What’s more surprising is the number of non car people who never take my advice ( or anybody’s) and buy sh1tters for all the money , apparently I know nothing
It's hard to sympathise with someone who despite warnings of rust on first MOT couldn't be bothered to bend down and take a look/enquire further/ask for an estimate. Presumably they spent the £20k also without bothering to look at it properly thinking the price would lift them clear of such worries...which it should?
spent a bunch of money without having any idea what they were buying or how to maintain, ignored rust warnings, unsurprisingly got worse - no sympathy really what gets my goat is that so many in society today want to look to someone else to blame - do i have a case, can i go after the seller (after two years ffs!) no-one told us etc - always someone else's fault. grrr.
A fool and their money....? Firstly £20k for a T4? Well maybe I guess. They enjoy it for a year, take it for an MoT, it passes but they are (presumably advised) "told about some rust underneath" but choose to do nothing about it? They use it for yet another year with no mention of any mechanical issues etc but at the following MoT, surprise, it fails on what was advised the previous year. Now they want compensation from the company that sold it 2 years earlier! They then go on to say they've been quoted "about £4000" to have it put right but were also told it's "not worth repairing"??? Doesn't add up, surely if it were worth £20k 2 years previous, in good nick it'd still be worth at least that now? I reckon a lot of Bay owners would consider £4k to resolve all of their rust issues a bargain!
My favourite: Rust : “does it evaporate on its own accord” Well yes, more or less - then you’re left with a hole where metal used to be.
Perhaps they have yet to learn both to laugh at themselves and their mistakes and to take responsibilty for them. Buying a rust heap should educate them in those simple life skills if neccessary? Crikey, the number of times I've been the victim of my own misjudgement I'd be insane if I couldn't at least to myself. I bought my first for £3.5k, spent another £3.5k on it, gave it a good hard think, sold it for £700 and bought a good one. I bet they'll look harder if they get another.
They are always the best bit of Guardian stories! Personally, I just think the garage that quoted where quoting “we don’t want the job” money... also, if your first port of call in their situation, is to write a whingey letter to the Guardian, then there really is no hope
We do live in very strange times though. There are people who see cars on Autotrader and click to reserve and place a deposit without actually seeing the vehicle- how mental is that!!! But I understand that this is fairly common place. Of course the cars are generally newer and will have less risk, and I also understand that dealers now are under more pressure to sell sound vehicles as there is more comeback on them / web reviews are also important etc So if you’re used to that way of buying, then you step to the left and buy an older campervan you could expect, naively, for similar protection? Two different worlds though
When I was a camper fixer there was a steady stream of enquiries from people needing welding underneath. They knew because they had failed an MOT but even then had kept their 100% record of not actually looking themselves, after all as one said "What would be the point? I wouldn't know what I'm looking at."
Quite a few comments in before someone mentioned Brexit. Gotta love the Guardian. It has been resolved apparently, as someone’s pointed out to the Guardianistas that rust is in fact completely organic
The demise of the local car trader doesn't help, neither does the rise of the multi trader compounds that we have in the south east - consisting of several 'associates' all trading out of one large compound, with no screen prices or way of telling who is selling what. On top of that you have a generation of new drivers with money to burn and no interest in car mechanics and maintenance. It's a spiv's paradise.
These folks with 'money to burn' and no brain deserve what they get. Its not just vans and cars, same applies to buying houses it seems. A while back I mentioned the new builds near me being 'built' on part of the old deep landfill site. Some rich folks from London decided to move into the countryside and paid £1 million for their new bling homes seemingly doing little in the way of searches only to now learn that their houses are on landfill and the wonderful forest around them is in fact 22 acres of more landfill with a planning application for 159 houses ongoing since 2017 and likely to be approved shortly. Instead of accepting they messed up and failed to check the place out properly, they are all looking to sue, but who to sue? The planning applications for their homes and the proposed landfill development around them are on the Wealden website for all to view and scrutinise, so a quick search would have shown the issues. I was amused to learn a couple of solicitors bought one of those £1 million homes, so what's their excuse and they are also complaining about the old public footpath going past their front door. which they told me they knew nothing about.
