Interested to get some perspectives on a situation I’m in. I’m in Australia and I bought a 2010 Octavia 1.8T mid last year from a dealer. The sale was through Gumtree, and in the initial contact I confirmed that the seller was a licensed dealer and that was the reason he was selling the car. The dealer was selling the car from his home as he was in the process of finishing up selling cars and moving onto another career, but his name was still registered on the Motor Trader’s license database, so I wasn’t concerned.

Within days of purchasing, I noticed a lot of smoke coming from the exhaust under deceleration. Tests with Skoda eventually confirmed the well-documented oil scraper ring issue affecting the engine and high oil consumption. $10,000 quote to fix. Initiated returning the car to the dealer under my statutory rights, he didn’t accept it as he claimed he sold it to me not under his dealer’s license. The dealer did insist in ‘taking care’ of the admin side of it prior to purchase, but as I haven’t bought a car before, I didn’t fully understand what paperwork I required (in hindsight I was a bit naïve on this front).
 

I opened a case for compensation through the Office of Fair Trading which took about 3 months but this was ultimately unsuccessful. They found that there was evidence to support my allegations of the dealer misleading me, but they couldn’t rule on it definitively due to some details around the legislation and their jurisdiction that’s not really worth getting into here. My next option is the small claims court (QCAT), and I feel like I have a fairly strong case. I’ve actually sought legal advice before I go ahead with QCAT, but the advice is taking a long time to come back, so in the meantime I thought I’d see what this forum thought. Obviously not looking for any overly informed legal views, but keen to get some views on the matter as a sense check more than anything. Thanks.
 

Edited 25 March, 20197 yr by TGP

I reckon you are up for a lot of pain, wasted time and hardship with ultimate failure.  

 

You get a lot of joy here as the bulk of members are from the motherland with slightly different rules.

 

You are probably better off pursuing VW as it's their POS engine that's the issue