Raw Deal: When you buy a year-old car … only to find out hundreds of drivers may have already used it

WHEN mum-of-two Sarah-Jane McMurray went shopping for a new car it was reliability she made her number one priority.

The staff nurse with NHS Tayside sometimes finishes shifts late at night and the last thing she wants is an unreliable motor breaking down and leaving her in the lurch.

She traded in her old car for a Fiat 500X Cross with just 9000 miles on the clock and a 2016 registration last July.

She was initially delighted with the service she got at Arnold Clark’s Fiat branch in Perth.

Staff were instrumental in persuading her the affordable SUV was the car for her, she says.

Three days later she excitedly went back to pick up her shiny new vehicle.

But Sarah-Jane, 39, of Dundee, was dismayed when she got it home.

She says the back seats of the car were not fitted properly and loose – not great for a mum with an 11-year-old daughter, Ellis, and seven-year-old son, Ben.

She also says the car’s aerial was missing, and the air conditioning didn’t work. In short, she feared she had been sold a bit of a dud so took it back.

When she contacted the dealership they agreed to sort out the issues she’d found and she got the car back. All seemed to be fine…..until six weeks later in September. That’s when the battery mysteriously went dead.

The garage arranged for the AA to come out and restart it. Worryingly, the AA specialist couldn’t find the fault and Sarah-Jane was concerned it would happen again.

And it did … at the start of November. Growing increasingly annoyed, Sarah-Jane phoned the garage to make a complaint but feels she was fobbed off with another visit from the AA. This time their expert said he was sure there was a fault with the battery, which would continue to cause problems until it was fixed.

He also said the handbrake needed fixing, too – which was news to Sarah-Jane. She hadn’t even been aware anything was wrong with it in the first place! It led Sarah-Jane to launch her own probe into the faults.

Why was so much going wrong with a car with such low mileage?

Well, she had a theory.

Studying the small print of her contract, Sarah-Jane noticed that, while the car only had one previous owner, that owner was actually a car hire company!

It meant, Sarah-Jane reckoned, potentially hundreds of people had driven the car.

And some might not have treated it like they would their own.

The revelation led to Sarah-Jane asking Arnold Clark for a replacement. Staff agreed to give her a new car – but said she’d need to trade it in at her own expense.

Sarah-Jane calculated it would cost her at least £1000, a sum which she was unhappy to shell out.

Got a consumer problem? The Sunday Post’s Raw Deal team can help

But the garage wouldn’t back down and Sarah-Jane wrote to us in the hope Raw Deal could direct her out of the tricky crossroads.

We’ve now helped drive a deal between Sarah-Jane and the company.

And she’s delighted with the brand new Fiat 500X she has now acquired with only a small increase in payments.

She said: “I am very pleased with the result and want to thank Raw Deal.

“Initially I was told I could trade the first car but would lose out financially as they would not give me the same as I paid.

“After Raw Deal got involved I was able to hand the car back and they cleared the finance for me and I was effectively able to start again.

“I purchased a new Fiat 500X paying almost the same monthly payment as the old car, albeit I now have a brand new car rather than a year-old one.

“I’d urge everyone to check the owner history of the car and whether a car hire firm has owned it before they buy.”

Arnold Clark insist they never hid the fact the vehicle was previously owned by a car hire firm.

A spokesperson said: “We are happy that Ms McMurray is pleased with the final outcome and wish her all the best in her new vehicle.”