Should I be wary?

baalad

Hi guys. I have arranged to see a car in Limerick tomorrow but i have no mechanic that can come with me so iam taking a right chance given that i know very little about cars. The girl selling the car seems genuinely lovely although i know that means nothing.

Everything seemed fine until today. She told me the reason the car is for sale is because her friend (it's her friends car) has moved back home (she lives abroad) and that's the reason the car is for sale. I asked how long the friend had the car and she said only 6 months. She also said there's no service history book for the car.

Iam wondering if this could be dodgy? The girl seems genuine and the car is only 5 yrs old with only 35,000 miles on the clock.

Any advice? Iam going to run a cartell check after work to see if there's higher purchase on it but iam paranoid about being stung as iam spending a significant amount of money and the car is due for nct in July so iam hoping there's not lots of work to be done on her.

Thoughts??

CorkColin

Whats your gut tell you ? probably should avoid it unless you get a mechanic especially if its a significant amount of cash...

delly

A car at that age is going to have a price tag to go along with it and is too risky without a mechanical check. Selling a friends car does not necessarily mean the car is dodgy/stolen, but more than likely is a part time trader. No history is enough to walk away, along with the cost and no mechanical check.

baalad

She said she asked her friend where the service history book was and her friend said she doesn't have any book but that the car was serviced last July and that the garages signature is on a sticker on the window???

Is it acceptable to buy a car with no service history book if the milage is only 35,000??

Del2005

baalad wrote: »

She said she asked her friend where the service history book was and her friend said she doesn't have any book but that the car was serviced last July and that the garages signature is on a sticker on the window???

Is it acceptable to buy a car with no service history book if the milage is only 35,000??

Without a service history you've no way of knowing that it only has 35k.

How far are you travelling and what type of car is it? If it's a common car and your travelling more than an hour I wouldn't bother, there'll be others closer with verified mileage.

Atlantic Dawn

What's to stop the car being stolen from someones house who is currently on holiday and she has the logbook? You should always ask yourself this as a Cartell and stolen vehicle check won't show any issue in this case.

colm_mcm

I wouldn't buy a 5 year old car from the owners friend. That's just crazy.

JohnBoy26

It might be genuine but tbh who spends thousands on a 5 year old car just to drive it around for 6 months.

baalad

Well apparently the friend went abroad fully intending on returning back but found work so isn't returning home anytime soon. Anytime i have asked her a question in relation to the car she always says that she has to contact her friend abroad and get back to me.

My gut tells me the car is good but my concern is if she's selling the car without her friends permission?

Atlantic Dawn

baalad wrote: »

My gut tells me the car is good but my concern is if she's selling the car without her friends permission?

Then your money and the car will be gone. Also whatever you do under no circumstances arrive to view the car for the first time with the full cash on you either.

visual

Walk away plenty of other cars for sale.

Sticker in window is as good as tippex on engine cover. It means zero.

visual

visual wrote: »

Walk away plenty of other cars for sale.

Sticker in window is as good as tippex on engine cover. It means zero.

Not quite. If it's a real garage (ie; dealer) - and assuming it's only 5 years old, it very likely would be the dealer that sold the car, then you could ring them and they could tell you.

Some cars come with a set amount of free services or their warranty makes you keep going back to them for x amount of years etc. so if its the garage that sold the car, they should have a record of everything they did to the car since it was bought.


EDIT: The backstory sounds iffy though. Buying a pricy car and leaving the country 6 months later. Who does that? I'm sure it happens, but... definitely not a common one.

baalad

Will a cartell report help in my case so or is it pointless doing a cartell check??

visual

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Not quite. If it's a real garage (ie; dealer) - and assuming it's only 5 years old, it very likely would be the dealer that sold the car, then you could ring them and they could tell you.

Some cars come with a set amount of free services or their warranty makes you keep going back to them for x amount of years etc. so if its the garage that sold the car, they should have a record of everything they did to the car since it was bought.


