Consumer Rights Act 2015 – A Strange Case
Friday, 5. August 2016
I have been reading one of the first cases I have seen that put the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to the test. I won’t go into the fine detail but a customer bought a 10 year old used car from a dealer. A short while after buying the car a light appeared on the dashboard.
The client called the dealer and complained, in turn the dealer told the driver to either bring the car back for them to inspect or call out the emergency roadside assistance, provided with the car. The client did neither and continued to drive the car whilst the dealer tried on 3 occasions to contact the customer. The driver then decided to exercise his rights to reject the car under the new Act, the dealer refused to accept the rejection and the case went to court.
Now clearly the driver did all the wrong things and it was found that the car needed a faulty crankshaft sensor replaced costing £49.69 but my real problem with this case is: when is a car considered to be of Unsatisfactory Quality? And the final statement from the dealer’s lawyers threw doubt on the decision.
First of all having a warning light appear on the dashboard for something more than low oil or water would cause me immediate concern. And whilst the diagnosis was that a faulty sensor needed replacing is this enough to reject the car? We all tend to suffer from the fear that when something goes wrong on a car – could this be the start of a string of faults? I have never heard of a crankshaft sensor, let alone one that goes faulty.
And simply replacing the sensor without stripping down the engine to check the crankshaft would worry me greatly and I would most certainly want to reject it. Added to which this is what the lawyer said at the end of the case: ‘The final element was that any damage which is caused by the claimant’s own negligence is not something the trader is liable for.’
I could understand that statement if the problem wasn’t the sensor but the crankshaft itself but they claimed the fault was just a faulty sensor which wouldn’t cause secondary damage to the car. So why make the statement, was the damage more than just a faulty sensor and there was a cover up going on?
The case is over but it has left a bad taste in my mouth and it tastes like a load of bull’s droppings. Not that I’ve tasted bull’s droppings but you know what I mean! By Graham Hill
