Anyone else bought a complete lemon of a secondhand?

[Yatzydog]

Please make me feel better about my expensive and soul-destroying purchase of a secondhand car. 10-year golf. Automatic. Transmission needs to replaced within 3 months of purchase. I am currently arguing with dealership about who pays.

Anyone got any horror stories of what looked like a reasonable runaround, only to find out there was a bloody good reason why the previous owner sold it?

I bought a second hand dishwasher which worked perfectly but was on its way out. It's currently defunct in my kitchen.

I bought a fridge freezer which was completely knackered (I bought as new) but the delivery guy got aggressive with me so I kept it.

Sorry, no. But I did think you literally bought an actual lemon.

I think there are rules of who pays, probably should be them as they sold it as working. Mine had a dead battery which i could have got them to pay but i couldn't be bothered in the end (£100)

Nowhere near as bad but DH bought a secondhand automatic golf too. Brought a mechanic friend with us to check it over in the lot before he handed over the money. As we drove it off the lot we noticed a big old crack in the windscreen... 3 of us really giving this thing the once over to make sure it was worth every penny and not one of us noticed the glaringly obvious... just annoying because we would have haggled off the repair cost if we'd known before we bought!

Sometimes it is more expensive to do things cheapily. Live and learn. That's what I am telling myself.

I mean there was someone on here the other day talking about how automatic transmissions never break.

Good luck with that one.

Spending money on cars 10 years old is a lottery tbh. You never know what they have been through and German cars are notoriously expensive to repair and not that reliable. My guess is you have a busted DSG gearbox and are looking at the thick end of £3k to have it replaced. Plus of course some people can actually figure out the cars are breaking and offload them to the unsuspecting public before they do.

If you are going for 10 year old cars I would say go for stuff that is less complicated and cheaper on parts to replace and has a better reputation for reliability. So stuff like japanese cars.

Non of the above is really much help to you now. So I will offer commiserations and hope you resolve the situation as inexpensively as possible. We've all been there (apart from the poster who has been driving for 40 years and never had anything majorly go wrong with their car).

Yes, Fiat 500 private sale that looked okay with a few mucky seats that I thought could be cleaned with a bit of work, tyres that obviously needed replacing, a few cosmetic things on the dashboard, but it was cheap as a runaround. Anyway although it had fairly low mileage, it had recently been completely thrashed and all the little bits and bobs that needed doing all added up to a lot of money in the end and plus it had an oil leak. Ended up paying more than it would have been if it had been a proper full price from a dealer. I think from now on, mucky seats are a warning sign...

I bought a second hand diesel car that had a petrol fuel tank fitted!