Interesting story... advice needed!

[Sken_80]

Hi guys!

 

I am new to the Octavia, having just purchased one. I am posting this as I would like as many opinion as possible.... once you read the curious story of my Ocatvia Purchase below:

 

 

- Octavia MK2 2009 Facelift, 123000 miles, 1.9 TD PD engine.

 

- The car was bought on Ebay, the seller being the "reputable" Subaru dealer in South Woodford, East London, with good 100+ feedback on second hand car sales.

 

- I won the car for £5133... went to collect it, noticed the interior was quite a bit more scuffed up than described, dealer offered £600 discount... bought car for £4500 an happily drove home.

 

- The day after: took car to local mechanic to re-assess and confirm purchase. Mechanic quickly drove it, said it drives ok, then spotted potential problem with flywheel. When starting to press the pedal I can feel some thumping on my foot, that disappears when pedal is fully pressed or depressed. is this normal? Should I be concerned the flywheel needs doing soon?

 

- The dealer then asked me to look at service history. BIG SURPRISE! It turns out it's most likely fake. The same hand wrote all the numbers, no trace of the dealer ID on the stamp (made up stamp???). No record on the Skoda Electronic system of any service carried out for that car. Service history pictures attached FYC

 

- I phone up the dealer and complain about that, he says he has no idea and can't trace the service centre either. 

 

- More discoveries: Upon another inspection to the car I notice a sticker on the side by a company that carried out the "conversion". It turns out the car was a police vehicle. Not a response car but.... a Prison Car so the rear seats were taken off to fit a plastic moulded bench, the rear windows (still) disabled, no mods to the dashboard and no light at the top. No wonders it's got a few rips and scratches on the roof at the back

 

- Phone up the dealer again, asked him to refund and come take his car back. In alternatively I would accept a refund of £1K. the dealer phoned me back after a while with the following option:

 

1) He picks up the car and issue a full refund for the price paid

 

2) He will refund the £1K on the condition that I will write a letter/email stating that should I find anything else wrong with the car he is clear of all responsibilities. 

 

Here are my questions:

 

... bearing in mind the car would have been )more or less) serviced while being with the police, and the fact that I do like the car (it looks great from the outside and on the inside it's not too bad, a couple of rips but nothing major)

 

1) What major thing could possibly go wrong with the car considering it drives pretty well right now and fuel consumption is great?

 

2) Should I accept the £1K back and take it in for a major service (£700 at skoda main dealer for the following). That would be for Oil, Air and Fuel filters (249) Cambelts (349), water pump (100). Do definitely think all this is necessary or do you recommend anything else? 

 

3) Is there any way to have the above service done cheaper at a local garage or is it best to bring to skoda and fork out the big bucks? Can these car be self serviced at all? I am relatively handy and have quite a few wrenches/tools

 

4) Air con doesn't blow cold air, is it just a matter of re-gassing? how much will this cost?

 

5) I don't suppose anyone knows how they disable the rear windows on police prison cars, and how can these be re-enabled? It seems to be mechanical as when I press the switch it seems like the window wants to open (it makes a little clicking sound)  but it can't

 

Any more feedback, comments and suggestions welcome!

 

Thank you so much for your help, it is absolutely crucial in these situations....

 

Vasken

 

 

 

 

 

[Rob_Quads]

Personally I would get rid. If they have faked the service history then you don't know what else has been done to the car. It could have all manner of problems wrong with it. Lets say you take the 1K - sign the deal and then the gear box goes your screwed (that said I wonder how the signed waiver would stand up legally)

 

Item 4 could be another £300/400 down the drain if the compressor has gone which is common. A regas would help show up if thats the problem or not.

Item 5 you need to remove the door card to see what they have done.

Edited 1 July, 2013 by Rob_Quads

[Phil-E]

Walk away....

 

Even with 1k discount a new flywheel and A/C compressor would more than wipe that out.

 

Plenty of other good examples for that money so don't feel you have to stick with this one.

 

Phil

[Gti Jazz Blue]

I'd walk as well if it was me.

[DGW]

Walk away and start looking again for a good one.

