What can I do if a used car is not as described?

What “as described” covers

Section 11 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 treats every contract to supply goods by description as including a term that the goods will match the description. Information the trader gives about the main characteristics of the goods is treated as a term of the contract, and a change to it, before or after the contract, is not effective unless you expressly agree to it.

Public statements about the car’s specific characteristics, especially in advertising, are also relevant to whether its quality is satisfactory (section 9), unless the trader shows it was not and could not reasonably have been aware of the statement, that it had been publicly withdrawn or corrected, or that it could not have influenced your decision to buy.

What you can do

If the car does not match, you have the short-term right to reject it for a refund, and the 30 days run from the first day after it is yours and has been delivered (section 22(3)). After that you can require a repair or replacement and, if that fails, a price reduction or the final right to reject.

For the repair, replacement, price-reduction and final-rejection routes, a fault or mismatch that shows up within six months of delivery is taken to have been there on delivery unless it is established that the car was in order or the presumption does not fit the nature of the problem (section 19(14) and (15)).

Mileage

nidirect says it is illegal to turn back a car’s mileage clock, known as clocking, and that if you find out later that your car has been clocked you should contact Consumerline in Northern Ireland. Our answer on proving that a car’s mileage has been altered explains the free checks that show it.

If you bought the car on finance

The Financial Ombudsman Service says that in some circumstances the finance provider is liable for what a credit broker or a supplier said before you took out certain finance agreements, and that it can also look at some complaints against the broker. It looks at adverts, invoices, brochures, manuals, service and MOT history, and messages, so keep them.

If a private seller described it wrongly

The dealer rights above do not apply to an ordinary private sale. Your claims there are about the description under the Sale of Goods Act 1979 and about misrepresentation, which our answer on buying a used car privately sets out for each part of the UK.