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My son found a car he wanted to buy in Auckland for $5000. It was being sold by someone who worked at a car yard, but was selling as a private seller.
He arranged for an AA pre-purchase inspection and the report gave him the impression that there wasnt anything of concern being a 2002 Nissan Stagea.
We from Tauranga to go look at the car. We arrived at this car yard it was sitting on - listed as private sale, As is where is.
A drive around the block and my son was happy with it, it looked okay and had just been serviced so he decided to hand over the cash balance.
20 minutes down the motorway, the car cut out and would not start again. The seller was not going to accept liabilty so we decided to deal with it.
AA towed us to the nearest garage, which wasnt even a garage and was in an extremely unsafe place to leave us and a dead car.
I got a second tow to a friends place eventually and towed the car back to Tauranga the next day.
My mechanic got he car started the next day, but it was riddled with fault codes.
If the AA inspection scanned for fault codes, I would not have bought this car and lost another $1000 and counting on repairs.
It seems like we paid $200 for the AA inspection for them to just take photos of the car and it took the inspector two hours to do it.
Personally, I am disgusted that the Inspection did not cover scanning for faults as its the first thing any good mechanic would do to diagnose.
1. Should we get our money refunded on the AA inspection?
2. Is there any way of claiming compensation from the seller of the car as it was obvious to us (now) that he knew it was a lemon.
Hi thanks for getting in touch with us.
The AA run a robust feedback system that can investigate this matter further for you, I suggest calling our PPI team to complete a customer feedback form on 0800 500 333 option (1), so that this matter can be addressed appropriately.
I have discussed and forwarded your correspondence to our manager.
Thanks. I will.
To further complicate things, we had to replace the brakes and a headlight on the car as they were clearly unsafe and not up to WOF condition, despite the car having a current WOF.
The car is currently broken-down again.