AIBU to ask for a bit of legal advice here...seriously panicking!

[spg1983]

Hi,

I recently had my first child (she's 3 weeks old). Before I had her, I had a small 'runaround' car, 13 years old, reliable little runner but quite a bit of cosmetic damage. Anyway, DH and I decided it was too small to put baby's car seat and pram in so we advertised it to be sold. We checked the going price and given the damage (which had rusted) plus the fact it only had 1 month mot, we reduced the advised price - the car in 'poor' condition was worth £780 according to this site, we advertised it for £450 to allow a buyer to potentially still have money to sort the rust.

Anyway, I bought a new car and a young lad bought my old car. I was quite emotional as I'd had the car for 9 years. I was a bit nosey and decided to 'look up' the new owner on Facebook/twitter cos (this sounds silly, sorry!) I still wanted to be able to check on my beloved car! I found him, but was a bit gutted to see he'd given the car a really derogatory nickname and was taking the mickey out of loads of its features, i.e. tape player etc.

Anyway, I soon forgot about that as 3 hours later I went into labour. I had a spare couple of minutes this morning and looked at his profile again, only to find that the car has failed its MOT and by the sound of it he doesn't want to pay to fix it and has decided to scrap the car. There's some pretty mean comments about me on there and his friends are all suggesting he takes legal action against me if I don't refund him. He's not got in touch...yet, but I'm thinking he probably will.

When he looked at the car, he couldn't drive it as he wasn't insured but I took him for a drive in it. I was 100% honest about the damage, the advert had close-up pictures of it and he looked at it when he saw the car and still decided to buy it.

What happens now? If he gets in touch am I obliged to refund the money? Help please!!

[Sparklingbrook]

His Mum?? His Mum??

[wibblyjelly]

Have you kept a copy of the advert, just in case you need to prove it to her? Can't believe he is old enough to buy a car, but needs his mum to call you on his behalf!

[Sparklingbrook]

How was it left? Did she back down?

[spg1983]

Yes I think she realised that I'd been honest and I also explained that I'd priced the car at £450 as I realised that the rust took a lot off the value, but he was quoted £400 ish to sort it so if you add that to the £450 then it matches the average value of that kind of car in good condition. I explained that without the rust I'd have asked for £800ish.

I have got a copy of the advert plus screenshots of his Facebook saying he was going to view a rusty car and then subsequently saying he'd bought a rusty car - there's no way he didn't know about the rust and that proves it 100%!

[FakePlasticLobsters]

So the Facebook stalking paid off then?

Hope that this is the end of it OP.

[spg1983]

Yes, I hope so too. And yes, the stalking has hopefully paid off! I didn't tell his mum I'd got copies of it all - wanted to have an ace up my sleeve! Anyway that should be the end of it, and I think someone's going to get a telling-off from his mum, she was almost apologetic to me by the end of the call! Even asked if the baby was here yet and how she was! She seemed like a really nice lady to be fair...

[unlucky83]

No-ones said this yet - you can have your car MOT'd a month before the expiry (not saying you did OP - and anyway he doesn't have a leg to stand on) ...
If a car is for sale with one months MOT -it means one of two things ...seller doesn't think it will pass - you always get more than the MOT charge with 12 months MOT
or (even worse) it has been MOT'd and failed and it is too expensive to repair (not sure if you can still get away with this now it is all computerised.)...
Also he would have taken the copy of the MOT - which now have the advisories on it ...
Hopefully he has learned a lesson in life - never buy a car with a months MOT and not be prepared to spend lots of money on it/scrap it....
(BTW I know why you looked ...I wonder what happened to my last car -had it for10 years and was attached to it - still look out for it around the local town and when MOT ran out (it had 6 months) wondered how I could find out (discreetly) if he'd scrapped it ...don't remember guys name or I be tempted to look on FB ...)

[mellen]

You can have a car MOT'd any time you like -doing it within a month of expiry allows the extra time to be added on to the next MOT, so you could have 13 months the next time, but if you arent worried about that you can do it any time.

[digerd]

Oh, well, just proves that Facebook has its uses afterall!! Good on you OP for following it up.
Great result. I love an ending where the 'baddy ' is proved bad and the 'goody' is proved good. < satisfied smile>