Good afternoonI bought a second hand car...

Asked by Andre on 02-05-2024 13:50:09
Question posted in the General Law category relating to Gauteng

Good afternoon

I bought a second hand car on Friday from a dealership.  I then took the car in this morning for a service and a check.

The garage phoned and said that the CV joints and ball joints need to be replaced.

I am still waiting for the registration papers.  The seller said I could take the car on Friday as I paid cash.

The seller phoned earlier on today to inform me that the registration papers will be ready tomorrow.  I told him of the issue and he said the car is not under guarantee.  My question is how could they get a roadworthy certificate?

Please tell me who is responsible for this cost that amounts to R16000.

Regards

Andre

Message from the Lawyer

Posted by Att. Patrick on 03-05-2024 09:01:56

Hi there and thank you for your question,

I am a practicing attorney based in South Africa and I will assist you with your question. Please feel free to ask as many follow up questions in order to clarify your question. If you have a new question, you must please open a new thread.

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Did the dealer specifically tell you that the car was in a roadworthy condition when you bought it?

Message from the client

Yes. They said that they would provide the roadworthy certificate.

Message from the Lawyer

Posted by Att. Patrick on 03-05-2024 11:21:21

So if part of the sales agreement was that you would pay XXXX for the car and they would deliver the car to you with a roadworthy certificate, then they need to do that. If this means that they need to pay for repairs to the car so they can get a roadworthy certificate to give to you, then they must pay for those repairs. 

The only real question would be what repairs are absolutely necessary for the issuing of the roadworthy certificate, and what repairs are not actually needed to get the roadworthy certificate. 

Because they will only want to pay for the repairs which are absolutely required to get a roadworthy certificate. They won't want to pay for other repairs which are not absolutely required to get a roadworthy certificate.

My advice is to speak to the roadworthy people to ascertain which repairs are necessary and which are not, then speak to the dealer and say that he must pay for the first category of repairs and you will pay the balance. 

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