Bought a trailer, turned out to be dangerous.

[EddyP]

Evening all,

Yesterday I bought a trailer from eBay, that was described as "good and reliable" but obviously had the sold as seen line on it.
I had a good look around it prior to paying for it and couldn't really tell anything was untoward.

A mile down the road one of the wheels flys off, the hub sheared clean off. From having a closer look at the failure it's obvious that it's happened before and had a very bad bodge done to repair it. The guy drilled down the stub shaft, tapped it and put an 8mm bolt in it.

We were doing about 20mph in a built up urban area when it went, and it was amazing it didn't hit another car or a pedestrian, it really flew off!

As you can imagine the guy has no interest what so ever in trying to make things right, won't respond to emails or phone calls, and we didn't go back to his house as I had to wait for recovery and by that time the gf just wanted to get home.

The money aspect doesn't really bother me and I know that eBay is caveat emptor. What bothers me is that I could have either done major damage to someones car or even killed someone.

So what would you do? would the boys in blue even be interested in this?

[anonymous-user]

You were towing it. You were responsible for it.

[DuraAce]

Bought from private individual rather than from a business seller I take it

Fix it and forget about it is what I'd do.

[TooMany2cvs]

What sort of trailer, how much?

[paintman]

There may well be offences under S75 RTA 1988:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/sectio...

But can you prove he did the bodge or knew it existed?

[EddyP]

Only a small 6'x4' trailer, market going rate £230. Bought privately from eBay.

I've taken the axle off tonight and had a much closer look at the failure, it's certainly been repaired very recently as underneath I found angle grinder marks where the axle had previously been taken off and the marks haven't even gone rusty yet, so I'd say for sure he knew the bodge was done, can I prove it 100% probably not.

[EddyP]

paintman said:

There may well be offences under S75 RTA 1988:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/sectio...

But can you prove he did the bodge or knew it existed?

Certainly does like there's an offence there, question would be what to do about it, he could do with a lesson so that he doesn't do something like this again and end up hurting someone.

[paintman]

Whether your local Police would be interested? You could always ask.

[EddyP]

Just spoke to 101, they aren't even slightly interested. I'm not all that surprised :lol:

[lbc]

EddyP said:

Just spoke to 101, they aren't even slightly interested. I'm not all that surprised :lol:

You were not speeding and nobody died, so what else do you expect. It's a civil matter.

[Cliftonite]

Do you not have recourse via eBay? They seem to side with the buyers in most disputes?

[R0G]

Caveat emptor = http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/cave...

[paintman]

From your link:
"This rule is not designed to shield sellers who engage in Fraud or bad faith dealing by making false or misleading representations about the quality or condition of a particular product."
As I said earlier though, proving it is going to be the issue.

[barker22]

A mile down the road, I would be taking this a lot more seriously.
I assume the recovery company can verify date/time/location 1 mile from sellers house.
Its not been described correctly when selling, get an engineers report, threaten court, he may just pay up.

[Vaud]

barker22 said:

A mile down the road, I would be taking this a lot more seriously.
I assume the recovery company can verify date/time/location 1 mile from sellers house.
Its not been described correctly when selling, get an engineers report, threaten court, he may just pay up.

It is a time for pragmatism. £230 cost of trailer. Repair? £50/£60? (I don't know)

Opportunity cost - court docs, costs, engineers report, etc..

Pragmatic approach - fix, negative feedback, move on.

[Some Gump]

IMO misrepresentation.

Given that you're not going to get anywhere, I'd return the favour by writing "" in fertiliser on his lawn.

[dudleybloke]

Disgraceful.
I would have used an m12 bolt.

[TurricanII]

EddyP said:

Evening all,
Yesterday I bought a trailer from eBay, that was described as "good and reliable" but obviously had the sold as seen line on it.

The advice re second hand purchases on SP&L has generally been that your only hope is if the item is misrepresented - not as described. Save a copy of the advert with description.

I don't think you can stick 'sold as seen' on an advert to avoid legal obligations.

If you can't just leave it and it is worth your time then I imagine I would get a suitably qualified mechanical type to write up the fault/bodge and would ask the seller to reimburse you for towing costs and repair of the fault OR reimburse you the sale price plus towing costs, whichever is the lesser amount. After that goes without replies you might look at whether a small claims court/money claim online process might be appropriate:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/courts/mcol-qu...

[Variomatic]

Vaud said:

It is a time for pragmatism. £230 cost of trailer. Repair? £50/£60? (I don't know)

Opportunity cost - court docs, costs, engineers report, etc..

Pragmatic approach - fix, negative feedback, move on.

Agreed, although it does raise the small conundrum of why have laws (in this case SOGA and possibly part of the RTA) if no one bothers to have them enforced. All the arguments about "no point" would disappear - along with most of the dodgy sellers - if enforcement was the norm!

[Vaud]

Variomatic said:

Agreed, although it does raise the small conundrum of why have laws (in this case SOGA and possibly part of the RTA) if no one bothers to have them enforced. All the arguments about "no point" would disappear - along with most of the dodgy sellers - if enforcement was the norm!

And in this case raises the question about why trailers and caravans shouldn't be subject to an MOT that would at least reduce the number of unroadworthy lumps of towed metal that are common on the roads.