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Hey all,
Just been researching CRA and came across this forum. This is something that has been giving me an extremely stressful month and I hope I can find some good advice on it.
The TL/DR version of it is: Bought a car, had problems discovered within 3 days, been discussing with the dealer to get it fixed for pretty much the whole month who are now being very awkward with paying the garage. What are my rights as 30 days have elapsed since buying the car?
Really sorry for the long version, tried to keep it short but it's hard not to give a full picture:
I first viewed the car 26/06/2020. The dealer is located close to 200miles from my home (more on this later). Barring some cosmetic issues, which made me talk down the price, it all seemed and drove fine. The engine was warm when I got there but nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. I agreed a price and paid/took ownership of a car on 27/06/2020 for a value less than £10k. I paid cash.
Problem 1 - After parting with the money and all paperwork signed, the car wouldn't start when I tried driving away. The dealer had to jump start it for me and told me it was likely the battery was on low charge due to lockdown etc and it probably needed a bit of a drive. It was jerking a little bit but I assumed low fuel and low battery probably made sense. Drove home thinking it would all be fine. But battery has since been constantly dying so needs replacing.
Problem 2 - The next day I went to start the car in the morning and after about 30 seconds the car started shaking on idle, and an extremely rough idle, then the engine management light came on. After the car got a bit warmer, I restarted the car and all was fine, so it's basically rough idle on a cold start (which I couldn't have known on the first day as the engine was warm).
Problem 3 - I then realised that the Bluetooth in the car was not working. The advert stated that the car does have BT and I had not been told anything different.
Communications
So on day three, I called the dealer to explain. He referenced the warranty sheet and said I would need to get it diagnosed to see what the actual problem was and if it was covered under the warranty they would obviously cover it but even if it wasn't, they weren't going to leave me to it, they would contribute (oh how nice of them!). Got the diagnosis done and it came to a £1500 quote to get it repaired.
The dealer wasn't happy with the price and said they wanted the car to go back to them so they could have a look at it and fix whatever needs doing. I told them doing a 400mile roundtrip twice (once for drop off and once for collection after repair) was putting me at a huge inconvenience when there are opportunities to get the car fixed here locally. There was quite a bit of back and forth until I read up on CRA15 I had to tell them basically I don't need to get it repaired and I'm only doing it to keep things simple. If they're adamant to get it fixed near them as it's cheaper, they can come to collect it and drop it off, otherwise I want it fixed locally to me as it's easier, those are my conditions for accepting a repair. I even phoned other garages to get quotes for them to compare.
We weren't coming to an agreement and it had been 20 days. Then they requested that I go for a completely independent quote. This new garage came to the same conclusion as the first one but with some additional parts, but a total job worth £1300. So less money for more work. The dealer again was not happy with this especially the additional items and said they would only pay £800 only or I bring the car back to them. I felt that they were pushing me into a corner but I offered to cover the additional items as a gesture of goodwill, provided they covered the rest of the bill (being £1,100). A bit of back & forth here but long story short he agreed to cover £1,100. So essentially they have agreed to carry out the work at a third party garage.
However he said the only way they would cover the cost is if they got full receipts of all parts (however much the garage paid for them), all labour, every paperwork relating to the job including a report of what's been done once the job is finished. Seems a bit excessive to demand in advance as my view is that garages would only provide receipts of work once the payments have been made and likewise for report. I put this agreement into an email on 21/07 and within that I stated that the garage would like to receive the money in advance of 27/07 as this is when the work was due to start, and I will forward the receipts over to the dealer once I get them. Since then I got no response to my email, or text, then on the 24/07 I phoned and texted the dealer to ask whether everything is on track to start the work on Monday and got no response until 25/07 where I was just told "work to be started as soon as possible" with no mention of anything else. So I responded and told him to let me know once the money has been transferred, again with no response.
Sunday 26th July marks day 30 of taking ownership.
Today I checked with the garage who hasn't received any money. Spoke to the dealer who was questioning how he could send money without an invoice or receipts of parts? He was being quite brash in the SMSs and stating that they've been waiting for the garage to get in touch with them to ask for payments and they've been waiting for the documentation. None of this was discussed or mentioned before, or even mentioned throughout last week. I provided the bank details and many times in our communications throughout the month the dealer has mentioned that they would pay in advance of the work if the garage requires it.
He said he would get in touch with the garage tomorrow and go from there but I feel like they have been playing delay tactics and trying to be as difficult as possible as they knew that I knew about my rights to reject this car. I have a feeling they are looking for an excuse not to go with this garage's quote (after all, no garage/shop/dealer would disclose their cost price for parts when they're supplying & fitting, only the price they charge the customers) and then they will try to insist that I take the car back to them (and I will have no clue what quality of repair they will do after all of this). I have seen a different side to their communications today, perhaps they are thinking that 30 days are up and they are now in the driving seat?
This really has me stressed as I really don't mind getting the car repaired but if they are making my life difficult by asking me to do multiple trips to them especially when I don't need to get it repaired, I'd rather save the headache and get a full refund. This was my leverage so far. Do I still have this right as 30 days have elapsed or have their tactics worked and they are now entitled to insist on a repair, even if our agreement falls through?
If you got this far, thank you so much! Would very much appreciate your thoughts?!
