Here’s something I read in Car Dealer Magazine today. It goes to show that often car dealers are good, honest people and some customers want everything for nothing and want to get away with it.

This article was written by ‘Big Mike’ in Car Dealer Magazine.

” My Patience, along with my ‘no-quibble’ guarantee, have been sorely tested in the past couple of weeks.
Why? Because I am sick to the back teeth of the poor reputation our industry has when it is others that are taking the pee. Ask anyone in the street if they would trust a car dealer and the answer you’ll get is ‘no’. In reality, though, it’s the general public that can’t be trusted, not us.
And yes, I am absolutely fuming…
A couple of weeks ago, I sold a very tidy Peugeot 407 HDi Station Wagon. Not my usual cup of tea, but a fairly honest workaday family car that’s always going to find a new home if offered at the right price.
The car was in tidy enough condition, with just shy of 100k on the clock, smart half-leather trim, nearly-new tyres and a decent service history. It was easily worth the £2350 I was asking for it, so I didn’t really bat an eyelid when a customer came on to the lot, had a cursory look around it and offered to buy it without even haggling.
A test drive, he said, wasn’t required, as if offered all my cars with a three month warranty and a seven-day no-quibble full return guarantee.
His last car was a 407 Station Wagon, so he knew exactly what to expect from the driving experience, and because he was currently without a car, he was happy to pay with his credit car and drive away that day.
Hindsight, they say, is a glorious thing. And when I look back at the circumstances, I really could kick myself for not seeing this one coming. Yet, even when you’ve been in the trade as long as I have, it’s very easy to get sucked in by the promise of a quick and convenient sale.
I sold the Peugeot on a Thursday morning. The following Monday afternoon, the buyer drove it back to me. It was running like a sack of you-know-what, black smoke pouring out of the back end and a curious vibration coming from under the bonnet.
It was, the owner said, a complete disaster of a car, hasn’t been right since he got it, and he was returning it under the terms of my ‘no-quibble’ guarantee. In such circumstances, there’s not a huge amount you can do – it’s a risk you take if you offer a full service guarantee of the type I do, and the occasional car that comes back is usually offset by the fact that the cast majority of honest buyers take comfort in the guarantee, which is generally good for business.
Therefore, I did the decent thing and transferred the money back to the blokes credit card, before driving the misfiring Peugeot round to the naughty corner, where I’d get my man to have a look at it.
The following day, he did. And what we found wasn’t pleasant. First up, we had to boost-start it, which seemed a little odd seeing as I’d had it in stock for five weeks and never once encountered an issue getting it going.
But then, there were bits on the 407 that were different from when I sold it, notably the front tyres, which were originally a nearly-new budget brand. In their place were a pair of once-expensive Goodyears, albeit now close to useless, as they were bordering illegal. The battery, I suspected, was not the one it had on it when it left my lot – something I was subsequently able to prove when I looked at the images I’d taken of the car for my dealer listing on eBay – unless, it was a magic colouring-changing battery, as the one on the car was white and the one in my picture was black.
The cause of the poor running, after a lengthy internet investigation, turned out to be the car’s injection ECU. Apparently this isn’t uncommon on 407s, but what was uncommon was for a 2005 ECU to be found on a 2007 car – unless, of course, someone had been there before. And that was what the date stamp on the ECU was leading us to believe. Time, then, for some further investigation…
That evening, my mechanic and I took a ride out to the buyer’s home, which turned out to be one of the less salburious parts of Birmingham. There, parked outside, was a black 407 Station Wagon, suspiciously wearing a pair of blacked up, nearly-new budget tyres. I’d bet my bottom dollar that under the bonnet there was also a black batterywhere a few days earlier would have been a white one… Of even more interest, this car was a 2005 example, not a 2007. Which means it would have left the factory with a 2005 ECU, which, I would wager had recently developed a fault. But I’ve left that one in the hands of my lawyers…”

This just goes to show that not all car dealers are out to con you, some are just genuine people trying to make a living. I have no doubt that this has left a bad mark on ‘Big Mike’s’ company, as that dogdey customer has probably left him a bad review somewhere, too.