What amusing phone call might be made to a not very nice bloke and his not very nice pal, who are re-advertising a car for sale that actually looks reasonably good, supposedly a lady owner, and only a small milage on it; but in reality is a worn out piece of rubbish. And they know this full well.
It's easily gone right around the clock. Somebody is going to get really stung by these dishonest people. So what might one (legally) say in a phone call to give them a sleepless night and think twice before cheating someone?
If you can get the V5 details etc, you can bring up the last 4-5 years of MOT in terms of mileage, advisories, failures and so on. That way you can a) justify your claims and b) make it clear what the real condition is.
I recall the number of "LCD odometer resetting service companies" is vastly greater than the actual number of failures would ever require for the entire world since their introduction. You can check mileage via many means, from inspection of pedals, seating, bodywork, inside the sills, battery acid, slop in various components such as bushings to engine mounts, windscreen wear. UK weather is pretty severe and a high mileage car will have noticeable weak spots identifiable when looking around the same model, ie, 40k genuine vs 90k clocked even if motorway.
Check what the website requires. I think you need the V5 document & car registration number.
Then you can then bring up the MOT history which would be useful.
Eg, if the MOT history says 118,000miles and they have clocked it to
42,000miles then you can telephone and say "why does the MOT history say 65,000 97,000 118,000 and the car is advertised as having
42,000miles. Then on to Trading Standards & Police - otherwise it is one person's word against another, police want some admissable evidence.
Did it for my own, sadly it does not go back far enough because I know the mileage was tampered with and tyres changed after purchase. It was purchased by a dying relative and I got landed with the bill, unable to sell for anything but little cash value (and a shed load more besides) and would have liked to have sued the main dealer. The main dealer went bust anyway soon after. Just after recessions are very very bad times to buy cars if you are not properly diligent or very good times if you buy carefully. This is particularly true after easy- credit took over, because a car listed at =A34200 for 3yr old in the depths of the recession became =A36995 straight after - people just financed the difference. Same on Ebay, a certain laptop was =A3399 for years on end, collapsed to =A3250 in the recession, back to =A3399 the year later re credit despite being a year older.
There will be some **** cars around at the moment, tread carefully. It used to be Porsche where the bills were multiples of =A3250 for the 944 (as in 2-3x for routine work & repair) and the 911 were multiples of =A3500 (as in 2-3x for routine work & repair). Now Common Rail Diesel can easily land you in what used to be 911 ballpark. Audi servicing costs are another case entirely, they stuffed themselves rotten create glass aerofoil palaces and some rather expensive "that can happen to some".
ARWadsworth wibbled on Wednesday 04 August 2010 00:14
Not a crime if you don't hide the fact - so did my mate. A 1963 Morris Mini. he was upfront and told the buyers to bring a trailer as the brakes were shot (amongst other things). Didn;t stop them driving it back to Belgium (or at least to end the of the village, for we never saw it again).
How does that scale run?
Renault = You are the proud owner of some scrap iron and a couple of gallons of petrol.
Fiat = you buy the rights to the brown stain on the road which you may like to scrape up into a jam jar and try smelting it on your BBQ
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