Should I let him get away with this?

In an hypothetical case, ?A' sells a car to ?B'. It is a private sale. The car was advertised as "drives perfectly" and is offered with 11 months MOT and nearly 12 months tax. ?A' writes "as seen" on the receipt. No mention is made of the car's roadworthiness and ?B' drives the car away while ?A' watches.

Within seven days so many problems become apparent that ?B' has the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) inspect the car. VOSA finds, among many other things, excessive corrosion that, in their opinion was "beyond all reasonable doubt" present when the MOT was done and the car should have been failed. VOSA reprimands the garage that did the MOT with a written warning and the Nominated Tester is required to undergo a training course.

?B' suspects, but cannot prove, that ?A' knew that the car was un-roadworthy and got the garage to issue the MOT regardless. Perhaps ?A' bought a replacement car from the garage. In any event, the same garage had serviced and MOT'd the car for nearly 10 years so they must have built up a relationship with ?A' over that time. After following up information kindly supplied in various newsgroups I believe that the Road Traffic Act 1988 (as amended 1991) section 75 (1) covers just this situation and I cannot see that ?A' has any defence to a prosecution. Can anyone here see something that I have missed?

As Trading Standards and the Police have no interest in enforcing this law I feel that I have an obligation to do so and I am considering a Private Prosecution. Any advice will be gratefully received as I cannot afford to engage a solicitor and got nowhere with Citizens Advice.

Reply to
Steve
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As it's a private sale I doubt trading standards have anything to do with it. Did you test drive it before purchasing? If so, anything apparent should have been queried before you handed over cash. If the problems became apparent later then you've got little ground to stand on as far as the seller's claim that it drove perfectly. Though very few cars drive perfectly. There's always a trade off between handling and ride quality, so it could be argued that no car drives perfectly :-)

Is it likely that 'A' is a trader operating from home under the guise of a private seller? If so then you could report him to the inland revenue for not declaring it as income, which opens up a whole tin of worms, and you may have some recourse. But it seems not, if he's used the same garage for many years.

I'd say it's nigh on impossible to prove that he knew the car was unroadworthy when he got it MOTd, and the onus lies with the MOT station. I doubt you'd get any money out of them though to be honest. Could be one of those tough lessons where you learn for next time.

Peter

Reply to
AstraVanMan

Speaking from experience: you would need to file a small claim through County Court. You can do all the legwork yourself to save money. However, there are judges out there who have the opinion that a solicitor should still be used even at this level, and can direct disparaging remarks at your attempts.

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Number 1 - you have to have a legitimate claim that goods were not of merchantable quality and not "fit for purpose" - this seems to be the case.

Number 2 - pursue your case, and hopefully win a judgment in your favour. Entirely possible if the defendant doesn't turn up / cooperate.

Number 3 - try to get the judgment enforced. It's up to you to do donkey work for court bailiffs (generally a useless shower of salaried civil servants), locate funds / bank accounts / proof of earnings / proof of ownership of goods etc etc.

Also, there are a number of ways a Defendant can continually defer action by requesting that Judgments Be Set Aside, these are often granted for even the most trivial reason "sorry sir, I couldn't be at the Hearing, I had to get shopping for my old granny".

To summarise: unless you're out of pocket to the tune of many thousands of pounds (like £6k and above) just forget it. It'll keep you sleepless for two years with no guarantees *even* with a good Judgment.

If you do need to recover a serious amount of money - go ahead, get your Judgment but *immediately* get a private firm of bailiffs to recover the debt, or even sell the debt to them - take the 25% hit.

Best of luck

Reply to
DocDelete

you have his name you have his address there are "LOTS" of things you can do, but it would be highly inappropriate of me to inform you of these without getting into trouble myself

all I would advise you to do would be to await some free credit card letter offering you one free of charge in the post

Reply to
dojj

Depends on what you paid for it. If you paid £50 then you should have little expectation of it being anything other than scrap. Equally if you paid 1/2 of book price for a newer model it's going to have issues. If you paid close to book price or about £500 as a minimum you should expect to have a working car, unless it's something like a '68 Porsche 912 that sells for £1000's even when an accident write off. In between £50 and £500 the level of expectation of the car being fit to preform it's function is in relation to what you paid.

If you get a car with a long MOT for about £250 it's going to fail the next MOT, you just made that happen a bit earlier.

-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!

Reply to
Peter Hill

Go on then, what did you buy and for how much?

Reply to
Scott Mills

"The car was advertised as "drives perfectly" ".

Did you test drive it? If you did and then bought it you're accepting that the description as advertised was not false (or at the very least you agreed a price which satisfied the description). If you didn't test drive it and then bought it you can't call his description as advertised false as you can't contest it.

"No mention is made of the car's roadworthiness"

The fact that he has written "as seen" on the receipt is very astute, and shows that you have bought this vehicle in the condition you have seen it as.

The end of your post says a lot about your chances regarding a successful prosecution:- "suspects", "cannot prove", "Perhaps".

Just some of the wonderful considerations of buying via a private sale.

krystnors

Reply to
krystnors

Yes. In a criminal court you have to *prove* the offence *beyond all reasonable doubt*. It is not enough for you to suspect that an offence has been committed. This not only takes evidence of a particular quality (you also need to know what evidence is admissible) but it also takes skill in presenting it. A criminal trial is not like taking a case to the small claims court. You must also consider the compensation claims that this person may well make if you fail.