[Aspman]

Walk away and start looking again for a good one.

 

If you've lost confidence in the car already take his offer and walk.

I suppose it's a bit of a moot point with that mileage but if you came to sell it on or trade it in any buyer might become suspicious for the same reasons you have and make it a hard sell.

[Sken_80]

Thank you so much for the prompt replies guys, much appreciated!

 

I do understand that the easiest thing would be to take the car back and walk away... however there are a couple of things to consider:

 

- the car does drive (accelerate, steers, breaks) really well.

 

- it has long tax and long MOT (issued by the dealer where I bought it...)

 

- judging from the forums I read, a lot of Octavias do develop faults like flywheel, aircon etc even if they are genuine models with full service etc.

 

- this car will have been serviced by the police, I'd be surprised if any police cars wouldn't get proper service

 

 

I phoned a local mechanic who offered to do a full roadworthiness test and VAG diagnosis, and confirm weather the car needs just re-gassing or a new compressor tomorrow afternoon.

 

Don't you think it's worth to do this before deciding to take the car back? I think if I bought  the car for £3500 (it's the 2009 facelift model) it would be a great price as they usually go for 6K+

 

Any thoughts?

 

Cheers,

 

Vasken

Edited 1 July, 2013 by Sken_80

[Ootohere]

Welcome to the forum.

 

My advice.

(mostly best ignored.)

 

Take your advice from people that know you and you know and not from faceless people on the internet.

You have a trained mechanic to hand and the vehicle, get real inspections and advice not virtual advice.

 

all the best.

george

[mikey vrs]

Id let your mechanic check the car over & see what he finds,get a quote for the aircon,cambelt,flywheel & clutch & service etc,i wouldnt use a skoda dealer for this,£3500 may sound cheap but this car would sell at auction for a lot less as it has no service history etc,if your happy with the car & can get the repairs done for a good price & intend to keep the car until its worth nothing but scrap then keep it,me personally would get my money back & buy something else.

[hannakournikova]

Take the 1k and drive away at it.

Im in a similar position. Ex police 2.0 BKD octavia estate.

Cost a lot less than comparable models and money saved incase something goes wrong.

You might find that the stamps were done by the service dept within the police?

mine came with 100k miles, unused spare key, new car smell and a noisey turbo and not 1 entry into the service book as the PSNI have their own fleet records (none of which are available to the public)

[Sken_80]

Thanks George, 

 

I do appreciate your advice but disagree with part of it. 

 

People I know know as much about cars as we know about women makeup

 

I highly rate the opinion of members of this forum as long as we don't go off topic.... everybody here drives a skoda, it's true that without seeing the car one can only give an guessed opinion... but it's still an opinion I highly regard for the above reasons.

 

I'll evaluate this, together with the mechanic opinion... and hopefully make the best decision!

 

Thanks for confirming that getting a proper inspection is the next step top take, I've booked it in for tomorrow morning

 

Cheers

 

vasken

 

Welcome to the forum.

 

My advice.

(mostly best ignored.)

 

Take your advice from people that know you and you know and not from faceless people on the internet.

You have a trained mechanic to hand and the vehicle, get real inspections and advice not virtual advice.

 

all the best.

george

[skodanorman]

I think I'd be tempted to walk away. There are many other examples out there and tthese cars are expensive and complicated when they start to.go.wrong.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

[mikey vrs]

A skoda dealer would not change the air filter & fuel filter at 17,000miles so id say that service book is a fake,have you asked a skoda dealer if that dealer i.d number is a genuine one?

[Sken_80]

Thanks Mikey, 

yes I'd definitely say the service history has been made up. Dealer stamp i.d. does not come up. However as I said, being ex Police it would have been serviced by the police. Then whoever bought it in February 2013 (the guy that gave it in as part exchange to the Subaru Dealer) had the great idea of making up this service history.

 

Alternatively the dealer made it up himself. Either way the car would have been serviced by the police.

 

It drives great, my only concerns are:

 

- Flywheel / slight beating on the clutch pedal only when you start pressing the clutch... maybe it has thousands of miles left in it if driven properly?

