Only buy used car if . . .

LAST year I asked Motor Industry Ombudsman Johan van Vreden to list the five things he wished consumers would do before they bought a used car.

Among them was this: “Check the vehicle’s service history is up to date and the service book is in the vehicle. And make sure there is a spare key for the vehicle.”

That should tell you how often dealerships don’t provide these two vital things with the used cars they sell. What they do come up with are promises that the service book and/or spare key will be provided “later”; but that seldom happens.

So many of the car-related stories that land in my inbox start with problems related to a missing service history or spare key. It’s never a good sign.

So I wasn’t surprised to see a missing spare key saga among the case studies in the Motor Industry Ombudsman of SA’s annual report released last week.

A consumer (neither the consumer nor dealerships are named in MIOSA case studies, sadly) bought a used vehicle from a franchised dealer, with the dealer promising to give him the spare key “at a later stage”.

A week later he discovered some faults and reported these to the dealer, attempting to make a date to sort it out and collect the spare key.

The dealers said they would contact him, but then they closed down.

In such cases, the CPA and MIOSA’s code of conduct entitle the office to refer a complaint to anyone in the supply chain.

So they approached the car’s importer, which refunded the consumer the cost of the repairs and supplied him with a spare key free of charge. Good to know!