Dealership washes hands of car
I’VE read your recent articles and have been trying to get the media involved in terms of my case, as we are in an unfortunate predicament and would like to expose not only this specific dealership, but all dealerships that operate in this fraudulent manner.
We’ve recently bought a car from a dealership which gave us unending problems from the day we left their lot. After returning the car to them thrice to have the issues corrected, which they did not, we decided to take this to an approved mechanic who pointed out the many issues we had with the car, such as bad oil and water leaks, the differential being broken, use of incorrect or generic parts which further decreased the integrity of the vehicle, incorrect or missing fixtures and missing or faulty sensors – among many other things that were experienced from day one.
We confronted the dealership, but they said the period for which they were responsible for repairs had expired and we should claim from the motor insurance they had sold us.
Reluctantly, we attempted this and were advised that the car was not roadworthy and we could not claim from the insurance. We were also told that an unroadworthy car could not have had motor insurance sold on it, as one of the prerequisites is for the car to be roadworthy. The dealership never informed us that the car was not roadworthy; they advised us that we needed to do this ourselves.
However, we could not, as they had not put the car in our name after two months of requesting this. They advised that they had sold the car on behalf of another dealership and we should get the papers from them, but the dealership denied this.
The car has now stood in our driveway for the past three months as we were advised by the ombudsman to stop all work on the car and to no longer use it. This affects us greatly as the vehicle was used for our business. Now we need to hire a car.
These dealerships are fraudulently selling cars that are held together by strands to people who do not know any better and have to take their word that what they bought is not broken. When confronted, they don’t hesitate to send you away as they know that most people can’t afford to embark on a long, drawn-out court case.
This only leaves us with the options of going to the ombudsman – who cannot advise how long it will take due to his being inundated with similar cases – searching for alternative means or stoically accepting the loss and moving on.