Car Fault After Buying? Your Consumer Rights, Explained

The short answer

Part of our guide to buying a used car. Bought from a dealer and the car has gone wrong? The Consumer Rights Act 2015 sets out what you can demand, and it depends mostly on how long you have owned it.

• Within 30 days: reject the car and get all your money back.
• After 30 days: require a repair or replacement. If that one attempt fails, choose between a price reduction and rejecting the car.
• Within six months: the law assumes the fault was already there when you bought it, and the dealer has to prove otherwise.

Two things change this. On hire purchase or PCP your claim runs against the finance company rather than the dealer, which usually helps you. And if you bought privately, almost none of it applies. Both are below.

The three-stage remedy staircase

The Act gives you remedies in a fixed order. You cannot skip a rung, and the dealer cannot push you further down it than the law allows.

Days 0 to 30: reject the car outright

The car must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described (Consumer Rights Act 2015, ss.9 to 11). "Satisfactory" is measured against what a reasonable person would expect from that car's price, age, mileage and description. So an eight-year-old car on 90,000 miles is held to a lower standard than a nearly new one. It is not held to no standard.

If the car fails any of those tests, s.22 gives you 30 days from delivery to reject it. That means a full refund, not a repair you have to accept.

One detail most people miss: agree to let the dealer try a repair inside that window and the clock pauses while the car is with them. You then get seven days from getting it back, or the rest of your original 30 days, whichever is longer.

After 30 days: one repair or replacement

Section 23 lets you require a repair or replacement. The dealer must do it within a reasonable time, without significant inconvenience to you, and pay for everything: labour, parts, collection. You cannot demand a repair that is impossible, or a replacement that costs them disproportionately more than repairing.

This right has no fixed calendar deadline. Plenty of sites say the repair remedy runs out at six months. It does not: s.23 sets no fixed period, only the "reasonable time" test. Something else expires at six months, and that is the next chapter.

When the repair fails

Under s.24, the dealer gets one repair or replacement attempt. If the car still does not conform after it, you choose: a price reduction (keep the car, get some money back) or the final right to reject. You get the same choice if a repair was never possible, or the dealer failed to do it in a reasonable time or without significant inconvenience.

The six-month rule: what it actually does

This is the most misexplained part of UK used-car law.

Section 19(14) says goods that do not conform to the contract at any point in the six months beginning with the day of delivery "must be taken not to have conformed to it on that day". Plainly: a fault in the first six months is assumed to have been lurking when you drove off the forecourt.

That decides who has to prove what. It is not a deadline on any remedy. The dealer can rebut it under s.19(15) by establishing the car did conform on delivery, or that the presumption does not fit the nature of the fault, like a clutch worn out by 9,000 miles of your driving. But the burden is theirs.

Two things follow, and a lot of pages get both wrong:

• It is not a six-month warranty. It buys you no free repairs; it decides who argues what.
• The repair right does not expire at six months. What you lose is the presumption: after that, you have to show the fault was present at the point of sale, usually with an independent inspection report.

Paperwork that tries to sign these rights away is not binding on you. Section 31 lists the terms a trader cannot exclude or restrict, and satisfactory quality, fitness for purpose and matching the description are all on it. "Sold as seen" on an invoice does not undo the Act.

Can the dealer deduct for the miles you've driven?

For most goods, no. Section 24(10) blocks any deduction for use if you exercise the final right to reject within the first six months.

Cars are the exception. That subsection carves out motor vehicles by name, so a dealer can reduce your refund to reflect the use you have had, even inside six months. In practice that means an adjustment for your mileage.

Two limits. Reject in the first 30 days under the short-term right and there is no deduction at all, because s.24's deduction rules only bite on the final right to reject. And under s.24(9) the dealer cannot charge you for use during a period when you only still had the car because they failed to collect it.

On the refund itself, s.20 is specific. You get it without undue delay and in any event within 14 days of the dealer agreeing you are entitled to it, by the same payment method, with no fee. The dealer also covers the reasonable cost of getting the car back to them, unless you choose to return it in person to where you collected it.

Bought on HP or PCP? Who you actually complain to

This chapter covers hire purchase, PCP and conditional sale, where the finance company buys the car and you pay it off. A credit card or loan used to pay a dealer outright works differently, and that is at the end.

On HP or PCP you do not own the car yet. Under s.7, a hire-purchase agreement is one where the trader hires goods to you and ownership passes only once the conditions are met, usually the final payment or an option-to-purchase fee. The finance company is the legal owner. For Consumer Rights Act purposes, it is also the trader who supplied you the car.