Just been researching CRA and came across this forum. This is something that has been giving me an extremely stressful month and I hope I can find some good advice on it.
The TL/DR version of it is: Bought a car, had problems discovered within 3 days, been discussing with the dealer to get it fixed for pretty much the whole month who are now being very awkward with paying the garage. What are my rights as 30 days have elapsed since buying the car?
Really sorry for the long version, tried to keep it short but it's hard not to give a full picture:
I first viewed the car 26/06/2020. The dealer is located close to 200miles from my home (more on this later). Barring some cosmetic issues, which made me talk down the price, it all seemed and drove fine. The engine was warm when I got there but nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. I agreed a price and paid/took ownership of a car on 27/06/2020 for a value less than £10k. I paid cash.
Problem 1 - After parting with the money and all paperwork signed, the car wouldn't start when I tried driving away. The dealer had to jump start it for me and told me it was likely the battery was on low charge due to lockdown etc and it probably needed a bit of a drive. It was jerking a little bit but I assumed low fuel and low battery probably made sense. Drove home thinking it would all be fine. But battery has since been constantly dying so needs replacing.
Problem 2 - The next day I went to start the car in the morning and after about 30 seconds the car started shaking on idle, and an extremely rough idle, then the engine management light came on. After the car got a bit warmer, I restarted the car and all was fine, so it's basically rough idle on a cold start (which I couldn't have known on the first day as the engine was warm).
Problem 3 - I then realised that the Bluetooth in the car was not working. The advert stated that the car does have BT and I had not been told anything different.
Communications
So on day three, I called the dealer to explain. He referenced the warranty sheet and said I would need to get it diagnosed to see what the actual problem was and if it was covered under the warranty they would obviously cover it but even if it wasn't, they weren't going to leave me to it, they would contribute (oh how nice of them!). Got the diagnosis done and it came to a £1500 quote to get it repaired.
The dealer wasn't happy with the price and said they wanted the car to go back to them so they could have a look at it and fix whatever needs doing. I told them doing a 400mile roundtrip twice (once for drop off and once for collection after repair) was putting me at a huge inconvenience when there are opportunities to get the car fixed here locally. There was quite a bit of back and forth until I read up on CRA15 I had to tell them basically I don't need to get it repaired and I'm only doing it to keep things simple. If they're adamant to get it fixed near them as it's cheaper, they can come to collect it and drop it off, otherwise I want it fixed locally to me as it's easier, those are my conditions for accepting a repair. I even phoned other garages to get quotes for them to compare.
We weren't coming to an agreement and it had been 20 days. Then they requested that I go for a completely independent quote. This new garage came to the same conclusion as the first one but with some additional parts, but a total job worth £1300. So less money for more work. The dealer again was not happy with this especially the additional items and said they would only pay £800 only or I bring the car back to them. I felt that they were pushing me into a corner but I offered to cover the additional items as a gesture of goodwill, provided they covered the rest of the bill (being £1,100). A bit of back & forth here but long story short he agreed to cover £1,100. So essentially they have agreed to carry out the work at a third party garage.
However he said the only way they would cover the cost is if they got full receipts of all parts (however much the garage paid for them), all labour, every paperwork relating to the job including a report of what's been done once the job is finished. Seems a bit excessive to demand in advance as my view is that garages would only provide receipts of work once the payments have been made and likewise for report. I put this agreement into an email on 21/07 and within that I stated that the garage would like to receive the money in advance of 27/07 as this is when the work was due to start, and I will forward the receipts over to the dealer once I get them. Since then I got no response to my email, or text, then on the 24/07 I phoned and texted the dealer to ask whether everything is on track to start the work on Monday and got no response until 25/07 where I was just told "work to be started as soon as possible" with no mention of anything else. So I responded and told him to let me know once the money has been transferred, again with no response.
Sunday 26th July marks day 30 of taking ownership.
Today I checked with the garage who hasn't received any money. Spoke to the dealer who was questioning how he could send money without an invoice or receipts of parts? He was being quite brash in the SMSs and stating that they've been waiting for the garage to get in touch with them to ask for payments and they've been waiting for the documentation. None of this was discussed or mentioned before, or even mentioned throughout last week. I provided the bank details and many times in our communications throughout the month the dealer has mentioned that they would pay in advance of the work if the garage requires it.
He said he would get in touch with the garage tomorrow and go from there but I feel like they have been playing delay tactics and trying to be as difficult as possible as they knew that I knew about my rights to reject this car. I have a feeling they are looking for an excuse not to go with this garage's quote (after all, no garage/shop/dealer would disclose their cost price for parts when they're supplying & fitting, only the price they charge the customers) and then they will try to insist that I take the car back to them (and I will have no clue what quality of repair they will do after all of this). I have seen a different side to their communications today, perhaps they are thinking that 30 days are up and they are now in the driving seat?
This really has me stressed as I really don't mind getting the car repaired but if they are making my life difficult by asking me to do multiple trips to them especially when I don't need to get it repaired, I'd rather save the headache and get a full refund. This was my leverage so far. Do I still have this right as 30 days have elapsed or have their tactics worked and they are now entitled to insist on a repair, even if our agreement falls through?
If you got this far, thank you so much! Would very much appreciate your thoughts?!
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