About a month ago, I bought a vehicle from a dealership 2 hours away from my house. They claimed it had passed a rigorous 170-point inspection.
A few minutes after purchasing, on the drive home, I noticed a star crack in the windshield (not noticed earlier because it was raining on the day of purchase, and the crack was harder to see on a rain-spattered windshield). I wrote to them asking whether it had been sealed, and they reassured me that all windshield cracks were repaired in preparation for resale. Repeated requests for verification were unanswered for nearly a month.
Two weeks after purchasing, the 12V battery died. I took it to the local dealership (with different owners), and they told me the battery was old and needed to be replaced, at a cost of $240. I asked the selling dealership to make this right–part of the inspection was a verification that the battery was healthy. Multiple emails and phone calls went unanswered.
Finally, yesterday I heard back: they told me they would do nothing about the battery, and that they could find no record of having repaired the windshield. They said they would send me a check to cover about 15% of the cost of repairing the cracked windshield.
Is this a “buyer beware” situation? Or do I have reasonable remedies? From my perspective, both of these repairs should be covered by the dealership, as I was sold the car with the promise that the battery and windshield were in good shape.
The battery replacement was $240, and the only other time I’ve replaced a star crack it was like $350. An unexpected $600 cost for a car is something I can soak, but not trivially.
That said, if I need to let it go, I certainly can.
I think it depends on how far you want to take it. From their response, it seems clear that the bottom line is you will need to spend money to get any additional compensation from them. They are not going to give it to you without legal “prompting”. I don’t know NC consumer laws and I am not your lawyer, but you would likely need to hire one to get anywhere here. Is it worth the time, effort and money to try to get them to pay? For me, probably not. You may come to a different conclusion, in which case, your first step would probably be to talk to a lawyer.
$350 seems a bit high to repair a star crack, but It’s not totally unreasonable. I had one fixed (filled) about two years ago and I think it was around $140. Of course, I haven’t seen yours and it may be bigger or more extensive. But if it was small enough that the car would pass inspection (I also live in NC), then I could see that they wouldn’t have felt the need to do anything with it.
As far as the battery, I would expect that they checked it out with a few basic tests and it passed. Unlike tires, where you can visibly see the progressive wear, batteries often just up and die. I had that happen last year while I was on a trip. No indication of problems and then it was just non-functional. OTOH, I would have expected them to at least check the age of the battery and make that information available in their inspection report.
Did they provide any sort of warranty on the inspection items?
That seems exceptionally high. Around here, I can get a car battery for €60-100, depending on capacity, and always change them myself, which is easy to do and takes at most 10 minutes.
If it cannot be a Small Claims Court case, I’d let it go. If it can be a Small Claims Court case, I’d think long and hard about whether it’s worth pursuing.
Litigation sucks, and – generally – Goliath beats David (which is why a no attorneys allowed Small Claims Court is the only way I’d even consider seeking redress through the Courts).
And it looks like Small Claims in NC does allow lawyers:
Which virtually guarantees the dealership will bring one. Also see: David v. Goliath.
A friend had something similar happen a few years ago - the dealership claimed certain things had been repaired/replaced on a used car and they hadn’t. They did the same song and dance of unreturned phone calls and emails. But what did work was showing up to the dealership on a busy Saturday afternoon and very loudly talking about how these things weren’t fixed as promised and letting everyone in ear shot know that the dealership won’t call them back, etc. Basically, raised a fuss in front of potential customers. The GM quickly shuffled him off into a side room and cut a check.
YMMV, and I don’t know if a 4 hour round trip is worth it to you for that amount of money.
By the way … in the age of ubiquitous social media, it’s often said that ‘complaining’ on the social media page of the business can pay huge dividends.
So, if they have a FB page, an Instagram account, or similar, you could post something ‘professional’ that could move this ball forward.
Similarly, if they’re Better Business Bureau members, sometimes a BBB complaint greases the skids.
You should have turned around then and gone back to the dealership. Because otherwise the crack could have happened since you bought it.
If they did a 170 point inspection they probably spent less than 30 seconds on each point–so quite unlikely they would have done a battery load (or whatever) test. And lots of us have had the experience of a battery working adequately–and then suddenly not working.
Used car sales are almost always as is. Unless you have some sort of contract that states otherwise, like (if they still do it) the CarMax 30 day warranty, it is certainly an as is sale. Unless there is some sort of fraud, like a rolled back odometer, “you should have gotten your own inspection” is going to be the response to any problems with their 170 point inspection.
As others suggest, you can raise a stink on social media or in person, but it sounds like the $20 check, or whatever, is how much they’ll pay to make you go away. Any legal pursuit is likely to be shot down with “as is, all sales final.”
Also, batteries sure have gotten expensive in the last 10 years or so.
For the windshield was that on the 170 point inspection? You did get a copy, correct? Ultimately most used cars are sold “as is” unless some sort of warranty was in place. Nice that an offer to cover part of the cost was made.
As for the battery. I have had batteries start a vehicle one day, and the next day dead. Being old it may have tested okay with the simple 2 minute test and not the full battery test that takes several hours. What kind of battery did you get? An AGM type plus having it installed at a shop the price would be reasonable.
If you buy a used car from a dealership that claims to have done a “rigorous 170-point inspection,” I would expect some sort of documentation about that inspection, and to have some rights (granted either by the dealership or by law) to reimbursement if anything had been misrepresented on that documentation.
When he finally came through with a response, the salesman sent me a copy of the inspection with the battery check highlighted. It said the battery had 81% health–but ten days later when it died, AAA measure it at something like 17% of health. I didn’t know that batteries could suddenly conk out, so I was very suspicious of the dealer’s claim; knowing that they die erratically, not steadily, makes me less pissed off.
That, coupled with knowing that $350 is really high for sealing a star crack, means I’m chalking this up to a learning experience. I’m still not happy at all that it took so many contacts for me to get an answer from them, but it sounds like I’m not being ripped off.
On the warranty side: it’s still barely under its “bumper-to-bumper warranty.” The salesman repeated that phrase several times during purchase, but when I looked in the fine print, neither window dings nor battery replacements are covered by that warranty.
There are Lemon Laws, NC has one. Usually you have 30 days to return the vehicle if you are not happy with these unexpected issues. You have to be willing to fight the system. If you are otherwise happy with the vehicle you just have to suck it up.
A star crack in the windsheild is usually glued and fixed for free by most insuranse companies, free. Drive it for a month, report it to your insurance, it should by fixed for free. If you are financing the vehicle you must have full coverage so take advantage of that. $350 is for a new windsheild not a crack repair. They usually just do a glue repair free because they do not want the do a full replacement. I am very surprised that the dealer didn’t just fix it. As mentioned above I could fix it for about $20.
A bad battery is one of those things you will feel better about replacing with new anyway, now you have a new battery you can trust for about 5 years.
Depends upon what you want to argue for, but you can just return the vehicle under lemon law and get your money back if you are really unhappy. IMHO neither of these issues is worth fighting about if you are otherwise happy. Both need too be fixed.
How about leaving an honest, and detailed, but critical, online review? With screenshot evidence, perhaps. There’s a good chance the business contacts you and offers to reimburse you in exchange for removing or updating the review. That’s often worth the tradeoff for businesses that rely on online reviews.
They want to play that way? They sound shady, and will probably take advantage of others. Report them to the BBB, and give them negative reviews on Yelp, Facebook, and anywhere else you can think of.
I think I remember reading on other car battery threads here on the SDMB that this is something that has changed over the years: older car batteries tended to fail more gradually than modern ones.
This.