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Regarding the directive on new car gaurantees if I read the paper correctlly then second hand cars must also be given a 1 year warranty including private sales.This applies upto 4year old vehicles ,I have ordered the full directive to read fully .It may or may not have something to do with so called dealers passing themselves of as private sellers.
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"then second hand cars must also be given a 1 year warranty including private sales. This applies upto 4year old vehicles"
"including private sales"
This is complete toss a private sale is just that a private sale ?
How is a genuine private seller be liable for a years warranty ???
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He has to buy appropiate insurance
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Thank you to Andy. There is a lot of contradictory information flying about concerning both a compulsory two year manufacturer warranty for all new cars sold within the EU and this new used car warranty. But for them to become law in the UK the directive would have to to adopted by the UK government and I haven't yet heard a squeak from them about this (nothing new).
HJ
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Only means you pay more for your car,new or used.Remember,no free lunches.
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I have just bought a second hand Ford Explorer 1998 from a Ford main dealer here in Germany and have a 1 year unconditonal gaurantee and a following year subjegt to a few clauses on km usage .This is now ford policy in Germany and is printed on all their new car brochures .Also they give a mobility warranty upto 4 years or a 100000km, Opel is 5 years
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Andy
I checked this on the net a while back and I'm pretty sure that private sales were excluded. Frankly, it would be a logistical nightmare to to include them, although one could see a field day for insurers and lawyers if they were. Alternatively, private sales would disappear, and second hand values would plunge further.
As HJ rightly says any EU Directive has to be adopted by the member states, and has no effect unless it is.
regards
John
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I wrote to my MP about this issue, and received a reply from the Department of Timidity and Inaction, stating that the relevant legislation would be enacted in the UK some time during 2002. Private sales are indeed excluded. In fact the one year period quoted is not a warranty period but a limitation period, i.e. the length of time within which you can complain that the car was defective when you bought it. This interpretation has been confirmed to me by the DTI. Auction sales are also exempt.
This seems harmless enough, except that for the first six months there will be an automatic presumption that any defect which appears in that period, was present when the vehicle was sold, unless the seller can prove otherwise. This amounts to a six month unconditional unlimited mileage warranty on any car sold, regardless of price. It also applies to second hand engines, gearboxes etc from breakers yards, but I shouldn't worry about that, because there is another directive coming in which will shortly close down most of the smaller breakers anyway, just leaving the 'super-breakers' who advertise in Exchange & Mart, and who tend to offer a reasonable warranty already (and charge a lot more than the smaller scrappies).
But just remember, this is consumer protection legislation, so it's all for our own good....
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I have just started to read the the actual directive and contrary to what has been said above it does appear to include private sales or more to the point it makes no distinction between private and commercial sales and is a consumer protection measure to protect everybody.As I have just stared to read it and it is quite a large document I will try and get to the nitty gritty and report back
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Oh dear,sounds like more of the nanny state.We must never take responsibility for our own mistakes or lack of judgement-somebodyelse must pay.
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Andy
Could you let me know the Directive number and I'll look on the Euro-Lex site. Seem to have lost it somewhere.
regards
john
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The directive number is 1999/44/EC. I found it using the Yahoo! search engine. Andy - it only covers consumer sales, which are defined somewhere in the document as sales made by a business to a private individual. I first became aware of this directive when a German company demanded that we give a 2 year warranty on our scientific equipment 'in line with the new EU directive'. The customer in this case was wrong.
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