Toyota Assured Used Cars: reliable?

Bricriu

A lot of Toyota garages have a quality label called Assured Used Cars.

As a buying customer, can I be fairly certain that a second-hand car I would buy from a garage that had that that label would have been thoroughly checked out by the garage when it bought it?

I've tried to get info about this label, with no success.

NIMAN

Other manufacturers have similar schemes.

I would assume any cars they would sell would be thoroughly checked over, hardly in their interest to be selling potentially bad cars to customers.

One way to be sure, what warranty are they offering with it. If its long, you can be sure they don't want to be repairing bad cars under warranty.

bazz26

You still need to use common sense and do your own basic checks. It's a lot easier to get a dealer to fix things when you hand over money than afterwards. In saying that the Toyota used car warranty would probably be one of the safer ones out there but take nothing for granted.

NIMAN

bazz, do you think many people would run a history check on a car if it was being sold by a reputable, long established dealer?

I think most people would trust them.

bazz26

Depends on how much value people put into them. Some people will happily spend 20k on a used car but have to think twice about spending €30 on a history report. It's not unheard of garages getting caught out themselves either when they take a trade-in.

In saying that an online history report is not the be all and end all to a car's history. There are plenty of other ways of doing background checks like ringing the garages that stamped the service history, talking with it's previous owner, etc. An online car history report can be very useful in piecing together information around the car and vice versa around ringing garages that serviced it.

NIMAN

Of course, but I think most people would assume that major dealers would do all the necessary checks before they accept a car, thats why I would probably not spend €35 myself if I was buying from a main dealer. Smaller dealers, yes of course, but not main ones.

bazz26

The risk is probably lower with well established reputable dealers but you know what they say about assumptions.

colm_mcm

The Toyota assured cars and Toyota dealer cover warranty are as good as you'll get. The warranty is very comprehensive.