£5000 car needs 4 grand worth of work within 4 months worth of purchase? Aibu?

[wingingit987]

A family member has bought a car from a second hand dealer for £5000 in March over the last month it's had some issues and ended up needing to go to a bmw specialist. The amount of work that's needed for the car is 4 grand!

Surely he's been conned or there's rules about this. Im just wondering if anyone has been in this situation before and know what can be done.

Best scenario at this point would be to return the car for a partial refund. He already spend money on a new exhaust!

I'm quite speechless that a car can go so wrong that quickly.

I think if it bought from a dealer you have some come back. Try trading standards and cab

Presumably depends what the warranty is, what the advert said, and a whole myriad of other things, like service history. The question will be, did the dealer knowingly hide faults when asked about them? And what checks were done on the car when bought.

Either way, cars can be fine in March and then go wrong in July. It happens.

Have they spoken to the dealership? I got a 12 month warranty on my second hand car

Did he go straight back to the dealer when he noticed the problems?

Did they get the car checked over on purchase? Is the BMW garage ripping them off? Have they got other quotes?

Depends on what warranty they got and what the warranty covers. Also depends on what work needs done. BMW are extremely expensive so they should probably get a quote from their local garage.

Something similar happened to my brother.

See this: www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/buying-or-repairing-a-car/problems-with-a-used-car/

www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/used-car/car-registration

Have a look on here. You have pretty substantial protection having bought from a dealer.

I would assume some of that work would be covered by the warranty seeing as he's had it such a short time.

Did they get a check on the car done? e.g. you can pay the AA for a check and it offers some insurance about work needing to be done later, then you have some come back. But I am guessing the garage knew it would need the work and sold it anyway.

Go to an independent garage, their labour rates are usually half that of main dealers, or less. That could cut the cost massively!

Sorry the car had to go to a specialist as 2 regular garages couldn't find what was causing the problem.

Looks like there is some options. The garage has had a few crappy reviews now that I've looked through it.

Did it go back to the original garage before going elsewhere? Otherwise the fact it has been through so many garages may make things trickier

Was it definitely a sold by the dealer and not as a private sale? Some sketchy traders have been know to sell cars as private sales.

Do you still have the ad?

Depends on the dealer. There are dealerships who fully check and resolve all issues before sale and have a one year warranty which will actually cover things that go wrong and then there are used car lots offering a 3 month warranty (at most) which basically isn't worth the paper it's written on.