VW finance are nothing to do with your CRA rights - your rights, such as they would be at this stage, are with the dealership who sold you the car - the retailer. Nobody else.

You can't reject the car under the general rules of the CRA - you are past the point at which you can do so.

The only option if you did wish to reject would be to take the matter to court (assuming you could not come to an agreement with the original retailer), arguing that the goods have never been 'fit for purpose'. However, before even considering that, you would HAVE to give the original supplying dealer an opportunity to rectify the fault.

Even if you went to court, no guarantee of winning, or what the court decision would be - they might order the VW dealer to just pay you a small amount of compensation, and close the matter.

However, you've had nearly 2 years use out of the car. The car is still covered by another year of warranty. The car has been generally reliable - and when faults have occurred, they've been rectified. The court might even decide you were being frivolous, and throw out your case.

Edited by RobJP on 05/07/2017 at 14:03

Assuming the agreement is regulated, which it almost certainly is if the purchase price of the car was £30,000 or less, them you do still have your CCA 1974 Section 75 rights which essentally means that the lender is jointly and severally liable with the supplying dealer for the dealer's obligations to you in respect of the car. That liability gerally continues whether or not the loan has been paid off.

However that might be of limited help. The lender will not be liable for anything that the dealer would not have been liable for. From memory, it is on the hook for the goods being as described and of satisfactory quality. In effect this would indirectly include obligations such as warranty that the dealer included.

That doesn't stop you pursuing the lender but if the dealer can wriggle out of it then so can they - unless the financial ombudsman service, to which you can try complaining, tells them otherwise.

There are nuances here of course, this can get very complicated. Was the agreement HP, conditional sale, or something else? Is the dealer responsible for the manufacturer warranty (although you have had no problem with this)? You are unlikely to have any claim on the servicing dealer.

The other thing is that lenders do their best, in general, to bat any claims back to the supplying dealer. They can't actually insist on this, as they are just as liable, but if it comes to a court case then not pursuing the problems with the dealer could weaken your claim (because you have not made enough effort to mitigate your loss).

Then there is the question of what the claim is for. Your car is still in warranty. If nothing else goes wrong, you have no claim. The lender will not entertain making any commitment to deal with something that might happen, they will just say they will consider it if it does (before, in all probability, batting it away).

It seems unlikely that you have undermined your rights by not going back to the supplying dealer. The lender is liable anyway (if there is anything to be liable for) and you cannot really be said to have failed to mitigate - what you have done was reasonable and customary.

In practice I would say your best bet is to hope for some goodwill from the manufacturer if it goes wrong again out of warranty. No harm in trying to get the manufacturer to "guarantee" the repairs for a reasonable period in advance, but not much you can do if they refuse.

E&OE - just my non-lawer's thoughts.

Some material here:

www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/techni...a

Incidentally I don't know what you mean by "CRA" - am I missing something?

Edited by Manatee on 08/07/2017 at 13:55