SimonsMerc
MB Enthusiast
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2004
- Messages
- 1,147
- Location
- Sudbury, West London
- Car
- Merc S212 E350 CDI BlueEfficiency Sport 256bhp, Suzuki GSX-650F, Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV Dynamic
My friend bought a VW Passat last week. From a dealer on autotrader, marked as 'trade'. S reg, one registered keeper, £3000 - good price, but not "too" cheap. It had 82000 miles on the dial, and a full service history. It had a years MOT (cert missing but sticker on the car windscreen) and was taxed till the end of the year. He had been driving around in rented cars for the last two weeks while looking for a car, and really wanted to buy, which I guess meant that he was less careful than he could have been.
He met the guy on the street, after calling his mobile and arranging to meet. The guy was two and a half hours late, but since my friend had travelled quite a way to meet him he waited. During the transaction, he was constantly getting calls from someone else driving down from Leeds, asking if the car was still for sale. When showing the service history, he first pulled out the wrong one - for another Passat, with a different reg number. The guy was dark skinned, but showed a Polish identity card as proof of ID (apparently his wife was Polish and he had learned to speak reasonably well from her). In the end, my friend was convinced - there was a logical explanation for anything that looked out of order - so he bought the car and was happy. Until today.
So today I came around to see him, and started looking at things. I looked up the MOT on the internet (http://www.motinfo.gov.uk/) - looks like it's valid, but it says almost 152000 miles. It also failed an MOT, with a bunch of problems, three days before it passed with exactly the same mileage at the same place as it had failed. I looked up the tax information (http://www.vehiclelicence.gov.uk/) and it says that the car is unlicensed, and the last tax disc ran out at the end of August. I looked at the service book, and it is clearly forged: too clean, no first owner information, similar handwriting on services, mileage worked out perfectly to hit the right number, and so on. The stamps are there, but it would only fool a non native speaker like my friend.
My friend has no paper that he purchased the car - he handed over the money and got the registration documents. He's sent off the docs to the DVLA already, keeping the new keeper bit. He put the mileage he was told down on the registration documents. He has a mobile phone number to contact the dealer, and can probably make it to the place the transaction was done.
So where does he stand? Should we try contacting the "dealer" and hoping that he doesn't just change his mobile number and vanish? Should we be heading to the police? Ok, my friend was naive - he got very excited as this was his first "nice" car worth more than a couple of hundred quid. He was also in a rush to get a car after his last one fell apart and he had been renting one to get around. I really want to try and help him out here, I'm worried about him.
Also, the things that the car failed MOT for sound to me to be fairly serious: nearside stop lamp not working, nearside and offside front suspension arms have excessive play in a ball joint, exhaust emits an excessive level of metered smoke for a turbo charged engine. Advisories on both front direction indicators slightly discoloured, nearside rear direction indicator affected by the operation of another lamp, and all four suspension arms rubber bush deteriorated but not resulting in excessive movement. Are these things that, if the MOT pass was faked, he should be worried about?
Thanks,
-simon
He met the guy on the street, after calling his mobile and arranging to meet. The guy was two and a half hours late, but since my friend had travelled quite a way to meet him he waited. During the transaction, he was constantly getting calls from someone else driving down from Leeds, asking if the car was still for sale. When showing the service history, he first pulled out the wrong one - for another Passat, with a different reg number. The guy was dark skinned, but showed a Polish identity card as proof of ID (apparently his wife was Polish and he had learned to speak reasonably well from her). In the end, my friend was convinced - there was a logical explanation for anything that looked out of order - so he bought the car and was happy. Until today.
So today I came around to see him, and started looking at things. I looked up the MOT on the internet (http://www.motinfo.gov.uk/) - looks like it's valid, but it says almost 152000 miles. It also failed an MOT, with a bunch of problems, three days before it passed with exactly the same mileage at the same place as it had failed. I looked up the tax information (http://www.vehiclelicence.gov.uk/) and it says that the car is unlicensed, and the last tax disc ran out at the end of August. I looked at the service book, and it is clearly forged: too clean, no first owner information, similar handwriting on services, mileage worked out perfectly to hit the right number, and so on. The stamps are there, but it would only fool a non native speaker like my friend.
My friend has no paper that he purchased the car - he handed over the money and got the registration documents. He's sent off the docs to the DVLA already, keeping the new keeper bit. He put the mileage he was told down on the registration documents. He has a mobile phone number to contact the dealer, and can probably make it to the place the transaction was done.
So where does he stand? Should we try contacting the "dealer" and hoping that he doesn't just change his mobile number and vanish? Should we be heading to the police? Ok, my friend was naive - he got very excited as this was his first "nice" car worth more than a couple of hundred quid. He was also in a rush to get a car after his last one fell apart and he had been renting one to get around. I really want to try and help him out here, I'm worried about him.
Also, the things that the car failed MOT for sound to me to be fairly serious: nearside stop lamp not working, nearside and offside front suspension arms have excessive play in a ball joint, exhaust emits an excessive level of metered smoke for a turbo charged engine. Advisories on both front direction indicators slightly discoloured, nearside rear direction indicator affected by the operation of another lamp, and all four suspension arms rubber bush deteriorated but not resulting in excessive movement. Are these things that, if the MOT pass was faked, he should be worried about?
Thanks,
-simon
If your friend was so inexperienced he should have got help to assess any potential purchase. Why did he not go one of the many legitimate small garages dealing with this sector of the market?? 
At least then he might have some recourse if things went wrong. Your "trader" is probably long gone-untraceable and your left with "damage limitation" 
Your friend will have to fix an unroadworthy car at possibly considerable cost. An expensive lesson to learn. shame 