EDIT: The backstory sounds iffy though. Buying a pricy car and leaving the country 6 months later. Who does that? I'm sure it happens, but... definitely not a common one.

Could be ex hire car. With long service interval it might have none. Could have underline expensive fault that's not easily notice but more likely to be crash repair being sold off.
Why take the chance someone selling for someone else is no good if it turns out to be clocked poorly crashed repaired or what ever. Your money's gone and while there no guarantee buying privately without actually taking to owner you have no way gauging if their answers are sound genuine.

There is no history for a reason

Or you could move on to next add that seller has history and owned car for more than 6 months

There is so many red flags it's not a look with out a extensive inspection by someone who knows what they are looking at.

visual

baalad wrote: »

Will a cartell report help in my case so or is it pointless doing a cartell check??

Yes it's always doing a check but you need to get the car checked over by mechanic before you part with cash.

baalad

Just done a cartell check and everything is good. She has told the truth about everything. Only alert from the report was that the car was imported from the UK And it's stating that the car only has 2 owners and the first owner was in 2014?? But the car is a 2010

bazz26

Get the car's old UK reg and run it through the link below:

https://www.check-mot.service.gov.uk/

Atlantic Dawn

Is the car way cheaper than similar models? You need to also verify that the car matches the chassis number from the logbook.

bduffy

Is the owner not meant to sign the back of the Registration paperwork when selling it? They are unlikely to have done this before they left based on the story? Always good to have a friend in the Gardai to run a check.......

baalad

I checked the UK reg guys and the car was crashed in the uk in 2013 and imported here a year later. The car was a cat d insurance loss.

€35 well spent.

JohnBoy26

baalad wrote: »

I checked the UK reg guys and the car was crashed in the uk in 2013 and imported here a year later. The car was a cat d insurance loss.

€35 well spent.

Cat d isn't major damage. It's usually minor damage. The car would want to be a bit cheaper than a never damaged example though. You would also need to get someone to check the car before buying it to make sure it was repaired properly.

In this case walking away is the best option.

Mycroft H

Ring the garage.

I was checking out a C5 last year. There was an old lad selling it. According to him he'd lost the service book. However there was a sticker from the dealer in the window.

Gave the dealer a ring and they'd been able to confirm that they'd been servicing it since 2005. Happy days.

Granted this was a 13 year old car, but still. You can do other digging other than cartell

corks finest

baalad wrote: »

Hi guys. I have arranged to see a car in Limerick tomorrow but i have no mechanic that can come with me so iam taking a right chance given that i know very little about cars. The girl selling the car seems genuinely lovely although i know that means nothing.

Everything seemed fine until today. She told me the reason the car is for sale is because her friend (it's her friends car) has moved back home (she lives abroad) and that's the reason the car is for sale. I asked how long the friend had the car and she said only 6 months. She also said there's no service history book for the car.

Iam wondering if this could be dodgy? The girl seems genuine and the car is only 5 yrs old with only 35,000 miles on the clock.

Any advice? Iam going to run a cartell check after work to see if there's higher purchase on it but iam paranoid about being stung as iam spending a significant amount of money and the car is due for nct in July so iam hoping there's not lots of work to be done on her.

Thoughts??

Don't go near it without a mechanic

baalad

Whilst on the subject of cartell. Dont get me wrong , It was 35 quid well spent but what do i do with the other 4 r 5 cars i have an interest in? I could literally spend hundreds just doing cartell checks!

As a guy thats new to all this (first time buyer) i have been completely put off buying a car! The first car i saw was a disaster and the guy was an absolute liar/ con man that completely waisted my day off!! The second car turned out to be crashed previously and again the seller was lying and now today i have noticed that a seller on donedeal that i offered 7000 to last week for a car and he refused the offer is now strangely after reducing his price to 4,500 but when i asked why he will not reply lol

Oddly enough every one of them just so happens to be a foreigner! Besides the point, i will no longer trust anyone on donedeal and ill be damned if iam paying 35 quid time and time again just to learn some liar is trying to make a fool of me.

