A quick Internet search "how much to re gas air conditioning", reveals few prices quoted except for Halfords, which mentioned £50. This is around what I'd expect and certainly not the end of the world.
But just a couple of points,
firstly, are you sure it has climate control?. In my experience, many sellers or garages say the car has climate control to make it sound better, when in fact it just has air-con. If it has climate, it will have a digital display for the temperature you require, plus, probably, some kind of pictogram to show where the air is being directed. If the car has standard heating and ventilation controls plus a button with a frost symbol on it, it is just plain old air-con. Not that this matters from the point of view of re-gassing, both systems use the same gas.
Second, unless the test drive was literally just a couple of minutes, you definitely would have detected that the air-con/climate control was working (assuming you had the temperature right down). Despite what you may think or have been told, it doesn't take long at all to start working.
To the best of my knowledge, both systems (but definitely in the case of air-con) will work like a normal heating and ventilation system whilst it needs re-gassing, but you will find that the car is more prone to misting up the windows. Otherwise, unless there is a 'funny' smell (bacteria in the system) it shouldn't cause any real problems.
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