Private sale or dealer: what you actually get

The one difference that matters

Everything else people say about dealers and private sellers is secondary to this: a trader owes you a standard of quality, and a private seller does not.

Section 14 of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 sets the baseline for a private sale. Subsection (1) says there is no implied term about the quality or fitness for any particular purpose of goods supplied under a contract of sale, except as the Act provides. Subsection (2) then supplies the exception, and it opens with the words that decide the whole question: where the seller sells goods in the course of a business, there is an implied term that the goods supplied under the contract are of satisfactory quality.

A private individual selling their own car is not selling in the course of a business, so that implied term does not arise. If the clutch fails on the way home, the private seller has broken no promise about quality, because they never made one.

What a private seller does owe you is an accurate description. Section 13 implies a term that goods sold by description will correspond with the description, and nothing in it limits that to business sellers.

What a dealer owes you under the Consumer Rights Act 2015

For a trader selling to a consumer, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 replaces that baseline with a set of rights that are considerably stronger and cannot be signed away.

Section 9 requires the goods to be of satisfactory quality. Section 11 requires them to match their description. Section 31 then makes liability under sections 9, 10 and 11, among others, something a trader cannot exclude or restrict by any contract term, and also prevents a trader making the pursuit of a remedy disadvantageous to you.

The remedies come in a defined order. Section 20 gives a short-term right to reject, and section 22 sets the window at the end of 30 days beginning with the first day after ownership has passed, the goods have been delivered and any required installation is complete. If you exercise it, section 20 requires the refund without undue delay and in any event within 14 days of the trader agreeing you are entitled to it, using the same means of payment you used. The clock pauses while a repair or replacement you asked for is under way.

After the 30 days, section 23 gives you a right to repair or replacement, and section 24 gives a right to a price reduction or a final right to reject. There is a rule in section 24 written specifically for cars: normally no deduction for use can be made from a refund in the first six months, but motor vehicles are excluded from that protection, so a dealer can reduce a refund to reflect the use you have had even inside the first six months.

Section 19 carries the point that decides most disputes. Goods that do not conform at any time within six months of delivery are taken not to have conformed on the day they were delivered, unless it is shown otherwise or the presumption is incompatible with the nature of the goods or the failure. In plain terms, for the first six months the dealer has to show the fault was not there when they sold it, rather than you having to show it was.

• Satisfactory quality, section 9. As described, section 11.
• 30 days to reject for a refund, sections 20 and 22, with the clock paused during an agreed repair.
• Then repair or replacement, section 23.
• Then price reduction or final rejection, section 24, with a deduction for use allowed on motor vehicles even in the first six months.
• First six months: the fault is presumed to have been there at delivery, section 19.
• None of it can be excluded by a term in the contract, section 31.

What sold as seen actually means

From a dealer, close to nothing. Section 31 makes a term that excludes or restricts liability under sections 9, 10 or 11 unenforceable against you, and it does not matter what the invoice says, what you initialled, or whether the phrase was on a sticker in the window. A trader who tells you the car is sold as seen, tried and approved, or sold with no warranty, has told you something about their attitude rather than about your rights.

From a private seller, the phrase has more force, but less than sellers think. It does not turn a false description into a true one. If the advert said one owner from new, full service history, or 68,000 miles, section 13 requires the car to correspond with that description, and sold as seen does not paper over a statement of fact that was not true.

It also does not help a seller who has lied. Dishonestly making a false representation to obtain money is fraud by false representation under section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006, and that applies to private sellers as much as to traders.

The sensible way to use this at the kerb is to get the important claims in writing. A message that says it has never been in an accident and the mileage is genuine converts a conversation into a description, and a description is enforceable in a way that a memory of a chat is not.

Buying online from a trader, sight unseen

Distance selling adds a right that has nothing to do with the car being faulty. Where a consumer buys goods from a trader at a distance, regulation 30 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 gives a cancellation period ending 14 days after the day the goods come into your physical possession.

That is a right to change your mind, and it sits alongside the Consumer Rights Act remedies rather than replacing them. It is why online used car retailers advertise a return window: much of it is the law rather than a favour, although some of them extend it.

Two practical points. The right applies to the trader and the distance contract, not to a private seller you found on a classifieds site. And a car you have driven a substantial distance is a car whose value you may have affected, so read what the retailer says about mileage limits and collection charges before you rely on the window.

What the price difference is actually buying

A dealer's price includes the cost of the standard they owe you. That is not marketing, it is the arithmetic of the Consumer Rights Act: some proportion of the cars they sell will come back, and the price of every car carries a share of that.

So the comparison is not dealer price against private price. It is dealer price against private price plus your own risk, and the size of that risk depends on the car. On a ten year old car worth a few thousand pounds, the gap between the two is often smaller than the cost of one gearbox, and the private route is a reasonable bet if you have done the checks. On a three year old car worth five figures, the six month presumption in section 19 is worth a great deal, and a private sale asks you to carry a fault you cannot see.

There is a middle case worth naming. A trader selling on behalf of somebody else, sometimes described as a sale or return or brokered sale, is still a trader in the transaction with you if they are acting in the course of their business. If a business is involved in the sale at all, ask directly, in writing, whether you are buying from them or from a private individual, because the answer decides which of the two sets of rights above you have.

If it goes wrong: the order to do things in

Write it down first. The fault, the date it appeared, the mileage, and what you were told before you bought. Then take the car off the road if the fault is a safety one, because continuing to drive it damages both the car and your position.

From a trader, put it in writing straight away and say which remedy you want. Inside 30 days, reject the car and ask for a refund under the short-term right to reject. Outside 30 days, ask for a repair, and keep the correspondence, because a failed repair opens the door to a price reduction or a final rejection under section 24. Remember that a deduction for use is permitted on a car even in the first six months.

If the trader refuses, check whether they belong to an approved alternative dispute resolution scheme, which many franchised and larger independent dealers do, and use it before you go near a court. Trading Standards, reached through Citizens Advice, is the route where you think an offence has been committed rather than a contract broken.

From a private seller, you are arguing about description or misrepresentation, not quality. Gather the advert, the messages and any paperwork the seller gave you, and put your case in writing to the seller before anything else. If the mileage or the history was misstated, that is a false description and, if it was dishonest, potentially fraud. Neither is a fast remedy, which is the real reason to do the checks before you pay rather than after.