What's a "reasonable time" to reject a vehicle under the Sale of Goods Act?
Girlfriend bought a T reg Mercedes A Class with 43k miles on it, from a main dealer (not MB) for 8 grand, and it has had two major failures in just under 2 months of ownership:
* power steering pump went within 24 hours of driving it off the forecourt, dealer had the car back for a week to fix.
* gearbox has just failed in a major way leaving the car undriveable - new gearbox is likely to be needed.
We've done approx 3k miles since buying the car.
Does anyone know if we have a good case to reject the car? We're asking a solicitor but any comments would be appreciated.
Also, GF bought an extended warranty (extending the warranty from 12 months to 3 years), and the dealer claimed on that for the power steering pump (400 quid), and will probably want to claim on that for the new gearbox (anything up to 2.5k-3k?). The warranty only has a total claim limit of 8000 pounds. Should the selling dealer be fixing these problems under his statutory obligations or can he "use up" the 3 year warranty my GF bought like this?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike
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I would contact your local trading standards office as they are best at giving at advice on what the dealer's obligations are. From memory I think the dealer has to provide a 3 month warranty that the car is fit for purpose bearing in mind age and price. But as you have already done 3000 miles in the car then it maybe more difficult to get a refund out of the dealer so a repair may be your only option. I would pay to have the car independently inspected now to make sure that a new gearbox is really needed and to show up if there is anything else serious lurking while you are still within the first 3 months. It might be fruitful to ask the dealer for an exchange A class of the same or better specification as you no longer have much faith in the car that you have bought.
teabelly
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Re: The dealers 'statutory obligations'.
The repaired items (new steering Pump & gearbox) will carry their own warranties anyway, so they will still be covered (but ask how long for). As far as I'm aware (I too am a car dealer, but not a franchise outfit), there is no 'law' to say that a dealer has to repair a car neccassarily out of his own cash. The obligations are that a warranty has to be provided, whether the repair costs are underwritten by the dealer or a separate warranty company is irrelevant; either way the dealer has fulfilled his obligations in your case. Regarding your cover for the next 3 years, you would still have around £5k worth of cover (probably more taking into account the separate cover on the replacement items), for repairs to exceed this amount, several really catastrophic events would have to occur and this is unlikely. 'Total' engine failures are extremely rare, in the worst case a cylinder head would need to be replaced (speaking from experience), and you would still be well covered by the warranty.
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