- Aircon - if the comp is gone it's expensive.... I might consider keeping it without aircon, once the summer's gone it's not really needed I suppose?

- Turbo / is there a way of checking if this is working perfectly or not? When would it make noises on accelerating I supposes? And what would the noises be like, whistles/whines? 

 

As I said, bodywork outside is close to excellent (looks brand new) and I forgot to say it's the estate SE model....

 

Thanks again for the advices, keep them coming as they really help with the decision

[DGW]

Assuming that the car has a full service history and knowing that it has are two completely different scenarios - and unfortunately there is no evidence to support the latter. Skoda UK will be able to confirm who the Skoda Authorised Service and Repair agent with the Dealer ID 847874 is or was.

P.S. I would have thought that time is of the essence if you intend rejecting the car.

[Sken_80]

I already phoned up Skoda UK, no track of Dealer ID 847874 and no record of that car being previously serviced by Skoda. But that's not a massive issue as police service their cars regularly and using their own internal mechanics.

 

So I do know that the car has been serviced regularly, maybe not exactly as recommended by Skoda, but nevertheless regularly.

 

About future services, is there a way to do these ourselves or does the car have to go into a dealer every time? I was thinking of doing fluid & filters myself, and have the dealer do the belts. Am I daydreaming?

[Gti Jazz Blue]

Personally I would walk away as you have no record of any service history at all.

 

You are just assuming as it was run as a prison transfer car that it was regularly serviced.

 

The fact that someone has tried to pass it off with a fake service history would be enough for me.

[pipsyp]

If ex police would have been serviced by them would never had seen a Skoda dealership unless it had to go back for a recall or something.

Its probably an honest car but being ex police it'll have had quite a hard life. I wouldnt buy an ex police car but everyones different....probably fair to say the mechanical work its had done to it over the years wouldnt be substandard though; would have been maintained no expense spared.....until they decided to get shot of course

[flat-eric]

Grab yourself a 07 (ish) VRS 2.0Tdi with around 100k for sub 5k now......

Its a no brainer to me.

[Eddie-NL]

you should do what you think best

 

a facelift car for £3.5k

 

you won't find another, you can't expect a minter for that price

 

salvage wrecks fetch more

[kevberlin]

Plenty of good cars out there in the market place. Cars you can trust too!

[Sken_80]

Thanks for all the advice, it really helps!

It appears that the majority of people would just return the car to be on the safe side. Apparently ex police cars, when bought completely blindly at auctions, sell for about a third of the market value... I wouldn't call this one a blind buy as I got a chance to test it and see that it drives well... and bring it to the mechanic too... so I'll see what the mechanic says. If he confirms the car is spot on I'll probably keep it and use it, otherwise I'll return it and get a refund. 

One point is how much better is the facelift 2009 model compared to the pre-face lift 2005 version? 

Thanks again for all your help!

Vasken

[pipsyp]

Thanks for all the advice, it really helps!

It appears that the majority of people would just return the car to be on the safe side. Apparently ex police cars, when bought completely blindly at auctions, sell for about a third of the market value... I wouldn't call this one a blind buy as I got a chance to test it and see that it drives well... and bring it to the mechanic too... so I'll see what the mechanic says. If he confirms the car is spot on I'll probably keep it and use it, otherwise I'll return it and get a refund.

One point is how much better is the facelift 2009 model compared to the pre-face lift 2005 version?

Thanks again for all your help!

Vasken

you'd no doubt get a better pre FL car for the money.

[thehulkster699]

I would walk away with a refund buddy. Honest.

[booke23]

For what it's worth, I think I'd walk away.

 

It's done 123,000 miles in 4 years, so what ever way you cut it, it's had a hard life. Presumably all non motorway miles, and I'm sure there have been a lot of toe rags wrestled into and out of the back of it. I wonder how many times some said toe rag had relieved themselves in the back of it  :think:

 

Perhaps the best way to solve this dilemma is to ask yourself this......If you knew the car was an ex prison car (with all the foibles you mention) before you bought it......would you have paid £3500 for it?.....Or would you have even bought it at all?