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I for one would be straight back and expect the problem fixed. To me, that's why you pay a dealer a premium price for you new car which you expect to be A1, whilst the dealer gives you a low price for p-ex, which he expects to have a few problems.
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i'm buying under warrenty so i certainly will be back to the dealer if i have any problems!
i have to be honest theirs a very small radiator leak too?
after i filled the coolant up in over a week and £350 the coolant warning light hasb't come on, so its very small.
will this be ok too do you think?
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you may well find that the dealer will ask when he's doing the paperwork if there are any new faults with your car, I know when I have changed car in the past they have gone for a quick look as part of doing the exchange.
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well they didn't inspect the car so they couldn't "notice" the radiator problem.
i'm just wondered how big a problem with the car has to be for them to colar you, if you like?
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They haven't asked me about any faults in the past when trading-in.
This is good as my Ka had the throttle idle valve engine flare problem, and our Merc A Class had dodgy aircon and probably a million other A-class faults too.
If the dealer had asked I wouldn't have lied. Or he could have checked them over.
:)
mike
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Bit simplistic, Mark.
In my view, the function of the dealer is to add value and that includes correctly assessing the car before trade in. The rest of the added value process we all know well enough; nice premises and salesman, warranty, valeting, faults fixed and so on. That's why we pay more for a car from a dealer than from a private owner.
Hawkeye
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Stranger in a strange land
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Hawkeye,
Mostly I agree; but that's not quite the situation here.
The fault, if I understand correctly, wasn't there when the dealer saw the car. It has developed since. The owner is aware that it has developed. And would like to know if the dealer doesn't check whether he would have any comeback.
Legally, perhaps not; but morally its not that nice.
The other way around, I might buy a car with a fault, but I'd be pretty naffed off if it developed that fault between my test drive and purchase, especially if I thought the person selling it to me knew about it and didn't tell me.
In reality I doubt that the trader will care, but it might affect future service levels and its not really a nice thing to do.
Only IMO, of course.
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About 10 years ago my uncle traded in his F reg Regata for a G reg example - which I later bought off him.
The dealer actually came back to him complaining about a fault that cost £200 to fix. My uncle didn't know about it.
My uncle gave him £50 to shut him up and he went away.
I personally thought that this attitude of the dealer was disgusting. The dealer was charged with supplying a car for sale to the general public, my uncle paid extra for the years warranty on his car and got minimal p ex on his car that he traded in.
Another example I know is when a daughter of a friend of mine bought an overpriced fiesta and had nothin but problems with it.
After getting them fixed and deciding to sell it she advertised it for £750 (more reasonable price at the time) and would have liked £650sh. A chap came along saying it was for his wife. He offered her £500 for it and she reluctantly took it. Had she have waited for other callers she may have got more. She then found out he was a dealer.
A few months later she got a phone call saying he'd sold it at auction and only got £400 for it because it had been registered as a total loss, and could she reimburse him the £100 he had lost. At this point she referred him to her boyfriend - who is 6'4". He never phoned back.
Personally whether I would tell the dealer would depend on a number of factors.
Do you think you're paying over the odds for the car you're buying or are you being fleeced for the trade in?
What is the dealer like to deal with? Will he generally appreciate knowing about the fault so that he can sort it before the inconvenience of having to do it under warranty, or will he use it as a means to chisel more out of the deal?
Is the dealer likely to retail the car or sell it through trade, auction etc? If he just wants to trade it he won't be bothered about a fault that you describe.
Mark, I agree with your comments in principle but I have a very jaded opinion as to how honesty can be used against people, so in my case I would advise that Andy plays it by ear.
H
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Mark,
I doubt that 99.9% of UK car dealers would know the meaning of the word moral.
I traded in a car that I knew had noisy air conditioning, a wheel bearing on it's way out, and had had the factory fitted CD changer removed.
I have absolutely no remorse whatsoever for then making the same dealer spend £1400 on faults present in the first few weeks of owning my new vehicle, I'm afraid it's swings and roundabouts, but at the end of the day the dealer is still making a tidy profit.
PP
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>>I doubt that 99.9% of UK car dealers would know the meaning of the word moral
I doubt if the percentage is that high, but I take your point.
My point is that its not relevant whether or not the dealer is honest, I am. I am honest whether or not the person I am dealing wiht is honest. If the person is "too" dishonest, then I simply wouldn't deal with him, I wouldn't drag myself down to his level.
But bear in mind, you traded in a car with existing faults which a dealer could have found or not. He should have the expertise to spot those problems, or get into a different trade.
What we are talking about here in this thread is a fault which occurred AFTER the inspection and agreement of price where that fault is intentionally not disclosed. Quite different.
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Only IF it's intentional.
