Dealer won't retune deposit and Barclaycard won't help

Michael

Member
Messages
340
Gents,

Last year I placed a £500.00 holding deposit on a Maserati 4.7 GT (as I was upgrading from my lovely 4.2) from a dealer (TMT Motor Company) in the Manchester area. The deposit was refundable if upon examination of the car I found it to be less than perfect and this was confirmed by TMT in an email when they took the deposit.

I live in Ascot, the dealer drove the car to my home to complete the transaction and on arrival, it was clear the car had had a very 'hard life' the interior was dirty and the exterior scratched. I refused to buy the car, the dealer went back to Manchester, refused to refund my deposit, hence my dispute with Barclaycard.

I have since learned from Barclaycard that because the full value of the contract was over £30,000 I have no Consumer Credit Act protection. I would not have placed the deposit on the car if I had known this and in my view, Barclaycard have a duty of car to make this very clear when advertising and promoting Barclaycard as a safe way to shop.

It is unacceptable to state that these terms are on the Barclaycard website and making it the duty of the consumer to find this out themselves. Barclaycard trades off protection and security. Barclaycard should make it very clear that this security finishes at £30,000.

Of course, if the dealer in question was honourable, decent or just simply truthful - this would not be an issue.

So beware fell SM folk when placing a holding deposit on a car.
 

Felonious Crud

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
21,011
Sorry to hear that, Michael. I've previously asked a credit card company to not pay a deposit on a car which a dealer had refused to refund. That worked. Barclaycard seems less helpful.
 

Razz

Junior Member
Messages
123
Really sorry to hear your woes. Please name and shame this dealer so that forum members can help make a stand in principle at least
If you pm me I’ll share my similar experience with you
Best
Razz
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
Messages
8,795
Although I can see why you would like to be able to rely on the whole credit card refund thing, my understanding is that Barclaycard's obligations in law are really just an accident of pre-creditcard consumer lending rules, which protected consumers from having to go on making hire-purchase loan repayments on stuff that did not actually turn up. This is why the protection is for credit card payments but not debit card payments. It might seem harsh, but I have never really understood why the card company (which is merely facilitating a payment transaction) should be on the hook for deals that go bad between a consumer and a merchant. Yes, they are in a position to apply pressure on the merchant (and probably even grab his money and give it to you), but to do this properly, and lawfully, they would have to do what you could do as the injured party - go to court and make the case, otherwise they are just handing you some of their shareholders' / customers' cash because you have told them that somebody else ripped you off.
 

spkennyuk

Member
Messages
5,930
Gents,

Last year I placed a £500.00 holding deposit on a Maserati 4.7 GT (as I was upgrading from my lovely 4.2) from a dealer (TMT Motor Company) in the Manchester area. The deposit was refundable if upon examination of the car I found it to be less than perfect and this was confirmed by TMT in an email when they took the deposit.

I live in Ascot, the dealer drove the car to my home to complete the transaction and on arrival, it was clear the car had had a very 'hard life' the interior was dirty and the exterior scratched. I refused to buy the car, the dealer went back to Manchester, refused to refund my deposit, hence my dispute with Barclaycard.

I have since learned from Barclaycard that because the full value of the contract was over £30,000 I have no Consumer Credit Act protection. I would not have placed the deposit on the car if I had known this and in my view, Barclaycard have a duty of car to make this very clear when advertising and promoting Barclaycard as a safe way to shop.

It is unacceptable to state that these terms are on the Barclaycard website and making it the duty of the consumer to find this out themselves. Barclaycard trades off protection and security. Barclaycard should make it very clear that this security finishes at £30,000.

Of course, if the dealer in question was honourable, decent or just simply truthful - this would not be an issue.

So beware fell SM folk when placing a holding deposit on a car.

You have the original email that from the dealer that confirmed the deposit was refundable.

Reply back to that email stating why the car was not acceptable. Give them 7 days to refund your deposit it full as per the terms of your agreement. Advise them that failure to refund the deposit in full within 7 days will result in legal action to recover the depsoit without further warning and any charges incurred will be added to the outstanding amount.

Sit on your hands for a week and then file a ccj as catman advised.

If they come back and reject your request via email then move to CCJ at that point you dont need to wait the 7 days.

If they come back with an offer reject it and request refund in full within the 7 days as already stated.

They may just be trying it on hoping that you go quietly into the night.

If they know you wont in writing then a change of heart may be forthcoming.
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
Messages
8,795
Although I can see why you would like to be able to rely on the whole credit card refund thing, blah, blah, blah.

I realize that my post might have sounded a bit unsympathetic. So let me say that I, too, would be very unhappy at such a situation, and would be irritated with both the Dealer and Barclays, and heading toward the County Court. But I was also feeling a bit nerdy about the whole consumer credit refund thing....
 