You say that the police have no interest in prosecuting this case. This may well be a clue that it is unlikely to succeed. If you still wish to proceed, I suggest that you at least ask the advice of your local Crown Prosecution Service. Their policy relating to private prosecutions can be viewed at:-

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Reply to
Howard Neil

Steve ( snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Why all this "B" crap, when it's obvious it's you that's "B"?

You've got no comeback on the seller. Why did you not notice this "excessive corrosion" when you inspected the car before purchase?

It's entirely down to you and the MOT station - and they've been officially bollocked, so that's already gone as far your way as it's going to.

Welcome to buying a used car.

Reply to
Adrian

I'm inclined to agree. the best thing you can do now is get a dog. Talk it for a walk each night to where he lives, and make sure it craps on his drive. will make you feel a bit better I suppose

Reply to
Scott Mills

The message from Adrian contains these words:

This is why people like the AA offer used car inspections. If you don't reckon one's worth it for the value of the car you're considering buying

- then expect the car to be fairly ropey to justify that value.

If the car's a peach - you're ahead, if it's a lemon you're only out by a few hundred quid.

Reply to
Guy King

That's crap - my last 4 cars have been in the £400-£700 bracket. I wouldn't say they were expensive enough to make it worth having an AA / RAC inspection.

I'd fully expect a car of that sort of price to be roadworthy and capable of giving me at least a couple of years of reliable service without having to spend too much on them.

Or, in my case, you've doubled the cost of the car.

Reply to
SteveH

The message from snipped-for-privacy@italiancar.co.uk (SteveH) contains these words:

I'd like it to - but I wouldn't /expect/ it to.

Reply to
Guy King

These days, yes, it's perfectly reasonable to expect a £500 car to give a couple of years of serivce without major expense.

Reply to
SteveH

And that's when you lost any chance of getting the car put right! If you had gone back to the MOT station first you may have found the garage would have repaired some of the faults free of charge. But you had too go to the ministry first! so now you have to pay to have the faults repaired and then get it MOT'd again. You obviously want a strict MOT done on your car , so I suggest you take it back to the garage that has the points from your complaint to VOSA. I'm sure they will not miss anything this time.

Reply to
Fred

Ok, Ok, 'B' is me. I was trying to keep it simple. Another mistake, sorry. I am trying to do things properly here but I get the feeling that I may have to resort to the unmentionable actions in dojj's post, particularly as the seller is not in dog walking distance :-)

I paid 375 pounds for a 10 year old Vauxhall Nova. It was to be a first car for my son (he having just passed his test).

Damn right I want a strict MOT done, every time, no question! I don't give a shit about the money. What's stuck in my throat is that this lowlife was more interested in a few hundred pounds than the safety of others - my son and any potential passengers of his.

Most of the replies were concerned about recovering money and County Court actions. Once I had acertained to state of the car I had the council take it away and scrap it. I got my son something else - which he promptly wrote off but that's another story.

The corrosion was within 30cm of seatbelt mountings and suspension points - underneath the car. No, there was no test drive (that wouldn't have shown up the corrosion anyway) and I didn't crawl under to take a look. With such a recent MOT and tax I believed it to be at least roadworthy.

As far as I can see a Private Prosecution is the answer. I believe that I don't need to prove that he knew the condition of the car, just that he sold it in an unroadworthy state (I've seen lots of Trading Standards websites saying this). VOSA have said that it was unroadworthy at the time of the MOT. Do I need anything else?

Losing the case and having to bear his costs doesn't bother me either. It'll be worth every penny if I can at least cause the SOB a few sleepless nights.

Thanks to all who replied.

Reply to
Steve

So you paid £375 for a car with a years tax and 11 months mot and you don't give a shit about money! What exactly did you expect for that price? You get what you pay for and I reckon you got a good deal.

What's stuck in my throat is that this lowlife was

It's you're son! is his safety only worth a couple hundred quid?

You paid excluding the tax well less than £275 for a car! You can pay a lot more than that for a push bike, You get what you pay for!

Reply to
Fred

"Fred" give a shit about money!

So anyone is only entitled to expect a car to be safe if they pay a lot for it?

You seem to have wandered off the point of my original post but as you ask, No! It's worth a lot more to me.

Reply to
Steve

You'll have to prove that the seller knowingly mispresented the car. The guy may have taken it to the MoT station, it passed then he innocently sold it. I think even on the MoT certificate it says something like " A valid MoT certificate is not proof of roadworthiness" so it's up to *you* to make sure the car is ok. If you'd bought it from a business then you have some comeback but I don't think you'll have much luck with a private sale.

You don't say what the other problems are but it could well be that a rust hole wasn't present at the time of the MoT but it was when you bought it. To me rust isn't much of a problem as I have welding equipment but for most people it means the end of the car's life. I'd rather have to weld a few patches than say, change a clutch.

Live and learn - there are a lot of people out there who will try to rip you off. You have to protect yourself from that. There's not much you can do now. Just let it go and get on with your life.

Reply to
adder

given those circumstances, i'd tend to side with you, even though you probably have less than a snowballs chance in hell of winning the case

the MOT people have given the garage a bollocking, they could have taken their license away but they chose not to life isn't fair, but i would have at least "sold" it back to him whilst leaving it in a "tow away" spot when this business came to light

the problem with this country is that, as a paid up individual who signs the dotted line and pays taxes and tries to live a normal life, the powers that be just see you as a sponge to squeeze. the other people who have never worked a day in their lives and are happy to sit at home claiming benifits for their 15 bastard kids get every sort of help they can because "they need it"

not a problem, though a posting in the legal group might prove to be more fruitful :)

Reply to
dojj

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