That sounds like bad news. Usually, it is the opposite. The Financial Ombudsman Service says so in its own guidance for firms: "A finance provider, supplying cars under conditional sale, hire purchase or hire agreements, is responsible for the quality of the car that is supplied. This is because the Consumer Rights Act 2015 ... implies a term into the contract that the car be of satisfactory quality."

So you have a better-resourced party to claim against. A small independent dealer can stall, go quiet or dissolve, where a regulated lender has a complaints procedure and a regulator. You also get a free dispute route in the Financial Ombudsman Service, whose final decision binds the business if you accept it.

Every remedy above still applies. You are just aiming it at the lender. Complain to the lender in writing first and copy the dealer in. Keep paying your instalments while you argue, because missed payments can damage your credit file regardless of who turns out to be right.

Paid the dealer outright with a credit card or point-of-sale loan instead? The dealer stays the trader you claim against under the Act, but s.75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 may give you a parallel claim against the card or loan provider, jointly with the dealer, for breach of contract or misrepresentation. It applies where the cash price of the item is over £100 and no more than £30,000, which covers most used cars. A personal loan you arranged yourself, with no link to the dealer, does not normally carry that protection.

What if you bought privately?

Then most of this article is not for you. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 governs contracts between a trader and a consumer, so a genuine private seller is not caught by the satisfactory-quality duty at all. Private buyers fall back on the much narrower Sale of Goods Act 1979 protections: essentially that the seller owned the car and that it matched its description, plus a possible misrepresentation claim if the seller actively lied.

Our guide to buying from a dealer versus a private seller covers what changes between the two, including what to do if the "private seller" was actually a trader in disguise. If so, the rights above come back.

Gather your evidence before you make the claim

The argument you are about to have is over whether the fault existed at the point of sale, and the cheapest evidence is already public.

Run the registration through our free car check before you write to anyone. It returns the full MOT history including advisory notes, often where a fault appears months before it stopped the car. An advisory for a corroded brake pipe or a worn suspension arm at the last MOT is direct evidence the problem predates your purchase.

A dealer can argue with your description of a noise. An official record is harder to dodge.

Our guide to reading MOT advisories explains what the wording means. A check reflects the record at the moment you run it, so run a fresh one if you need something newer later.

Then keep the advert, the invoice and any written description of the car. Section 11 makes "as described" a contractual term, so the listing's wording matters. Add dated photos or video of the fault, especially an intermittent one, plus every garage job sheet and invoice, and an email to the dealer summarising anything said on the phone.

How to make the claim — and what to do if they refuse

Put it in writing: to the dealer if you paid cash, to the finance company on HP or PCP. Keep it short and factual.

1. What you bought, when you took delivery, and the price.
2. What the fault is and when it appeared.
3. The remedy you are exercising, by name. "I am exercising my short-term right to reject under s.22 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015" leaves no room for a conversation about goodwill.
4. What you want, and by when.
5. That you will escalate without a substantive reply within 14 days.

Send it by email, or by post with proof of delivery. Past 30 days, a dealer offering a repair is within their rights, so confirm in writing that you are agreeing to one attempt under s.23 and waiving nothing. Inside 30 days you do not have to accept a repair at all. Before the next purchase, our used-car buying questions checklist is worth a read.

If they refuse

The Financial Ombudsman Service takes HP, PCP and conditional sale complaints, and a s.75 claim against a card provider. It is free, and the final decision binds the business if you accept it. You normally need to complain to the firm first and either get a final response or wait out its response period.

The Motor Ombudsman takes cash purchases from a dealer accredited to one of its Motor Industry Codes of Practice. It is free for consumers, and again binding on the business if you accept the decision. Accreditation is voluntary rather than mandatory, so check your dealer is actually signed up before pinning hopes on it. If they are not, they must still point you towards an alternative dispute resolution body.

I'd keep court as a last resort. The small claims track in England and Wales handles claims up to £10,000, covering the great majority of used-car disputes, and is designed to be used without a solicitor. Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own equivalent procedures, both with a £5,000 ceiling: simple procedure in the Scottish sheriff courts, and the small claims process in the Northern Ireland county courts.

Citizens Advice gives free, impartial help with any of these. If you think a dealer is trading unfairly as a pattern rather than a one-off, report it through the Citizens Advice consumer service, which passes reports on to Trading Standards. Trading Standards will not take up your individual case.

Common questions