“I bought a second-hand EV from a dealership four years ago this June. I accidentally hit a bollard with the rear driver’s side door. The damage revealed that there was already a fix job done on that area. Cracked filler, quite deep, I was told by a panel beater. Do I have any comeback if I went back to the dealer and argued this damage wasn’t disclosed to me at the time of purchase?” - Ronan C from Co Dublin
You absolutely do have some comeback here Ronan.
The time that has elapsed between you buying the car and discovering the damage might be an issue, as the dealer could argue that you may have caused the damage yourself in the interim, and are now trying to seek some kind of false compensation, but if your panel beater can professionally stand over their comments that the previous repair was carried out some time ago, and you can prove that you haven’t damaged the car yourself in the meantime, then yes there is a case to answer.
The specific law here is the Consumer Rights Act 2022 and the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act, which state that any product that you purchase must be: “As described – it must match the description given verbally or in an advertisement.”
RM Block
Worryingly for you, the Act goes on to state that: “If the fault occurs within the first six months of owning the item, it is considered that the fault was there when you bought it.”
However, as noted above, if it can be definitively shown that the damage occurred before you bought the car and it was covered up, then there is certainly a case to answer.
The time lapse will cause issues, but they are not insurmountable — the fact that you brought the car for repair at your own expense in the first instance demonstrates that it’s unlikely that you’ve previously caused damage and covered it up.
If the garage in question is a member of the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) then there is a code of ethics that they must follow, which includes “operating businesses according to the highest ethical standards” and to “advertise products positively, factually, and informatively”. If there was undiscovered damage to a car, then that second point has not been fulfilled, and arguably neither has the first.
While it might be reasonable to assume that a used car could have some light damage that has been dealt with previously, it is also enormously important that this information is not only divulged at the time of purchase, but also that it’s reflected in the price. The phrase ‘sold as seen’ has no legal grounding.
It’s an important issue - for any used car purchase, not just for electric cars - as the phrase ‘the day you buy is the day you sell’ is absolutely correct, and if the damage had been, for example, discovered when you attempted to sell the car on yourself, or to trade it in, then it would have seriously affected the used value of the car.
The fact that four years have passed will give the dealership in question significant leeway to claim that the damage falls outside the remit of consumer law, but I wouldn’t take no for an answer in this case.
Make sure you have as much factual documentation as you can possibly gather, including photographs of the damage, and a statement from the place where you brought it for repair regarding the age of that damage. Make sure you have the paperwork from the original purchase, and see if it notes or discloses any such damage or details of any prior repair.
Your query raises an interesting point when it comes to insurance and electric cars. So far, electric cars are proving to be more expensive, on average, to insure than their petrol and diesel counterparts, mostly because the potential cost of repair in the event of an accident is higher, especially if the battery itself has become damaged and needs work.
However, there does seem to be a myth that EVs are being written off more frequently than combustion-engined cars. The narrative being told around this is that insurers don’t want to get into difficulties when it comes to battery repair or replacement, and so they’re writing off electric cars for the smallest amount of damage, just to save the hassle.
Not so, says research from the UK, which shows that although EVs have a repair cost around 29 per cent higher, on average, than combustion cars, the write-off rate is actually considerably lower — for cars of up to one year old, 0.01 per cent of EVs were scrapped, compared to 0.03 per cent of petrol and diesel cars, while for cars of up to five years old, the figures were 0.13 per cent of EVs scrapped, compared to 0.33 per cent of petrol and diesel cars.
