A legal opinion on the circumstances wou...

Asked by the Customer on 19-07-2019 09:48:04
Question posted in the Consumer Protection Law category relating to Western Cape

A legal opinion on the circumstances would be appreciated.

I purchased a 2nd hand vehicle about a year ago. (July 2018)

Within days of delivery the vehicle revealed issues which were immediately reported to the dealership.

The vehicle was scheduled for workshop on three occasions (for two weeks and longer at a time) between July and September without being able to resolve the issue.

At this stage the dealership acknowledged that the fault was not being resolved and committed to replacing the vehicle with a suitable alternative.

We corresponded regularly but no suitable replacement was forthcoming.

After a year, they have now changed their commitment to swap the vehicle to trading in the defective vehicle at trade value.

This after I’ve paid a hefty deposit as well as a year’s finance instalments.

Needless to say, this is not a fair compromise in my opinion.

Raising this with them, they’ve attempted another workshop remedy (another two weeks) without success with the problem surfacing on the same day the vehicle was returned. (4 June 2019)

The vehicle was again taken into workshop on 1 July 2019 and remains there.

So during the year, I’ve been without the vehicle for almost 3 months.

Question: do I have any alternative action worth pursuing given the commitments made, or am I at the mercy of the dealership.?

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