Top 10 car problems with Honest John

Buyers’ rights after purchasing a car

I have to send links to my Consumer Rights FAQ answer to an average of 10 readers per day. You have the same basic rights against any dealer retailing a car for about £2,000 upwards. Unless you are forewarned and buy on that basis, any significant faults that occur within six months of purchase are deemed to have been developing on the day of purchase, thereby rendering the car of “unsatisfactory quality” and are the responsibility of the dealer to repair. You can either return the car to the dealer to fix it, get a refund, or agree to part fund a repair if that is “reasonable” – what you can’t do is simply have it fixed elsewhere and send the dealer the bill. If dealers deny any knowledge of consumer protection law, it begs the question why they should be allowed to trade. It stands to reason that you cannot reasonably expect 10-year-old bangers selling for a fraction of their original price to be completely fault-free, which is why I mentioned the arbitrary £2,000 figure.

The state of the roads

The general state of our roads, together with the proliferation of speed humps and speed cushions, is a campaign issue called Cash (the Campaign Against Speed Humps). Not only do speed humps, and particularly speed cushions, damage vehicle tyres, suspension and engines (through grounding of their sumps), a constant pounding from vehicles also destroys the substructure of the roads. That’s why you see subsidence and potholes in and around speed humps. Money that should have been spent on road maintenance was diverted by the previous government into “traffic-calming measures” that have damaged the roads, increasing the maintenance bill. A speed cushion with a pothole in it is a metaphor for the state in which the previous administration left the country.

Insurance disputes

These are split into three:

1 - Protected No-Claims Discounts (for which policyholders pay a premium) don’t amount to much when, even after a “no fault” claim, they find their premium has escalated because they are then judged to be an increased insurance risk.

2 - Valuation disputes occur when insurers write off a car that could easily be repaired and pay the owner a settlement that is inadequate to replace the car like for like, only for the owner later to see his written-off car fully repaired and for sale. One garage even had bailiffs threaten to obtain the spare keys from the previous owner of a repaired write-off that was supposedly scrapped.

3 - Credit Hire expenses are where an “accident management specialist” takes over a claim, puts the injured party in an equivalent hire car for the duration of the repair, then delays the repair to extend the period of the hire. A repair cost of £4,000 and a hire car cost of £9,000 are typical where, if the insurer had anticipated the hire car bill, it would have written off the car in the first place. Never sign any document that leaves you liable for hire costs if the other party’s insurer (rightly) refuses to pay. The worst examples have been hire car bills of £29,000 and £40,000 – sums that could have bought the hire cars outright. You have got to read the full article as published on the Telegraph.co.uk