Hello all, I've just joined up to have a rant..

I know I'm not good buying cars - my mind seems to go blank when it comes to checking the car over. I also appreciate that second hand cars are not going to be perfect.

If I hadn't been lied to I wouldn't be annoyed as I still think I got a reasonable deal. It's the attitude of the dealer that really got to me.

Firstly, the car was supposed to be serviced as part of the deal - it's on the receipt and the book has been stamped. The exact words the guy used were "I'll service it and check all the fluids, don't worry about that". When I picked the car up I should have lifted the bonnet to check but I didn't.. I don't know why, just taking him at his word.

When I actually got some time to check it at home I found the brake fluid below minimum, the coolant below minimum and the washer fluid empty. The brake fluid was the most alarming obviously... Unforunately, being a diesel when I dipped the oil it was already black so I have no way of knowing if it was actually changed.

I rang the guy to ask him how he could stamp a service book after leaving the brake fluid so low and whether he actually lifted the bonnet at all and even changed the oil. I got an awful lot of attitude back - not letting me speak, constantly accusing me of swearing at him (I didn't swear once). He said fluid levels weren't part of the service and that a full service would have cost £500!! and that the service I got cost £100 which only consisted of an oil and filter change (convinient that I can't check). He insisted this was what an oil change cost and asked me if I knew how much 5 litres of oil cost. When I said about £25 he said I was being ridiculous.

On the test drive the car felt fine but towards the end the n/s back suspension started squeaking. Afterwards he insisted that if it he hadn't fixed it when I went to pick the car up I could have my deposit back. When I went to pick it up it wasn't squeeking so I assumed he'd fixed it. I asked him straight what the problem was and he said it was the rear disc cover rubbing. Stupidly I believed him. This has turned out to be an outright lie as, sure enough, a couple of journeys later the squeek came back and I finally ducked down under the car to take a close look and found the trailing arm bush half hanging out of the arm.

This is also when I discovered the another lie. The previous years MOT pointed to the front tyres being low. There wasn't a receipt showing any new tyres but on not-very-close inspection all the tyres appears ok. I brought it up with him anyway and he promised to check them out and replace anything illegal. When I picked the car up he told me that all the tyres were fine. But getting right under the back of the car to inspect the bushes showed both rear tyres severly worn on the inner edges. Seems to me like he swapped front to back so I wouldn't notice.

I've had car dealers be economical with the truth and I've often ended up paying more than I ought but never been lied to quite so brazenly.