit quiet and can fit you in today? No? Oh, ok, here's your MOT certificate with 27 advisories for a load of non-issues.....

ETA - Sill damage could be from poor jacking by a DIY'er, but then I have had a certain garage chain ("M****save") start jacking on a plastic sill cover before yelling at them to use a bloody jacking point!!

Edited by Petrolhead_Rich on Monday 27th March 19:30

[Scootersp]

Loads on there that are just picky advisories, I mean rusty springs!? Unless the car is know for snapping springs I'd not be bothered. Some light surface rust to brake ferrules blah, brake discs again worn fair enough. Sort of smacks of the sort of mot place fishing for a bit of easy work?

I'm just saying that another tester might have only given a few of those advisories, as far as I know they are purely at the discretion of the tester.

[hairykrishna]

It's either somewhere touting for work or somewhere scraping a mates car through and covering his arse.

That list would worry me if it was an MOT done just before it went up for sale but it seems to be now fairly short of MOT. The advert does state it was serviced at 83k, around the time of the MOT, maybe it was a garage warming him up for a fleecing? Worth a call if you're looking for one I reckon - you might be lucky and it turns out that the owners one of those people who just pays for all of the advisories to be 'sorted out' then complains about how old cars are money pits.

[Ahbefive]

Or they could be rusty bits that after another 7k miles in the rain and salt are pretty much ready to give it up.

I just think it's a bit stty to fail to mention a single bad point in an ad if the car needs £1k+ of work straight away.

I'm sure that there are much worse examples of this though and would love to see if anyone can find 2 pages of advisories on a car advertised as mint or similar.

[Elroy Blue]

Petrolhead_Rich said:

The MOT check is a useful tool and does show how the owner looks after their car, if every year its failing on bald tyres and blown bulbs then you know it's not even being vaguely looked after, but a few advisories for rusty springs on a 15 year old car wouldn't alarm me!

Edited by Petrolhead_Rich on Monday 27th March 19:30

Not sure about that. My wife's car is maintained meticulously, but the last two MOTs it's failed on a 'blown bulb'. This is despite them all working the day before when I checked. The garage kindly 'replaced' them for free.

I can only assume it's a way of providing some sort of (dodgy) proof that they're doing the check.

[patby]

I have not even known my car failed 1st time until checking the MOT history.

Bulbs replaced FOC

[anonymous-user]

I find the modern PH preoccupation with "advisories" quite peculiar. Focus on (1) overall condition of the car, and (2) its real service history (I like to see a pile of invoices). If those two boxes are ticked then advisories are IMO neither here nor there.

[andymc]

its a 15 year old car, either up your budget or stop looking at the rough bottom end of the market

[andymc]

this is the problem with people who aren't mechanics having access to MOT advisories

[anonymous-user]

A lot of those advisories look like bks and if you took the car to a different MOT tester might not even have been advisories. Some MOT garages are rather over zealous in finding advisories to try and drum up work, particularly the big chain places.

If you want it go and have a look at the supposedly corroded springs and pitted discs and make your own mind up.

[steve-5snwi]

None of that would bother me either and realistically you wouldn't put that in your advert if you wanted to sell it.

[r11co]

There's more buts in that advisory list than a Brazilian beach-front. Nothing there that would worry me on a 15 year old car. Quite re-assuring in fact.

Ahbefive said:

I'm a bit surprised that a car can pass an m.o.t with so many advisories.

No offence, but that demonstrates how ignorant you are. Advisories are discretionary on behalf of the tester and are just his/her opinion. No legal sigificance.

[Chedders]

Found this, seems a little cheap, was tempted to view:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/292065820351

Quick search on cazana.com, oh!

[caelite]

I feel pretty bad actually, I sold a car in December to a nice old guy, it had a clean MOT with I think 1 or 2 advisories, it needed a few odds and ends and was priced accordingly (new fuel filler neck and new front tyres). Just took a peak at its current MOT and its failed in a massive way, couple I don't feel that bad about, he didn't change the tyres and it's failed on those, it's also snapped a Front spring which can happen at any time, but there is umpteen failures about rust around rear suspension components I knew nothing about.

[Ahbefive]

r11co said:

Ahbefive said:

I'm a bit surprised that a car can pass an m.o.t with so many advisories.

No offence, but that demonstrates how ignorant you are. Advisories are discretionary on behalf of the tester and are just his/her opinion. No legal sigificance.

Indeed I'm not an m.o.t tester but judging by that list I would be looking to change bushes (do these come with the arms or can the bush be pressed in?) Anti roll bar drop links, brakes and brake lines. Discretionary points maybe but also bits that could be failing the next m.o.t depending on how far gone they are.

To me this seems an oversight/deceiptful not to be mentioned at all in the ad.

My impreza I owned for 7years only ever has an advisory for tyres wearing a bit low on one m.o.t and my Volvos pass with no problema. In fact I have only had 2 cars ever that had lots of advisories or failure points (a 106 and a ZX )so I'm not used to seeing a huge list like this.

Edited by Ahbefive on Monday 27th March 21:17

[Ahbefive]

Chedders said:

Found this, seems a little cheap, was tempted to view:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/292065820351

Quick search on cazana.com, oh!

That is the sort of thing people would buy and think its pretty much a new car with so few miles and warranty etc. Not a good seller. Pretty dishonest imo.

[Denis O]

Chedders said:

Found this, seems a little cheap, was tempted to view:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/292065820351

Quick search on cazana.com, oh!

That's nothing. The picture, on Cazana, of SWMBO's Range Rover, is an X5

[r11co]

Ahbefive said:

I'm not an m.o.t tester but judging by that list I would be looking to change bushes (do these come with the arms or can the bush be pressed in?) Anti roll bar drop links, brakes and brake lines. Discretionary points maybe but also bits that could be failing the next m.o.t depending on how far gone they are.

To me this seems an oversight/deceiptful not to be mentioned at all in the ad.

You are joking, aren't you? The car was 'priced accordingly. £1200 for a TT with suspension components that are old but 'not significantly weakened' is a bit of a result.

To suggest there is dishonesty involved (rather than exceedingly high expectations by the OP combined with a certain laziness associated with a resignation of responsibility regarding common sense and due diligence) is unfair.

[KPB1973]

That MOT history website goes a long way to explaining why so many traders are now obscuring reg plates on adverts.

The discrepancies I recently spotted between that website and cars in the flesh was depressing - shaved mileages, repairs unresolved but MOT's magically applied by other garages, scrappy parts or the cheapest part worns, the same advisories 3 or 4 years running going un-addressed etc.

Some of the issues bothered me more than others, but the Govt could do a bl00dy big service to the motoring public by promoting that website, even if not everyone is qualified to interpret the advisories.