Buying a car privately vs a dealer help

[professorpoopsnagle]

We're looking to buy a MPV but having a wrestle with a private sale vs a dealer. A car we have seen (not yet test driven and I know we need to do that with all the checks etc, so it might not be a go-er anyway) is £2K below the standard garage price for the same car. It has a FSH and obviously we would check it out in the same way as a dealer car, but we have never spent this amount of money privately before.

I've always found the dealer backup to be overrated. You buy a lemon from a dealer, it's still a lemon. A friend of mine took the dealer he bought a car from to the SMMT disputes process. Although they found against the dealer, he didn't get his money back, just the trade in value of the car, so he still lost out. If you are worried, get a quote for an aftermarket warranty from Warranty Direct.

CruelAndUnusualParenting

I've always found the dealer backup to be overrated. You buy a lemon from a dealer, it's still a lemon.

You get a level of recourse against the dealer if it is a lemon - there's a bunch of extra options available to you. As you said, your friend got the trade value of the car back - not ideal, but I'm guessing a damn sight better than gett zero back.

I've received excellent aftersales from a dealer - 12 months warranty with the car which gave a new battery, headlight autolevelling sensors replaced and brand new brake discs (and brake pads refaced). The latter wasn't even covered under the warranty, the dealer just did it out of a sense of good customer service.

I'm not saying don't buy (done that several times as well) but weigh up the pros and cons.