Long story, bit of a fright, buyer beware

Sunhill

Sorry can't make this any shorter.
Bought new car during the summer, saw it in a main dealer's showroom, didn't haggle about the price and agreed to purchase. Then the salesman said "The distributors have agreed to allow us to discount these cars by €1,500 by selling them as demonstration cars with zero mileage. What this entails is that we will register the car in our name but you can drive it away immediately, then change it to your own name in a couple of months."

It's been a long time since I bought a new car but this sounded a bit irregular. Told salesman that if this wasn't a main dealership I'd be running a mile. He assured me that all was above board and I agreed to take the car. Even in the week before I took delivery I rang him again and said that I wanted the car and was quite prepared to forego the discount if it wasn't 100% straight, got the same reassurance.

At that time I couldn't think what advantage it was to the garage to offer a discount when I was almost begging them to take the full price. Picked up the car and am more than happy with it. Couple of months later I went back to the garage and asked for the log book so that I could transfer ownership to myself, was told that they'd post it out, had to be satisfied with that for the moment, About three weeks went by and no sign of log book in the post but my mind was on other things at the time and didn't worry about it.

That brought me up to the days before Christmas and I happened to have a local tradesman working in the house. He saw the dealer's sticker on the rear window and said "That crowd are only barely avoiding NAMA and I don't know how long more will they last". When my brain eventually got into gear, the implications of this hit me. The garage had their name still on my car and if they went to the wall NAMA/liquidator could walk in here and drive off with my their car, €25,000 sailing out the gate and little chance of doing anything about it, Was this why they were so pushy about the discount? They had my money but they also had the car still on their balance sheet, that might be how they were keeping NAMA at bay. Holidays closure meant I couldn't do anything about it.

The situation didn't spoil my Christmas but I fretted a little about it now and again. First day the garage was open after the hols I went in and asked for my logbook. The secretary took out a folder, opened it up and I saw -- get this -- about thirty log books in it. She found mine, which already had my name and address on it for the transfer and promised she'd send the logbook off to Shannon immediately. had to be satisfied with that but couldn't help doubting. Thankfully my new logbook arrived within a couple of days and I kissed it when I took it out of the envelope!
Does anybody else know of this kind of deal? It happened in a country town and I don't want to identify myself or risk a lawsuit by naming the town, the garage or even the make of car. Are/were you in the situation above? Shouldn't you be anxious to claim your logbook as soon as possible?

dollybird2

Wow that is crazy! For anyone purchasing a car - never allow anyone, even the dealer, to have their name on the logbook once it is in your ownership. If your name is not on the log book then the car is not legally yours.
When you take out insurance, you are asked if the car is registered in your name.
Tax reminders are sent to registered owner.
Traffic fines and penalty point notices are sent to registered owner.
It is very important that you have your own correct details on the logbook.

dingding

They were probably able to finance the car as it was in their name. There may have been finance outstanding on the car. It would have been interesting to do a check on the car when they had the logbook to see if there was finance outstanding.

colm_mcm

This is quite normal. If they invoiced you for the car then its yours anyway, whether their name is on the log book or not would have no bearing on whether it would be repossessed etc.
the distributors give a discount for demos, part of the deal is that the garage taxes the car, sends the VLC to the distributor, who then sends it back after a certain period of time. A lot of garages just get a duplicate cert and change the ownership over to the new owner.

Cars garages have on finance tend to be unregistered cars, finance usually runs out once the car gets registered.

dollybird2

That's interesting, I didn't know that colmmc_n. How would that work re: insurance if you wrote off the car but it was registered in the garage's name?

mickdw

Yes Parents bought a zero mile vw pre reg in 2012. They were aware of the dealer being recorded as first owner but nobody made them aware that there would be a delay with the change over of registration.
They went looking for the reg cert after about 3 weeks to be told only then that the dealer had to retain ownership for 3 full months. Anyway, after a disagreement, the book was sorted in a few days.

I dont know how things would go if a garage went bust in the middle of such a deal but no doubt there would be a few headaches involved in getting the logbook even though there would be a definite paper trail showing payment in full etc.

Sunhill

Thanks colm_mcm. This is news to me and I am reassured.
There couldn't have been finance outstanding, dingding, it was a brand new and unregistered.

L-M

Also the garage wouldn't have 30 demos, those lpg books you saw were probably for all the used cars etc.

coylemj

colm_mcm wrote: »

If they invoiced you for the car then its yours anyway, whether their name is on the log book or not would have no bearing on whether it would be repossessed etc.

+1 The old tax book used to have a notice in bold which explicitly stated that the person in whose name the vehicle was registered 'may or may not be the owner' so being the legal owner and being the registered owner are separate issues.

As long as there is no finance outstanding when you buy it, it's legally your property as soon as you pay the dealer and drive it off their premises.

Voodoomelon

dollybird2 wrote: »

Wow that is crazy! For anyone purchasing a car - never allow anyone, even the dealer, to have their name on the logbook once it is in your ownership. If your name is not on the log book then the car is not legally yours.
When you take out insurance, you are asked if the car is registered in your name.

