Victoria T

2018 (68 plate) Red Kia Sportage

1) Despite phoning ahead, engine wouldn’t start on arrival to view. They said this was because it hadn’t been started in so long because of lockdown. 2) Smelled strongly of cigarette smoke on viewing. Car was backed up against fence so unable to view the back of the car. 3) Took for a short test drive up Caerphilly mountain and back again. Agreed a sale which included terms to fix or replace the battery, thorough reclean/valet, an extra key to be provided as was being sold with one key. 4) Collected the car 5 days later, arrived to see salesman hosing off the car which indicated clean never done. Surely enough, inside the car still smelled strongly of smoke. Literally empty fuel tank. They later admitted that they never recleaned the car. Took us 4 hours to clean ourselves. No-one called to arrange new key replacement as promised. Car was backed up against showroom on collection. 5) As we’re in lockdown, had very little chance to drive the car other than one or two trips to the supermarket. After a week of ownership, car was driven a longer distance which was when we noticed what we thought was clutch judder. But the car was only 2 years old, didn’t seem right. 6) After 11 days of ownership, had chance to thoroughly clean the car. At this point, we noticed severe damage to the back bumper and drivers side brake light. The light had water ingress and when pressed, came completely away from the bumper. As bumpers are designed to absorb shock, the force with which this must have been hit was clearly enough to merit this being classed as accident damage. This was never disclosed to us at any point. 7) We called the garage and left two messages. No response after 2 days, which to be fair was understandable given it was the Christmas period. We decided it best to put everything in writing. Emailed to explain that we had found accident damage on the car which had not been disclosed to us during the sales process. We informed them that the car was of unsatisfactory quality and so under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 we were entitled to reject the car, within the short-term rejection period of 30 days. We also informed them that it had been their responsibility to disclose the damage, by virtue of the Customer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations Act 2008. We asked to return the car and get a full refund, and to be reimbursed for the petrol still in the car. We had a response the same day asking for photos of the damage. We sent these photos immediately and at this point also mentioned the clutch judder. 8) A few days later we had an email response from the garage stating that they had looked into it and it wasn’t on their initial inspection log, and because we didn’t pick up the damage at point of sale, and they’d checked their original pictures and couldn’t see any damage, then they ‘couldn’t confirm when the damage occurred’. Luckily for us, we had screenshot the entire advert, and once you knew the damage was there, if you checked their pictures, you could actually see the damage. We sent their own pictures back to them to prove it was there before purchase, they started to claim that it was ‘cosmetic damage’ only. Initially they denied it was even there at sale, then they are trying to blame us, then they are making the claim that it was cosmetic damage without seeing it for themselves?! 9) Once presented with their own photographic evidence that the problem was there before we bought it, they glossed over this without acknowledging their mistake or any hint of apology for insinuating that we had caused this damage, and moved on to state that the clutch judder couldn’t have been there when sold because they hadn’t picked it up when they did a road test, and we didn’t pick it up when we test drove it. 10) We pointed out that the car had done over 28,000 miles when we bought it from them, and had done less than 100 miles in the 2 weeks since we had owned it, so to suggest that the clutch would develop a fault in the time since we bought it was ridiculous. We arranged for an independent mechanic to inspect the vehicle a few days later and advised Pinetree that we would be submitting a report. 11) They responded to say that they didn’t have to, but agreed to collect the vehicle and provide us with a full refund. They said this would be done the next day. 12) Someone came to collect the car the next day but we couldn’t get hold of the office for the refund. 13) The following day we had an email to say that they had inspected the car and driven it themselves and there was nothing wrong with it. They claimed the only reason we wanted to return the car was ‘buyers remorse’, but agreed to refund us anyway. They effectively had prevented us from getting the car inspected privately so that we would not be able to prove them wrong. They also would not refund us a reasonable amount for the fuel. We had put £67 of fuel in and had driven 79 miles. Online fuel calculators suggested £8-11 for this journey. We asked for £55 back to be reasonable and they gave us £50. No way did 79 miles use £17 of fuel!!! We even sent them a picture of the fuel gauge showing that it had barely come down from full. 14) In short, Pinetree Cars failed in their duty to notify us of damage and a fault with a vehicle we bought from them, didn’t carry out agreed work before pickup, tried to claim that we caused damage to the bumper and brake light, and when proven wrong, inferred we had caused a faulty clutch as well (within 2 week of owning the car and driving it less than 80 miles). They then prevented us from proving the issues were present at sale and had the gall to suggest that there was nothing wrong with the car and that we were just experiencing "buyers remorse" when we notified them we were rejecting it. We informed them of their duty to disclose the damage and the fault to a buyer before sale, but at no point did they acknowledge that they were obliged to do this. We experienced unfair sales practices and poor aftersales care in our dealings with them. 15) The salesman asked us to leave a review – so we are!!