Masking car error before trade-in

jpaul · 12 Sep 2018 at 13:53

At an auction, I assume you cannot take the filler cap off to look for mayonnaise, if they were mixing,
and equally the distance it gets driven maybe too short to see the coolant evaporating.
.. and if you cleaned the cap before delivering it to WBAC

kinobestew123 · 12 Sep 2018 at 14:05

I was once trading a car in and I was asked if it had an MOT. I replied "yes" and said no more. The dealer seemed happy enough.

When I was picking up my new car and dropping the trade in-car off, they asked me for the MOT certificate. I promptly handed it them. The look on the salesman's face when he realised that the MOT only had 1 day left on it.

He said "you told me that it had an MOT" to which I replied "it does, I just drove it here on that MOT". Nothing more was said.

I knew that the car would need some quite big work to get it through the MOT including a new catalytic converter. I did see the car driving around a few weeks later though so somebody must have taken it on.

iamdjdz · 14 Sep 2018 at 14:31

My dad had an old Citroen Berlingo multispace and the turbo failed so he toddled it the 50 miles to the dealer at 45 on the motorway and traded it in for a new one. Nothing was ever said about it and they gave him a reasonable price.

Raymond Lin · 14 Sep 2018 at 15:18

I traded in my Yaris with a crack on the front Bumper and a hole in the exhaust which sounded like it’s been de-cat.

I didn’t mention it and legally I don’t have to as the garage is deemed an expert.

If I’m selling it private I would disclose these but to a garage I am not obliged to and had they merely looked at it they would see it. They even test drove it too and happy with the estimate value agreed.

unrealrocks · 14 Sep 2018 at 15:20

I agree morally it isn't squeaky clean, although I would expect most dealers will send tatty cars on to auction without even batting an eyelid. Once at auction all bets are off in terms of what could be wrong with a car!

MissChief · 14 Sep 2018 at 17:57

unrealrocks said:
I agree morally it isn't squeaky clean, although I would expect most dealers will send tatty cars on to auction without even batting an eyelid. Once at auction all bets are off in terms of what could be wrong with a car!

This. if you're trading in a £1500 car at a dealer or trader who only deals with nearly new your trade in will be across the auction floor within 7-10 days, probably without even being looked at again.

lordrobs · 15 Sep 2018 at 11:20

jpaul said:
At an auction, I assume you cannot take the filler cap off to look for mayonnaise, if they were mixing,
and equally the distance it gets driven maybe too short to see the coolant evaporating.
.. and if you cleaned the cap before delivering it to WBAC

At our local auction I've seen people be more thorough tearing a car apart than my Passat gets when it has its health check at service time

I had an intermittent CEL that came on for something irrelevant, failed secondary air pump on a 'CEL light bingo' VAG 1.8T in case anyone is interested.

Anyway, that got cleared before it went for auction but popped back on while the local chavs revved the **** out of it "cos the exhaust goes pop pop pop. LOLs" :rolleyes:

before it went into the auction room. I watched with a mix of intrigue and horror as while said revving was going on people were pulling the dip stick and oil cap etc. at the same time.

Jono8 · 16 Sep 2018 at 00:16

I would imagine if you were specifically asked whether it had any faults and you said no (whilst knowing full well there are), then legally that puts you on slightly dodgy ground.

However, in reality i doubt the dealer would bother to do anything as it would likely be impossible to prove you knew about the fault before hand (and that it had not just happened) and were in fact lying to them.

stoofa · 16 Sep 2018 at 17:48

Thanks all - very interesting thread.
The error light is going through an intermittent phase at the moment - it had been on for nearly 2 weeks, then when I started the car up yesterday, it was off and has remained off all of today.
I know that it will come back on at some point however.
By the time I'm looking for the new car it will be a 7.5yr old, 105k miles vehicle. WBAC offered £5k, I know they would try and negotiate down, although the vehicle is in very good condition. I'd like to think a main dealer would offer at least the same against a car valued at around £18k.

I think I'll be sensible about it all really. In the past my trade-in vehicles have been given a look around and I've not been asked any questions outside of "what service history is there on it?" and if that is all I'm asked this time, I can confirm it's had every service it has been due and leave it at that.