Brief cases: don’t take no for an answer

Having been a member for 30 years and currently a Which? Legal subscriber I would very much like real information in articles. The idea that other consumers could go to this unnamed dealer and be rooked I find depressing. Surely the charity should reveal the dealers name in order to protect all? Stories with anonymous villains and non-locations are not going to be nearly as effective.

Perhaps Which? Legal would take this opportunity to comment on the desirability of the Indian consumer court system where every judgement throughout India is recorded and available on the Web to anyone. The system in the UK courts is to bury every judgement so unless you were in the Court on the day or a local newspaper reports it then virtually no one will know the result.

So in India I put in the companies/traders name into the national database this will pull me all cases against them/him/her. Useful to know particularly where it relates to shoddy equipment or services.
Empowering consumers that is what it is about.

I agree, consumers need constant reminders of their rights when purchasing faulty goods and services. I have a special interest at present in the Misrepresentation Act 1967 since being involved in selling my home which involves the differentiation between fact and opinion, an issue that can be more difficult to prove.

I have recently been fobbed off and strung along by estate agents with fabrications and deception and attempts by solicitors to engage in negotiations in an effort to extricate me from my home as a result of these falsehoods and charge me for the privilege! I havent yet had cause to use Which? Legal Services, but if things don’t improve soon I may need to. It’s because I am involved in these convo’s that I have so far managed to stand my ground under the Consumer Rights Act. It’s surprising how quickly they back down when one quotes this.

There is an Unfair Commercial Practices Directive that regulates unfair business practices in EU law which require corresponding laws to be passed that incorporate it into each member States legal system but it is extremely complex and way beyond myself and I would guess, the remit of the ordinary consumer.

More can be found @ en.m.wikipedia.org – Unfair Commercial Practices Directive.

This case study shows that it is as important to choose your car dealer carefully as it is to choose your car.

I certainly agree that there should be more Brief Cases reports here and in the magazine as legitimate public interest spin-offs from Which?’s legal assistance service. Knowing my rights through decades of reading Which? has probably saved me from bad deals, put me right when things went wrong, protected me from lawyers, and ultimately kept me out of the courts.

So the problem remain then… How can you know that a car dealer is a “good” or at least trustworthy car dealer? Is there anywhere you could double check if it is worth dealing with them?

justwonder– try- complaintslist.com/car-auto-dealerships/ or car dealer reviews.co.uk. I have got to say–as per usual this country unlike most other countries and the US most of all , has mountains of car organisation quangos/ NGO like bodies etc to lead you down the garden path of FRUSTRATION who really try to water down your complaint or “lose it ” in the network -ie- still leave you unhappy after weeks of getting their “help ” . Why because at the end of the day they arent 100 % for the British public but for businesses . When you check US websites that really “dish the dirt ” on dodgy car dealers and then try to compare with UK ones its a case of Superman -V- 5 stone “weakling “

I asked Which? Legal for advice on rejecting my son’s new car which he had bought on finance and which developed a persistent and incurable electrical fault after 2 months. After months of the car breaking down and the dealer refusing to accept there was a problem despite a whole battery of AA reports, the finance company told them to make repairs (after we made a complaint) and this was completed. A week later there was a fire in the engine. I phoned Which? and followed their advice and after a long wait we successfully rejected the car, got my son out of the finance agreement and ended this particular nightmare. However, he had lost hundreds of pounds of earnings by then which they refused to pay, he had suffered stress and anxiety about losing his job because he didn’t have a car and the whole family had suffered. Their argument against paying costs was that he could have hired a car (for a 21 year old this was a very limited option and the daily cost exceeded his earnings) or temporarily insured a different car (sent by the Good Fairy? and no we couldn’t get insurance for him on either of our cars). They didn’t seem to realise that his car insurance was so high he simply couldn’t insure another car even if that car existed- and they insisted that he kept insurance on his useless car until the complaint was upheld even though it was locked in a compound covered by the dealer’s insurance. The point is that there should be much clearer guidelines for compensation when this happens to someone who buys a car in good faith.