Dealer selling on behalf of owner

lalipule

Hi all,
I have a question. I'm looking for a car and possibly found the one. However on dealer site there is a note "selling on behalf of the owner". Would you be able to explain what does it mean for me. Will I have trouble with getting warranty from the dealer if something goes wrong with the car? Should I pull off and look for another car, or it's normal in some cases?

Atlantic Dawn

Might be genuine or a case of the dealer simply not wanting to provide any warranty for a car that has been traded in to them, either way you will get no new warranty from the dealer.

bazz26

Usually how this works as I understand it, is that owner is probably a regular customer of the dealers but either the dealer cannot match the trade-in value of what the customer expects or thinks they can get for their car. The dealer may offer to sell the car on their forecourt on behalf of their customer for a commission. This commission may or may not cover the cost of a warranty that a dealer may offer the new buyer on the car.

You need to clarification from the dealer around warranty, if they are not giving a warranty and selling it directly for the owner then why bother buying it through the dealer at all, just buy it from the owner and save you and the owner money from the dealer's commission. My guess is that the dealer will offer a warranty on it to make it worth their while being involved in the sale at all though.

JoeA3

I've seen it a few times, usually relatively new (<2 years old) cars. Likely scenario is - customer needs to offload the car quickly and doesn't want another one (e.g. emigrating / lost job) and cars that are that new are very difficult to sell privately, so they approach the dealer they bought it off in the first place to help them out.
If the car is < 3 years old you'll have the balance of the manufacturer's warranty at the very least.