urgent what can i /they do/

[whitebeachesandcoconutoil]

two months ago i bought a new car. i put a deposit down of 500 pounds ,the rest on finance and when i picked up the car another 1000-except that when i went to get the car with one thing and another they forgot to take the 1000 and i was so busy tring to placte my son [2.9] that he wasn't allowed the car that he was playing in could be taken home [the salesman kept saying mommy will let you take that home with you she has plent of pennies-it was 120 pounds!]that it was completely got forgotten..anyway yesterday they rang me and said that they realised they had made a mistake and it was bad but they had n't taken the 1000 pounds and that they needed it now. the thing is i dont have 1000 pounds spare now at best i could give them maybe 800 i spent the money somewher along the way thinking i had miscalculated my money i have asked if they can add it to my loan but the salesman said they will take away my car!
can they do this -can i not pay pay them in instalments etc what is my legal standing on this?[ i really don't mind paying i just cannot do it all at once]

Did you buy it on hire purchase? If not, then they cannot take the car. Offer to pay in instalments (i.e. £800 now and the balance in two monthly instalments). If they refuse, all they can do is issue court proceedings. By the time the matter came to court, chances are you would have paid all the money.

They cannot take your car for the sake of £200.

I don't know the legal situation, but didn't you notice that you still had the £1,000 after you left? Or did you forget that you hadn't paid for it? Tbh you owe them it and they must be cacking themselves that you aren't going to pay it.

i can;t beleive you did not realise you had an extra £1000 about your person after buying it !

do as freckle says, but you do owe it to them!!

well I'm no expert but I'd have thought that if its in the contract that the additional £1,000 was due on delivery of the car, then you will have to pay it immediately and not in installments. Am amazed however that they could forget to take the payment and only remember two months later? Surely you knew it was due though and shouldn't have spent it? You will have to dig out the paperwork and check the wording on it I think.

tbh i was supposed to give them a cheque and we were so excited about the car and trying to keep my lo happy because as i said they had given my lo a replica ride on car to play with and the salesman looking after us kept saying you can have that and i was saying no we cant and he was saying yes you can your mommy has plenty of pennies and so tbh it was just a releif in the end to get out of there.

well, you are in the wrong, IMO. 'forgetting' to pay £1000 is not the same as forgetting to pay £20 or some more incidental amount

the sales people were remiss for not chasing it up sooner, but you owe them the money

the salesman might be in deep shit, which is kind of your fault too

You owe the money, you took the car- you should pay IMO.

I agree that she owes the money and she hasn't said that she has spent all the money, just £200. As both parties were at fault at the time of the purchase, I think it is perfectly acceptable for the OP to pay £800 now and the balance in instalments. The car company would not get their money any quicker if they were to issue court proceedings and, if they take the car back - depending on whether there is an appropriate clause in the sale contract - they will have to reimburse the OP her full payment.

Legally of course you should/must pay it - but it is not worth it for the car company to reposess your car for the sake of a couple of hundred pounds - it will cost them far more than that to reposess it and they won't get their money back because the value of your car will have dropped anyway.

So they are just pressurising you. The salesman will have got a massive bollocking for being such a prat and he's passing that on to you.

Stay calm. Give them what you have immediately - i would send a cheque + letter by registered post - plus a proposal for giving them the rest. They may chunter a bit but they will have to accept it.

And tell them that the salesman's attempts to emotionally blackmail you into buying an expensive toy for your son were completely unacceptable.

thanks all of you. as i said originally i know i have to pay them and i don't object to that i just wondered where i stood legally in asking to pay in instalments.
my dh is going tomorrow and gonna pay the 1000 [the 800 cash and 200 on credit card] but he is going to make a complaint about the way the salesman was and is

You're going to complain about the salesman because he forgot to ask for the £1000 and you forgot to pay it???

You should have gone back and paid it right away, you surely can't have taken 2 months to realise you'd not paid it.

I do agree that they should accept the £800 now and £200 later though.

no we are going to complain about how he was trying to get us to buy a 120 pound car for my son that HE had given him to play with and how he had said that there was a lack of sex at his age whilst looking pointedly at me and finally for when ringing up to say they had made the mistake being downright unreasonable and yelling above my voice that they would take the car away!

So two months later you decide to complain about the salesman? Not sour grapes about having to fork out the £1000 you had forgotten about?

as i said and i stand by it we FORGOT on the day as did they and then with lots of other stuff happening it was genuinely forgotten about you know in real life accidents and mistakes happen. as i have said repeatedly there was never any question as to whether we would pay we owe so why wouldn't we. my original question was whether we were ok to pay differently.
as for complaining about the salesman my dh is hardly gonna go mad but he is gonna pass his opinion that the salesman was out of order which he was.