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Buy or lease a new or used car and you’re pretty much guaranteed a 3 year period of fairly low cost motoring, subject to the car of course and your annual mileage. But you have a new car that will have on average maybe 2 services, that can be carried out by a non franchised dealer and maybe a couple of tyres. Compare that with the rocketing costs of Read more »

Years ago, when I always bought used cars, and had a mechanical problem I used to dread going into a garage and explaining the fault because I knew I would be met by a sharp intake of breath by the mechanic and ‘Do you want me to do a quick bodge job or do you want me to sort it out properly?’ After which he would explain the problem in technical Read more »

This is now getting bloody monotonous! Every week I seem to read something about warranty claims that aren’t being honoured by the dealer or manufacturer because the claim has been made just outside the warranty period or mileage. Last week it was the Guardian, this week it’s What Car that have made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end! Read more »

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Following from my previous article there has been much confusion for years about warranties provided on used cars. It has been a much held view that a car warranty is an insurance policy and therefore falls within the control of the Financial Services Act. In other words you have to be a regulated advisor to discuss the product and the product itself Read more »

You know I like to search out great deals for my customers and boy have I found a real Bobby Dazzler for you!! How would you like a car which comes with a free servicing package? Not for just 3 years or even 5 years but 7 years. That’s right, a whole 7 years. Before you look for the Vauxhall style lifetime warranty catch, ie. restricted to 100,000 miles Read more »

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I am very Mr Angry of Sussex. You see I get very frustrated when it comes to poor customer service, not helped by the fact that I’m the UK’s leading authority when it comes to vehicle finance so when I see a so called expert or an authoritative car magazine or national newspaper giving so called advice which is flawed I get bloody furious. Take a Read more »

Knowing what you are doing when it comes to car finance is so important. I know I bang on about it all the time but let me be quite clear if you guess and get it wrong it could end up costing you a fortune. In a recent edition of Auto Express a lady bought a 5 year old Mini Cooper S Convertible for £10,500 from a main dealer under the Cherished Car scheme. On her way home a warning light came on and the ABS cut in when it didn’t need to. Already a clear case of faulty goods. She returned to the Read more »

When is a lifetime warranty not a lifetime warranty? When it’s a Vauxhall it would seem. When Vauxhall announced the warranty to a fanfare of press support other manufacturers that had extended their warranties to 5 years were shocked. But after careful examination it was found that the warranty only applied to the owner of the car and not the car as it only covered the car if it was still owned by the original buyer. So as soon as the car was sold the warranty became null and void. Enter the Read more »

With new car deliveries stretching out all the time and 4 month delivery becoming the norm rather than the exception, many are tempted to go the used car route, often paying over the odds for a car less than 12 months old simply to get a fairly new car. I’ve mentioned the dangers in the past but with so many people being forced to take a used car because their current leased car cannot be extended, it’s worth mentioning the dangers again. I explained that servicing costs increase with age but Read more »

Warranty Direct, the aftermarket warranty provider has calculated the average winter breakdown bill to be £408. When they carried out the exercise they found that the most frequently claimed items were ignition coils, thermostats, fuel injection pumps, and central locking motors. They stated that ignition coils were the most likely of the components to fail in winter with there being a 283% greater chance of failing in the winter than in the summer. The most expensive to fix are automatic torque Read more »