Did you see the dealer check for correct operation of the switch during his inspection and write something down on a checklist? If not, who's to say who's right and who's wrong - what if TRUE history was that the fault had arisen but you genuinely weren't aware of it? Would you want to cough-up money then based just on the dealer's say-so?
The 'normal' position for the button would be to have the light ON, if YOU happen to habitually have it set to 'recirculate', and suppose it just happened that it had got set to 'fresh' by accident at the time it was inspected by the dealer - soon afterwards you set it back to your normal position, and have never noticed the fault because it broke during that repositioning but you've never had it back on 'fresh' since?
Or suppose you have a medical condition which gives you a bad memory, and although you knew about the fault, at the time you hand over the car on Saturday, you have genuinely clean forgotten about it?
Or what if the fault condition which caused the motor to tick had also happened to cause the bulb to blow, or maybe the bulb's life just ended during this period entirely coincidentally, and, without realising, you'd been driving around with the switch set to 'recirculate' ever since? (Can you access the bulb and apply far too many volts to it? OK, you'd be doing something naughtily intentional here, but only creating a situation which could genuinely conceivably have happened. Hey, maybe you just found that light really irritating and wanted rid of it and were prepared to base your knowledge of the setting purely on the position of the switch (assuming it's not a push-push momentary), and had deliberately disabled it 11 months ago - so it wasn't working at the time the dealer inspected the car but he never checked it. Or maybe he did check it but didn't write it down and HE's got a bad memory and is now just deluding himself that it worked.)
All comes down to morals. Clearly Mark has got very high morals. Based on many many other postings, dealers and garages, even if not exactly criminal, often don't mind giving their customers less than 100% service. So as Hugo says, it depends on how you feel towards the dealer. If he's a bit of an old mate and has given you good service in the past, tell him. If you don't think he's giving you the best possible deal he could, don't tell him. Don't lose any sleep over it, and if you get any comeback from him, try invoking one of the plausibly genuine explanations, at least in the first instance.
Chap buying a car off me - points out that one of the silencers is set to blow any minute - I crawled underneath and took a look; he was right, but I genuinely didn't know - I knocked him another £100 off the price without hesitation - see, I am a nice person after all.
But it is possible to be too honest for one's own good. Retain a healthy level of cynicism. Do as you would be done by the person you're dealing with.
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I don't believe the punter is planning on lying to the dealer about the state of the car at trade-in, if the dealer doesn't ask you don't tell.
Nobody ever traded in a car because they were totally happy with it, this is why trade-in values are pants compared to A1 showroom values.
mike
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the car is a high mileage so its certainly going to auction.
the inspection/test drive of the car was a quick drive round the roundabout and back, don't know whether he pressed any buttons.
my only worry is "someone" sees the light straight away, swithches it off and the fault shows its head.
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Andy, it obviously bothers you, and not solely because you might get "found out" as it were. I'm with Mark on the honesty issue...
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Mark
Yes you are quite right if the fault appeared after the deal was agreed.
At my local Citroen dealer the various faults I have asked about on my Synergie are there for all to see on their quotes system. Even changing the number plate for a personal reg. hasn't fazed them, so when I went to ask about trading it in for a recent C5 estate and told the sales manager about the sticking tailgate lock and the faulty driver's seat warmer, he grinned and said "I know, I checked before you came". There's a chap who deserves success in life.
Hawkeye
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Stranger in a strange land
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Clever guy! :-)
I do wonder if Jennings ever checked when I traded mine in? If they had then they would have seen an interesting history. ;-)
Which I should point out, I disclosed everything that they asked about, accidents, the car's import staus, everything.
Blue
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I wonder if he's going to show a print out to potential buyers?
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I had the exact same problem on a Peugeot once. I wasn't planning to sell the car at the time and found a way to disable the recirc function (i.e. light off, always outside air). I rarely used it when it worked, so forgot to mention it to the buyer when I sold it a year later.
A new climate control unit could have cost at least a few hundred. The same car would only be worth about £1,000 now. In many cases, second-hand cars (especially French) have minor electrical niggles, not affecting safety or driveability, that just aren't worth fixing. Either that, a quick fix like mine or cheap second-hand parts.
Andy22, bearing in mind the car being part-exed and what it is worth, if you were buying it second-hand, would you expect all the minor electricals to work?
James
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Of course you could always pop the switch out and remove the bulb before replacing the switch.
On the other side of the coin, having a car stuck on recirculate at this time of the year can cause sudden fogging of the windows when the air in your car reaches sufficient saturation. I accidentally set the air to recirculate on a Civic I had about 7 r 8 years ago and didn't notice. At some point later in the journey the car fogged-up completely in about 5 seconds flat. Very scary on the A3(M) on a dark November evening, I can tell you.
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