Small Claims Court.....

[Pilch]

Yep the 406 saga is still rumbling!

Now have a court date of Jan 4th.

just wondered if anyone has had to make a claim against anyone and what I actually need to do for before the date etc! This is the first time ive done it and havent got a lot of time to research as I would normally do!

Just want advice and things!

[scotty73]

Have you made the claim or is somebody making a claim against you?

[Pilch]

Im making a claim against a car dealer who sold a clocked car.

It was advertised at 100k miles and had done 145k instead and been used as a taxi.

Found out from the MOT History when i was being lazy one night!

[scotty73]

I remember that now.

You have to wait for the Defendant to file a Defence, a copy of which should be sent to you and the Court should send you an Order with directions on it. Just make sure that you keep an accurate record of everything ready for the hearing

[Pilch]

Right - do i need to prepare evidence and send into court before the hearing?

We filled in forms which stated a brief outline of why i am claiming, he done the same with his defence.....

Just unsure really where i go from here! Got the date and unsure if im to send anything in

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MEWAX:IT was the advert for the car.

just made me laugh with the comment: -

All cars are thoroughly HPI checked for adverse information

Yet that HPI check he sent me was last checked in 2004 - car was clocked on the MOT's in 2008 and he doesnt check the MOT History.....

[scotty73]

Right - do i need to prepare evidence and send into court before the hearing?

We filled in forms which stated a brief outline of why i am claiming, he done the same with his defence.....

Just unsure really where i go from here!

It all depends what the court order stipulates and what they've directed you to do.

I hope you can make some sense of that because until now you've been talking to my wife, if theres anything else just ask and i'll shout your questions down to her dungeon.

[Pilch]

cheers Mrs Scotty

Yeah - Ive got upto that point, the court case got transferred and was due to be heard 31/1/12 but now has been moved forward.

Just unsure what preparation work i need to do and what Im likely to have to say/do etc!

[scotty73]

I was like that for my tribunal mate and still turned up clueless, it sounds like you've got it all covered to the un-educated me I'm surprised the dealer let it get this far he's obviously f*cked up.

[Pilch]

I actually notified him after 10 months that I had an issue with the mileage and which point he didnt help.

Unfortunately I couldnt start court proceedings due to financial circumstances! I actually had to miss rounds of my quad racing I was that skint!

In other letters he calls my action frivolous!

Fact is the ebay add clearly states the car is 100,400 miles and is supposed to be HPI checked.

Office of fair trading guidelines state that a dealer should also check the MOT history of the car and also disclose information. (Also that it was previously used as a taxi and had been altered in some way)

The old thread viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18381

He also stated that I underpaid for the car - i wont start on that one - he advertised the price, I agreed to pay - then told me in the letters I should pay him more as its valued higher.







Just a few snippets of the info!

[scotty73]

He sounds like a cheeky turd who's chanced his luck to me just get your story straight and try to stay calm on the day... Courts can be funny fukas even with spelling and i noticed one straight away on his letter to you and I'm far from literate.

[Pilch]

what i am going to do is to write out a list of things that if i get chance to say in court then I will. At least i have chance to think about it now before the day and i can add too it.

One of my big things i am desperate to say is that the case is about the car being clocked - not the quality which is what he seems to think is the issue. My issue with it is that the car being clocked has affected the cars quality by having a misrepresented age which has meant that issues have occured sooner than you would expect them too.

IE at 100k miles should have less issues than the 143k ? Especially as the use it had recieved previously as a Taxi - previous MOT history shows that it was MOT'ed by a taxi company every 6 months for a period of 2 years or potentially more.

But the amount of times i have wanted to write some very strongly worded things and thought better of it has been unreal, even had people who would go and say hello to him for me but ive said no, its being done legitimately.

Can forsee xmas being a bit crap now I know this is gonna rear its head, so thought start early and try and prepare myself, might even give the court a ring and see what they think i need to do.

[lozz]

dont worry about it,


you will get aletter a notice of Hearing,

Bare in mind, you can be sat in the waiting room with the op so dont loose it if he Mouths off go see one of the court staff they will turf him out,

another thing they do, your case can be listed for say 10oclock and they can move on with another case, so you can end up
waiting there till 4pm or given another date, its all abit of a pita how they work it,

just print off any evidence, ebay add, high light any descriptions where it mentions Mileage or any hpi checks, (reason why you bought the car)
looking at the ebay add, theres no mileage Disclaimer so there fore hes basicly advertised it as genuine miles, thats the way id look at it anyway
you can get a solicitor for advice, your allowed 1hr of there time free of charge,

print off the Receipt you got when you bought the car, (anything you put in writing make sure its in black ink dont use a blue pen )
Make a note on the printed copy, (no mileage disclaimer stated)
you need to also tell them in that no Mileage Disclaimer was Mentioned verbaly nor in the Advertisement,

(Car dealers/traders shouid put a white sticker on the speedo area of the car, this covers them )


Disclaimers
If the accuracy of the odometer reading is in doubt, you must make this clear to prospective customers. This is done usually by the use of disclaimers although they are not a specific legal requirement. Disclaimers are an attempt to remove or negate the description of the mileage given by the odometer to prevent the misleading practice occurring. However, the new requirement to avoid a misleading omission and the 'professional diligence' test significantly questions their use under the new regulations. Some practices, such as generally disclaiming all mileages as 'incorrect' without making any checks, are likely to be prohibited. At best, it may be possible to indicate, using a disclaimer, that you have been unable to verify the mileage.

If it can be shown that a reasonably diligent professional could easily discover that the mileage was higher than shown, then this will also breach the regulations. Once such facts are known, they should be disclosed to avoid a misleading omission.

[Welly]

I think all you can do is go along and be completely honest about the facts. The facts speak for themselves; you found out about the mileage as a layman so why couldn't the 'professional' car salesman have done the same?

Don't lose your rag at all just state what you know and the court will decide. I surmise you may be offered a full refund and return the vehicle (which may be ordered to be crushed?), or you may be offered compensation perhaps but above all else they will be looking closely at the car seller for his wrong doings.

As others have said, and as far as I'm aware these court hearings invariably change at late notice so I wouldn't focus too much on the date yet. I would make up a folder of the evidence you have gathered, put it somewhere safe and don't look at it until the hearing (and try to relax over xmas).

Don't forget it's not YOU at fault here so they won't be grilling you and trying to trip you up over the details etc. in fact you should be praised for seeing this through where others would have let it drop for an easy life.

Best of luck with it and please report back.

[Welly]

Just looked again at the MOT/mileage history above:

March 08 = 128K
June 10 = 84K
Aug 10 = 87K

There's a gap of 27 months between 08 and 10 - why's that? and then it had 2 MOT's within 3 months

[scotty73]

Just looked again at the MOT/mileage history above:

March 08 = 128K
June 10 = 84K
Aug 10 = 87K

There's a gap of 27 months between 08 and 10 - why's that? and then it had 2 MOT's within 3 months

i thought it looked dodgy as f*ck with no mot for two years when i looked last night but didn't catch on to the 2 mot's in 3 (possibly 2) months but it was late and i was on the tablet and it deleted my reply before i could post it so i gave up and turned it off.


I can see why yourself and Lozz have mentioned keeping cool this guy sounds like the type to try and intimidate as a last deffence on the day so he needs to be careful of that...

Personally i think the guy is screwed so get a nice big important looking red folder get all your evidence in it over the weekend and enjoy christmas if indeed you can.