straight swap with a dealer, any consumer rights?

[Apache]

Exchanged our old car for another from a dealer just under a month ago with him repaying us for the road tax we had just bought and the cambelt has just snapped wrecking the engine, does he have any legal obligation to help?

[northwest monkey]

I bet this is the sort of question legal students get!

I'm going to guess probably not - based on no legal knowledge whatsover!

[AMST09]

You still technically bought the car so yes under warranty

[Deva Link]

AMST09 said:

You still technically bought the car

Correct.

AMST09 said:

so yes under warranty

What warranty? Please don't say all cars have to come with 3mths warranty.

Even if it had a warranty the warranty company wouldn't pay for damage due to a failed cambelt.


Sale of Goods Act *might* help the OP. Depends.

[Ozzie Osmond]

Deva Link said:

What warranty?

^^^ This

And there are many hurdles to cross for any SOGA remedy. The big questions are inevitably age, mileage, and price paid as well as any specific description of the car. With a cam belt any service history will be in the mix too.

[tintopracer]

Just because you didn't pay cash, doesn't alter the dealer's obligations. It's still a sale for consideration i.e. the car you sold to him.

Any warranty depends on the age of the car, condition, declared faults etc just as if it were a cash sale.

[Marcellus]

There's an offer, an acceptance, followed by exchange of consideration between the parties and it's fully legal so there is a contract.

So the fact you gave them a car as payment for a car is completely irrelevant and they shoudl look after you as it you had given them cash.

[Output Flange]

Had the cambelt been changed in line with the manufacturer's schedule? Is it reasonable to think that there was a pre-existing fault when you bought it?

If it were me, the first step would be to talk to the vendor and see if you can get them to offer to help out.

[the car dealer]

If theres nothing at all on the paperwork stating if you have warranty or not then you have a chance

If he says no warranty given or implied then no

accept and move on

[H_Kan]

the car dealer said:

If theres nothing at all on the paperwork stating if you have warranty or not then you have a chance

If he says no warranty given or implied then no

accept and move on

For somebody with your username, you should know that you are talking absolute tosh. A car dealer cannot absolve themselves of any responsibility by sticking that little caveat in there.

There may not be a traditional warranty however there is certainly some obligations under SOGA that the dealer will have to comply with. OP speak to the dealer and see what they say, however the fact you paid with your car rather then cash doesn't make a difference.

Please give more details on the car, mileage, 'price' paid etc.

[confused_buyer]

If either of the cars concerned are the Renault 19 or Saab 9000 in your profile then you haven't really much chance unless you paid vastly over the odds.

Cars worth the price of non-advance train ticket between London and Manchester are only considered to need to last as long.

Nothing wrong with bangernomics at all but when they go pop you have to shrug your shoulders and move on.

[BlueMeganeII]

I would still talk to the dealer regardless of the cars costs. There's always so much talk of SOGA or whatever and taking the dealer to court before even just speaking to them! Many are aware of their obligations and will try to help you out. If the purchased car was in banger range they may just refund you, you never know.

Pick up the phone... ask them if they can help...

[Apache]

confused_buyer said:

If either of the cars concerned are the Renault 19 or Saab 9000 in your profile then you haven't really much chance unless you paid vastly over the odds.

Cars worth the price of non-advance train ticket between London and Manchester are only considered to need to last as long.

Nothing wrong with bangernomics at all but when they go pop you have to shrug your shoulders and move on.

Sorry for not replying sooner. The saga has come to a conclusion, no names mentioned but the dealer, in my opinion, was a gent. The car we exchanged was our old Alpina which was very much looking forward to retirement and not suitable for the short journeys to work that it was being used for by my wife. For various reasons we settled on an exchange with this dealer because he intended to break the car and wasn't too concerned about the condition of it. Within a month ours went pop, unbeknown to us, so did the Alpina. There is a bit more to it than this but it was resolved with a suitable, reliable and low mileage replacement to us for a significant discount. I'm not sure what is happening to the Alpina but it is now in Germany

[4rephill]

Part of the problem with these sort of threads is the lack of information given by the OP.

For example, what is :

Apache said:

Exchanged our old car for another from a dealer

supposed to be telling us?
(yes, you can view the OP's garage section, but that assumes that the section is: A) up to date, and B) is complete ).

Was "our old car" worth £100?, £250?, £500?, £1000?, £5000, £10,000?, £50,000, how much, because you have far more legal comeback on a car worth £50K than you do one worth £100.

In the eyes of the Law, if you're dealing with a car in the £100~£500 range, there is an understanding that at this end of the market you are taking a gamble and have to expect any purchase to be liable to have possible faults that could cost more to repair than the car is worth.

In this situation, the Law would deem it unfair to expect repairs to be carried out by the Dealer that could cost double the value of the car.



If the OP had simply given an approximate value of the vehicles involved then it would save an awful lot of guess work being involved in the responses!

[Apache]

I think my previous post answers your questions