Anybody selling a car as far as iam concerned should HAVE to produce a cartell report at their own expense and send on a link to the report to any potential buyer let alone donedeal should should allow feedback to be given so others could be warned of these morons!!

Rant over

Comhrá

baalad wrote: »

Whilst on the subject of cartell. Dont get me wrong , It was 35 quid well spent but what do i do with the other 4 r 5 cars i have an interest in? I could literally spend hundreds just doing cartell checks!

As a guy thats new to all this (first time buyer) i have been completely put off buying a car! The first car i saw was a disaster and the guy was an absolute liar/ con man that completely waisted my day off!! The second car turned out to be crashed previously and again the seller was lying and now today i have noticed that a seller on donedeal that i offered 7000 to last week for a car and he refused the offer is now strangely after reducing his price to 4,500 but when i asked why he will not reply lol

Oddly enough every one of them just so happens to be a foreigner! Besides the point, i will no longer trust anyone on donedeal and ill be damned if iam paying 35 quid time and time again just to learn some liar is trying to make a fool of me.

Anybody selling a car as far as iam concerned should HAVE to produce a cartell report at their own expense and send on a link to the report to any potential buyer let alone donedeal should should allow feedback to be given so others could be warned of these morons!!

Rant over

Why not consider confining your purchase options to an established dealer or even a main dealer and even if you have to pay a bit over the odds, chances are you'll get a decent used car, uncrashed and with a proper service record.

Paying a bit extra would be worth the relative peace-of-mind afterwards and you have some fall-back if the car has any issues afterwards.

baalad

tippman1 wrote: »

Why not consider confining your purchase options to an established dealer or even a main dealer and even if you have to pay a bit over the odds, chances are you'll get a decent used car, uncrashed and with a proper service record.

Paying a bit extra would be worth the relative peace-of-mind afterwards and you have some fall-back if the car has any issues afterwards.

Thats what i feel i have to do! Too many con men on donedeal!! Never could of imagined that there would be so many gangsters on it , a few maybe but it appears 90% of sellers are out to con you. . . . and some appear to be dealers also actually so the risk seems just as high buying from a dealer as it is buying private!! Head is melted trying to buy a car lol

ShadowHearth

baalad wrote: »

Thats what i feel i have to do! Too many con men on donedeal!! Never could of imagined that there would be so many gangsters on it , a few maybe but it appears 90% of sellers are out to con you. . . . and some appear to be dealers also actually so the risk seems just as high buying from a dealer as it is buying private!! Head is melted trying to buy a car lol

Dealers and traders almost as bad as private sellers. Dp you really think when they take trade on, they check cars completely and fix up all the issues? Most dealers and traders warranty is not worth the paper it's written too, even of its written.

All in all: welcome to the world of buying amd in the future selling cars. Unfortunately this is the reality and it's not unique to Ireland or foreigners.

there are plenty of good tips in these forums on how to buy a car. You did the right thing already by asking about it here.
I did not bothered answering todau to this thread as you already put the cartell check and decoded not to go with particular car, but from my own cheat sheet when o am buying a car and what I would do:

Red flags everywhere:

Car is not sold by owner.
No history on newish car.
Buying a 5 year old car in private sale. I wouldn't buy any car over 6k eu in private sale.

