Price increased after reservation of car saying it is intially incorrectly priced.

[MSG2004]

Humans make mistakes and this "price" was clearly one of those. I'm no fan of main dealers hourly garage rates etc, but lets say you made a mistake and paid them 9k too much when completing a bank transfer - would you expect them to return that?

Possibly seek a goodwill reduction and see what they say. Good luck

 

[esscee]

Syntner dealership. Probably best to move on and keep looking around, might not find exactly what you want but likely for the best.

 

[markjay]

Humans make mistakes and this "price" was clearly one of those. I'm no fan of main dealers hourly garage rates etc, but lets say you made a mistake and paid them 9k too much when completing a bank transfer - would you expect them to return that?

Possibly seek a goodwill reduction and see what they say. Good luck

From the legal perspective, suppliers and consumers do not have a reciprocal relationship. The supplier generally holds more power, while the consumer has statutory rights via consumer protection legislation. It's not a level playing field, nor is it meant to be.

 

[MSG2004]

Thank you, Markjay

 

[Petrol Pete]

Lets say you fight for the £9K and win ....Do you think that dealer will then be very accommodating to you if (more likely when) you have problems with the car ? Or ask for a courteously car during service work ?

Walk away from this bunch of shysters.

 

[Fastcar155]

So , what's the point of a deposit on a car ?

 

[markjay]

So , what's the point of a deposit on a car ?

This depends on how the deposit is described.

My issue with the events as per the OP's post, is that it is misleading to call this a 'reservation' (assuming that's the word that was used in the documentation provided by the dealer) if the car is not in fact reserved.

 

[oldguy57]

As you point out, the advertised price is indeed an "invitation to treat" with no legal obligation.
However (as pointed out above by MJ ) the sales contract was entered into by the OP when he offered to pay that offered price. At that stage there was still no legal requirement for the dealership to accept.
Once the dealership accepted the OP's offer (and deposit) both parties had entered into a "Sales contract" which absolutely is legally binding. The fact that the OP has verifiable confirmation in writing from the dealership of all of this, should put him in a very strong position to insist that they honoured their half of the contract as legally required.
However (as also pointed out by MJ ) the t&c's may be sited as their "get out". Nonetheless Terms & Conditions should be intended to clarify the terms of any contract, but are specifically not permitted to circumvent the Sales of Goods act.

Imho it depends on how much you value that £9k disparity. If he were to pursue it doggedly enough, I personally would be very surprised if he was unsuccessful. However I do not expect they would want to to make it easy for him, so doing so may not be a very pleasant experience.?

Seasons greetings..

The seller does not seem to be regarding the "reservation fee" as a deposit though and seems to be saying in their t and c's that they do not regard the payment of the reservation fee as entering into a legally binding contract. I'm not a lawyer so don't know whether this complies with legislation or not. Seems to be not uncommon practice though. Whatever the rights and wrongs though I personally would find another car.

 

[HappytalkAgain]

I know it’s unheard of but I wonder (hypothetically) what would have happened had the OP’er had paid the £29k in full via a bank transfer then arranged to collect the car? Would they have just bounced the money back to him or honoured the sale?

 

[st13phil]

Most (all?) UK Mercedes-Benz dealerships operate on the same model for used car sales in that paying them £99 "reserves" the car prior to viewing and entering into a contract for purchase. The "reservation" just means that they agree not to sell it to someone else within a defined period to allow the potential purchaser to view the car and either decide to proceed with the purchase or decline to proceed in which case the £99 is refunded and that's the end of the matter. In other words, the £99 has a defined and narrow purpose - to allow time for an inspection of the vehicle - but neither party has entered into a contract to trade just because the £99 has been paid.

In the instant case, the dealer advertised the car at an incorrect price and the salesperson involved erroneously lead the OP to believe that they would sell to him at the incorrect price. If the sum involved was small, say £500, then there's a chance that the dealer could be persuaded to honour the price originally advised to the OP on a goodwill basis, but with a £9k error (almost 24% of the "correct" price) IMO there's nothing on earth the OP can do to either persuade or compel the dealer to sell him the car at price he was attracted by.

Time to move on.

 

[tonysmb]

I was going to mention 'invitation to treat' but it's already been covered. The OP didn't pay a deposit, but a reservation fee and they're not quite the same.

Personally, having been involved in taking a franchised dealer to court over a car 'sale', and being on the losing side, I'd just take the reservation fee back and forget it. Not ideal but unless the contracts are very clear that their acceptance of a reservation fee binds them to a sale I'd be surprised if you'd succeed. Similarly, I presume that the 'contract' allows the 'buyer' to pull out, probably with the reservation fee only being returnable if the car isn't as described. However, not having had sight of any of the smallprint, I can only guess.

Irritating, but life.

 

[Will]

Hi Guys, I am a new member.
Today i am very disappointed by mercedes benz dealership team. I saw a glc 300d listed for a very good price yesterday and immediately called up the dealer, confirmed the price and car details. They advised to reserve the car if i am interested. So i reserved the car and i got the the confirmation email including the car reg no, details and listed price. So i cancelled my reservation with another glc car as i liked this car most. Today i received a call from sales team saying that the car is wrongly priced yesterday and the actual price is £9000 more now. I told them i spoke to one of the sales team yesterday, confirmed the car price and details, then only i proceeded for reservation, for which they said the price now is £9000 more now(which i obviously cant afford) if i want to proceed further. So i asked them to keep the reservation and will get back to them later. I am just wondering what are our rights once we reserve the car and is there any way we can raise this issue and make a complaint. I would very much appreciate any suggestions on how to proceed further and is there any point in making a complaint at all?

Being reasonable here, you can’t expect a garage to make a £9k loss on a car just because some human being that works for them has made a typo.

Doesn’t sound as though you have suffered any loss, the garage hasn’t sold the car to someone else instead etc.

Simple mistake that they have acknowledged. And I suspect the only reason you were interested in this specific car was because it was underpriced by £9000.

Get the reservation fee back and move on. See if the other one you had reserved is still available - that way you’ve lost absolutely nothing

Fair enough, it was worth a try and you might have got lucky but you haven’t and haven’t lost anything either. We all make mistakes sometimes

 

[Fastcar155]

So , what's the point of a deposit on a car ?

Hi , thinking about my comment I feel I feel my wording of a deposit is incorrect.

The OP used the word reservation which from my understanding that generally the dealer will hold the car for a period of time allowing a potential customer to view.

From memory the OP changed his mind with another Mercedes dealer re a reservation for another Mercedes car.

The two dealers could have been in the same group.