I Like to think I am a little savvy when it comes to buying things, I haggle, I barter and I even take the opportunity to walk away from buying something when it doesn't feel right.
I made a massive mistake and I think I must have screwed my stupid head on that day.
Two weeks ago I found out from the garage that my car was going to fail it's MOT, it would need £500 sent on it to make it back on to the road again.
I had to think fast and this is where my error came into play, thinking fast is never a good thing when it comes to cars.
I had a choice, wait for my mum to come home from a holiday and have no car, sell the car that I had and get something else or even swap it.
I decided to see what was around and about for swaps and came across something that fitted my needs, it is a 7 seater Mpv zafira 1.6.
The add read,
It has done 114,000 miles, has 6 months MOT and is in good working order.
I contacted the guy who called himself david.
My wife and I travelled to Doncaster to see the car, it was a private sale and he sent me his house address and when we arrived we waited and hour for the guy to turn up in the car.
Now when the car pulled up, he showed me around it, and it turned out his name wasn't david, the car had a few little issues but for the age it wasn't much.
I took it for a little run and while we drove around I said to the guy that it sounded a little loud, he told me it had a bad boy exhaust on it.
I decided to go a head with the sale.
What a dickhead I was.
We signed the papers and got on our way as now we were running late for the school run and the kids needed picking up.
I noticed that there wasn't much power in the car but for it's size and littre I didn't really take much thought to it.
It wasn't until I picked the kids up and got home that my neighbour pointed something out to me.
Where is the exhaust?
Yep the noise and loss in power was because there was no exhaust on the car, it had been removed.
then at a closer look at the car, it turned out this car had done 151,000 miles on the clock and its a petrol car.
I went online and found out that the MOT is due in 3 months and not 6, things started to add up pretty quickly and I was worried.
I messaged the guy to find out what was going on with the car, he didn't reply, I messaged him again asking where the back box to the exhaust was, and again - nothing.
I was screwed over, big time.
Blocked
He has now blocked me and I can't get hold of him to sort out these problems and there seemed like there was nothing I could do.
Until my wife's uncle got involved.
He told me what to do and has given me a phone number to ring, which I have to do on Monday, this involves going down the correct roots and contacting trading standards.
There isn't much they can do as this was a private sale, but we have found out of other people by doing a little digging that he is a car dealer and often gets cars in as part ex and sells them on the side.
I feel a fool, I shouldn't have jumped into the sale as quick as I did and I feel really done over and that is what is playing on my mind right now, normally no one gets the better over me, it must just have been a bad day.