Buying a car is just one of the life skills you will need to learn. Just learn how to do it right and find a mechanic for yourself that will check out car before you buying it. Trust me, it will take a ton of bull**** of your shoulders.

colm_mcm

If €35 was cheaper than going to see the car, is it a waste?

goochy

Main dealer with manufacturer backed warranty way to go

grogi

goochy wrote: »

Main dealer with manufacturer backed warranty way to go

Then you're looking for very young cars... Not his budget I'm afraid...

colm_mcm

I think you might need to look at what you can get within budget again. If this was cheaper than all the other ones out there, then you need to consider that the cheap ones aren't usually the good ones.

bmwguy

I went looking at 4 cars recently, all more or less the same model. 1 was in a 2nd hand dealership in Dublin 12 (I know, I know) that sells high end cars the salesman hadn't a clue about the car. The car was polished and sparkling but the bonnet was in sh#te full of stone chips and they said they wouldn't be fixing it for sale. And I mean not a clue he didn't know what size engine is in it (i knew). 2 of them were foreign lads flipping cars from their house pretending it was theirs but it wasn't really, 1 was a decent Irish guy selling his own car which he had looked after and was being honest. So yeah, that's what you are up against.

goochy

A five year old car would be covered under a manufacturer backed used car warranty

colm_mcm

I might be wrong. But perhaps the OPS budget will stretch to a dodgy 5 year old model being sold by a friend of the owner while they're abroad - and not bumper-to-bumper warrantied example with glass palace tax thrown on the top

BrianD3

colm_mcm wrote: »

I might be wrong. But perhaps the OPS budget will stretch to a dodgy 5 year old model being sold by a friend of the owner while they're abroad - and not bumper-to-bumper warrantied example with glass palace tax thrown on the top

grogi wrote:

Then you're looking for very young cars... Not his budget I'm afraid...

He says that he has already offered 7000 for one car so his budget is decent. He can surely get something relatively fresh from an established dealer for that.

Eg 3 year old Dacia Sandero from a main dealer asking price 7500
http://www.carzone.ie/used-cars/dacia/sandero/used-2013-131-dacia-sandero-alternati-mayo-fpa-201314574421969590

dar83

Something decent... Dacia Sandero :pac:

dr.fuzzenstein

baalad wrote: »

Whilst on the subject of cartell. Dont get me wrong , It was 35 quid well spent but what do i do with the other 4 r 5 cars i have an interest in? I could literally spend hundreds just doing cartell checks!

As a guy thats new to all this (first time buyer) i have been completely put off buying a car! The first car i saw was a disaster and the guy was an absolute liar/ con man that completely waisted my day off!! The second car turned out to be crashed previously and again the seller was lying and now today i have noticed that a seller on donedeal that i offered 7000 to last week for a car and he refused the offer is now strangely after reducing his price to 4,500 but when i asked why he will not reply lol

Oddly enough every one of them just so happens to be a foreigner! Besides the point, i will no longer trust anyone on donedeal and ill be damned if iam paying 35 quid time and time again just to learn some liar is trying to make a fool of me.

Anybody selling a car as far as iam concerned should HAVE to produce a cartell report at their own expense and send on a link to the report to any potential buyer let alone donedeal should should allow feedback to be given so others could be warned of these morons!!

Rant over

All good points.
But do you always go for the cheapest car? For example, if there are 5 Ford Focus for sale, would you pick the one that's 1000's cheaper than all the others? If you do, you will end up with the lemon from the scammer.
Make sure the seller is also the owner, ALWAYS, unless you know it's a reputable garage and not a tax-dodging, fly by night cash merchant.
If the seller pretends to be private, but has 10 or more ads up on DD, I wouldn't, unless you can give the car a very good checkup. The reason a lot of people won't meet you at their house (and very loudly protest if asked to do so and come up with a lot of very plausible sounding excuses) is because they most likely are one of those houses with 20 cars parked around it. And the service department is most likely a Lidl trolley jack in the drive.
If you get a car from one of those backyard car emporium sellers and it's good, it's not because the seller is brilliant, but because you managed to pick the one that isn't a dodgy import, crashed, clocked and with porridge in the radiator.
A lot of these are even a step below those popup dealers that occupy a car park with a portacabin and a flashy sign that changes whenever the present owner finally gets banned from trading and signs the company over to his brother/cousin/dog.
Privately from the owner directly (and only if you know it was THAT person who owned the car for a few years) or a reputable garage, inbetween there is a world of crud and deceit.