Rick1008

New Member
Messages
71
Correct me if I'm wrong. BC security finishes at £30,000. Although that was the overall value of the potential purchase, you had not completed this transaction?
As it stands there was only a transaction for £500 (deposit, subject to viewing) for which you are covered?
 

steve3200

Junior Member
Messages
87
"I live in Ascot, the dealer drove the car to my home to complete the transaction"

just curious, i notice you mentioned the dealer drove to your home (assuming Ascot near Windsor), about 200 miles, did you pay them for delivery/fuel costs?
 

rockits

Member
Messages
9,167
One to bear in mind from a tech perspective people. Email is not a guaranteed delivery method.....never has been & possibly never will be. This is by design. A case similar to the Consumer Protection Act as mentioned above where it was designed for a use then evolved into something much bigger than the originally intended use.

An email should be followed up with a call to make sure they have received it or alternatively send an old school written letter by some form of signed for service.

It would be pretty impossible to prove someone received an email & it has been read. Or even to this point it has 'sent' fully. There is a great deal involved in getting an email from A to B. Catman will know & tell you the same I'm sure.

Only guaranteed point-to-point delivery methods I know are signed letter, fax, ISDN, digital sender. Not sure about other methods.....maybe modem handshake!

It is still surprising to this day the amount of people who send an email & expect it to appear in the recipients mailbox within seconds. Often it does but there is much that can & does go wrong inbetween. I do explain this to many people quite often. They all never seem to agree! Yes, but I've sent it & it has left my Outlook & should be there by now.

Very funny really the expectations that people have built up with no knowledge of what it takes to achieve send/receive.

As the others have said just do the form online and make sure it gets sent to the right person/address. No dealer in their right mind would challenge this if their description was so wrong. That is of course not allowing for a dodgy dealer or person who really might not care about anything.

It amazes me we haven't developed a better way to transact buying/selling cars. We have a system that solicitors use for buying/selling houses with clearing accounts used. The automotive world & financial companies really need to create/design something better fit for purpose to cater for the typical process.
 

CatmanV2

Member
Messages
48,539
Err, well Catman would agree with *some* of what you say and certainly I'd use snail mail as well with anything getting too contentious.

C
 

Michael

Member
Messages
340
I realize that my post might have sounded a bit unsympathetic. So let me say that I, too, would be very unhappy at such a situation, and would be irritated with both the Dealer and Barclays, and heading toward the County Court. But I was also feeling a bit nerdy about the whole consumer credit refund thing....

Mark,

Don't worry, no offence taken and to be honest you make a fair point.

Michael
 

rockits

Member
Messages
9,167
Err, well Catman would agree with *some* of what you say and certainly I'd use snail mail as well with anything getting too contentious.

C
The world would be boring if we all agreed about everything

Imagine if we all had Maserati's with the same exhaust configurations!
 

Michael

Member
Messages
340
Thanks, everyone.

I'll take the small claims route. When I called the owner of TMT for my refund, he actually threatened me. I'll get my £500 back via the courts and I hope my experience makes others on this forum and folk they know avoid TMT.

PS - On a lighter note, I met a guy yesterday who bought his GT 4.2 in November 2007 and has just turned 85k miles in it. The car is his daily driver, he's looked after it and it shows. He's had to replace a starter motor, the usual Lamda things (the MD spun him a story on these) and fix a motor in the passenger seat that broke and has never had the variators 'fixed'! These are all things that would happen in a German car over 85k miles.
 

Scaf

Member
Messages
6,511
When I called the owner of TMT for my refund, he actually threatened me. I'll get my £500 back via the courts and I hope my experience makes others on this forum and folk they know avoid TMT..

To threaten you is well out of order, let’s hope one day he threatens the wrong person and gets what’s comming.
Good luck with the CCJ process and keep us posted.

Also when you get a moment - find him on google maps and leave him an honest review (he only has 14reviews and one of them is a 1 star - there are other independent review sites as well. Share the love !
 

bigbob

Member
Messages
8,952
Thanks, everyone.

I'll take the small claims route. When I called the owner of TMT for my refund, he actually threatened me. I'll get my £500 back via the courts and I hope my experience makes others on this forum and folk they know avoid TMT.

PS - On a lighter note, I met a guy yesterday who bought his GT 4.2 in November 2007 and has just turned 85k miles in it. The car is his daily driver, he's looked after it and it shows. He's had to replace a starter motor, the usual Lamda things (the MD spun him a story on these) and fix a motor in the passenger seat that broke and has never had the variators 'fixed'! These are all things that would happen in a German car over 85k miles.

Can't comment about this dealer but the forum is great for making people take care. As for what must be one of the first GT's in the country that is good going. Mind I would expect in 85k miles the chances of needing one set of lambda sensors changed would be high. I suspect on variators he is with the 80%+* of owners who never have the problem.

*Insert whichever percentage you want. I have no idea what it is but presume it is a lot more than forums might suggest.
 

safrane

Member
Messages
16,746
Just out of interest... or not.

I had a dispute with British Gas when I moved to my new house some years ago.

Somehow they set up two accounts and expected me to pay twice for the fuel used. Despite numerous calls which all ended up with them saying it was resolved every month I would get letters which eventually threated court action.

So on my next call I opened by telling them the call was being recorded. The office said I couldn't do that but I persisted as they were also recording for training and quality purposes...thankfully they finaly cancelled the second account and refunded 12 months gas.

They knew they had no legs to stand on should we go to court.