Broken Car, Finance and Small claims

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This sounds like a typical CarCraft sale to me!

The only real issue I can see here is that you expected the things to be covered by the warranty, so as others have said it all comes down to what you signed.

Find out from the warranty provider if ANY cover was actually offered or if you were mis-sold the warranty. If the latter, go after your £300, but the rest of it you are going to have a hard job with.
 
Clutch failure 6 months later and gearbox 9 months later, I think you'll probably get laughed out of court for that one. Sorry for your awful financial decisions.
 
I take on board what you say but the issue to me is the car has to be fit for purpose over a period of time....in my eyes 9 months isn't a great deal of time on a 4 year agreement.

Its all very well and good saying i shouldn't of brought it...i did.

thank you for your honesty though and i shall keep you all posted on my progress. Friday is cut off for them to reply before i take it court.
 
shanestatham said:
I take on board what you say but the issue to me is the car has to be fit for purpose over a period of time....in my eyes 9 months isn't a great deal of time on a 4 year agreement.
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It is a 10 year old car - the length of the finance agreement is sadly not as relevant as you might think.

If you want a car where you can guarantee you won't need to spend money on maintenance of consumables, such as a clutch, then what you need is a new or nearly new car not a 4 year agreement on a 10 year old car. I appreciate that wasn't possible but that doesn't mean you can expect new-car hassle free costs on a 10 year old car with 70k miles just because you took out an enormous finance package on it.
 
shanestatham said:
Janesy - Your not reading correctly.....clutch failed 23 weeks after i brought it and gearbox 3 months later. Please read correctly.
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Yes mate 23 weeks is nearly 6 months and 3 months makes it 9 therefore the gearbox failed after 9 months of use.

shanestatham said:
I take on board what you say but the issue to me is the car has to be fit for purpose over a period of time....in my eyes 9 months isn't a great deal of time on a 4 year agreement.
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It's a four year financial agreement to purchase a car, not a fully maintained lease. If I had the same thing happen I'd just chalk it up to bad luck, the car is 10 years old after all.

The gearbox even failed out of your warranty period and the onus is you to prove that the gearbox was inherently faulty from day one, which you can't. Clutches have friction material that wears out, maybe if it died after a few weeks you'd have a small case but 5.7 months down the line, don't think so.
 
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It's your 4-year agreement, not theirs.

It's annoying but it's just one of those things. My other half had to spend nearly £1k on a gearbox refurb/new clutch on a car she only had for about 12 months, and it only cost her £2.5k in the first place.

Live and learn etc...
 
You realise that the obligation on keeping the car fit for the road is on you? Your finance agreement doesn't play into this, I'm not sure why you think it does?

A clutch is a consumable. You will not receive anything for it. A gearbox failing 8 or 9 months after you bought the car AND after someone else was around about it is very unlikely to be able to be pinned to point of sale

Had the gearbox and engine imploded after a day then no, that would not be acceptable. They didn't.
 
For the clutch, anything more than a couple of weeks you were on to a loser, if indeed it could ever be seen to be an item that they would resolve.

Gearbox within circa 6 months, assuming nobody else had been near it....which they have. As has already been pointed out they don't tend to just implode. Especially not on a manual car
 
shanestatham said:
So what is the cut off for reasonable?
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The onus is normally on you rather than the trader to prove a claim (that is, to prove that the vehicle is faulty in some way). However, the law states that if you are claiming repair, replacement, full or partial refund within the first six months of ownership, the onus is on the trader to prove that the vehicle was sold without faults when you bought it. This is called the 'reversed burden of proof'. After six months, the burden of proof reverts back to you to provide evidence to support your claim that the vehicle was faulty when it was sold.
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http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/cgi-bin/glos/con1item.cgi?file=*ADV0003-1011.txt

Can you prove the gearbox was faulty from day one?

rodenal said:
Gearbox within circa 6 months, assuming nobody else had been near it....which they have. As has already been pointed out they don't tend to just implode. Especially not on a manual car
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Exactly, could have been damaged resulting from the clutch change/failure. Looking around online Minis do seem to chew gearboxes more than some other cars.
 
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You keep saying the clutch 'failed' as if it broke, it didn't, it wasn't faulty it just wore out because it's probably been in the car for 10 years, it's a consumable item just like the tyres, belts, filters, etc. none of which you should be expecting the garage to sort out for you after sale frankly. You need to drop this issue from your thinking.

The gearbox breaking 9 months after purchase, afaik, leaves you outside of the scope of SOGA and they'd have a reasonable argument in defence of that regardless, given someone else has been at the gearbox to change the clutch.

It's a 10 year old car, things can break. This is why they're (normally) cheap.
 
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