Pretty sure none of this is accurate. The car is yours as soon as you hand over the money. If you are issued a receipt at the same time, you can prove it's yours. You're implying that you can't be insured on a car until you have your name on the logbook, this is not true.

Same goes for a private sale. You own the car as soon as you hand over the cash.

But you are correct about fines, tolls etc.

dollybird2

Voodoomelon wrote: »

Pretty sure none of this is accurate. The car is yours as soon as you hand over the money. If you are issued a receipt at the same time, you can prove it's yours. You're implying that you can't be insured on a car until you have your name on the logbook, this is not true.

Same goes for a private sale. You own the car as soon as you hand over the cash.

But you are correct about fines, tolls etc.

I worked in Motor Tax & this was the advice given re: registration of owner details, but I see from this thread that it isn't so. Interesting the registered owner v legal owner, I had never looked at it from that perspective.
Thanks!

K.Flyer

It all sounds a bit strange...
Would it have anything to do with how the warranty might be handled?
If they are selling it to you as a second hand demo could it give them reason for slitthering out of the normal new car warranty if there happened to be a major problem in a year or so, just curious and wary?

mathepac

dollybird2 wrote: »

... For anyone purchasing a car - never allow anyone, even the dealer, to have their name on the logbook once it is in your ownership. If your name is not on the log book then the car is not legally yours. ...

That is completely misleading and inaccurate.

There are two kinds of vehicle ownership - the registered owner (or registered "keeper" in the UK) and the beneficial owner.

For a car on HP / lease-purchase etc, the registered owner is the person who drives it every day, whereas the beneficial owner is the finance company. The registered owner pays motor tax, insurance, fines, etc for the car. If he/she fails to pay the finance as agreed, the beneficial owner may reposes the car, which is their property.

colm_mcm

K.Flyer wrote: »

It all sounds a bit strange...
Would it have anything to do with how the warranty might be handled?
If they are selling it to you as a second hand demo could it give them reason for slitthering out of the normal new car warranty if there happened to be a major problem in a year or so, just curious and wary?

It has nothing to do with warranty. As stated before, the dealer gets a few quid from the distributor to register a few cars in the garage name, they pass on that saving to the customer.
The warranty is on the car, if there's 7 owners in the first year it makes no odds.

650Ginge

dollybird2 wrote: »

Wow that is crazy! For anyone purchasing a car - never allow anyone, even the dealer, to have their name on the logbook once it is in your ownership. If your name is not on the log book then the car is not legally yours.
When you take out insurance, you are asked if the car is registered in your name.
Tax reminders are sent to registered owner.
Traffic fines and penalty point notices are sent to registered owner.
It is very important that you have your own correct details on the logbook.

Thankfully in law your name on the registration doc doesn't mean you own it.

Otherwise sure could we all just still cars get them regd in our name with no come back.

You should have just asked Shannon for a replacement.

You had pocession of the car so what's the big deal again?

Padraig Mor

I accept that I don't have the experience of the motor industry that some posters have, but I'm not sure that this is as 'regular' as some think? My understanding (mostly from UK websites - maybe things are different here?) is that garages register cars as demos to make sales targets to get bonuses, etc. However, the manufacturer usually has restrictions on demo registrations so as to protect the brand. Basically, garages are allowed sell demos at a discount, but only after they've owned the car for 3 / 6 months and the car has a certain amount of mileage - i.e. the garage are not selling effectively brand new cars at a substantial discount - which harms the brand's reputation. Manufacturers police this by conducting spot checks on reg certs, where the garage must show that the car is registered in the name of the garage. Some garages flout the arrangement by selling brand new cars as 'demos' (to get their bonus), but holding onto the cert in case the manufacturer checks. I have a personal interest in this as it happened to me. Some time back, I bought a pre-reg (not demo) brand new car (Citroen C5) at a substantial discount. I was told that the price was only possible because of "support" from Citroen, but nothing was mentioned to me about demos etc. They took money from me to tax the car (doing me a favour LOL!) but I never got the cert. When I went looking for it, I got fobbed off until eventually they told me that they had registered the car as a demo and needed to keep the reg cert for a few months. Naturally, I kicked up and got my cert but the whole affair left a sour taste in my mouth TBH.

I'm also not sure that it's as straight forward as people think on the insurance front. The "assumptions" on the first car insurance site I just opened state that "your car is registered.....in your name or in the name of your spouse". I am pretty sure most of them are the same.

keithclancy

The ownership is based on the exchange of money, this forms the contract.

The registration with Shannon should just reflect this.

If there is finance outstanding then the contract is invalid as it is not their property to sell in the first place.

ninty9er

Most new cars on a dealer's forecourt would be financed through the likes of Lombard or GE. There are very few new cars which do not have finance outstanding, just not the type that a buyer needs to be worried about.

Main dealers might have no more than a few hundred grand in their current account, but might have €5-6 million in stock sitting on their forecourts, multiples of that for larger dealers.