(Long) Tale of woe: BMW was a mess :-(

Got off the train earlier today to collect my BMW. Once I'd met the
seller, I dutifully followed him, to get a ride to his premises, I
thought, but no - the shiny green paint at the back of the car park
alerted me to the fact that he'd brought the merchandise with him and was
intending to complete the handover there and then.

'Very well,' I thought, 'I'll get him to come for a spin with me before I
part with my hard-earned.' However, as I came within reach of the green
monster, it became apparent that the proceedings may not get that far.
There was a bad scrape on the lower rear bumper to accompany the couple
of light scratches he'd told me about. This rang alarm bells, so I
hustled round to scrutinize front end. On my way round, I passed the
'small scratch' above the filler cap. It was small in length, but big in
area, like a big ugly S shape, and had been badly touched up to make it
even worse. There was also a bloody long straight scratch on the rear
door, which I knew nothing of. Or at least if I had been told about it,
it certainly wasn't described as it was.

But the real sinking feeling came as I completed my walk round and
confronted the mutilated remains of the BMW's front end paintwork. These
weren't "light chips, with just a couple of larger ones." The bonnet
looked like it had been subjected to a meteor shower. Large depressions
of missing paint were dotted right across the whole length of the big
hood in abundance. A lot of these had made it all the way to the
windscreen, as the lower half of that had quite a few chips, too. It is
probably the worst case of stonechipping I have ever known on any vehicle
I have paid attention to. The car had obviously spent endless hours
travelling at highly illegal speeds.

By now I was getting a stomach churning feeling of dread. I simply could
not take this car. I opened the driver's door and turned to the interior
to look for further signs of bad description. There were holes in the
centre console from a previously fitted mobile phone harness. The inside
of the drivers door had been scraped along it's bottom egde and was
beginning to rust. Generally the interior was otherwise OK, but I'd had
enough. I puffed out my chest and gave him the unwanted opinion of the
car, my interpretation of it's condition, and how that differed from his.

He cringed and began to point out that it *had* done 160,000 miles and
even offered to drop £100 off the price. I declined and stuck to the
opinion that it did not fit the description of 'very clean and tidy
throughtout'. Clean it was, tidy it most certainly wasn't. So we both
parted with our tails between our legs, him to get back in his unsold BMW
and me to buy a far more expensive train ticket and begin a nightmare 5
hour journey home.

There may be repercussions via Ebay, but I don't care. The car wasn't up
to scratch and I could not part with my cash. The trains were expensive
and I've had to cancel the insurance, which I'd pre-arranged so that it
would be insured and legal for the drive home. But I learned a valuable
lesson: I will NEVER ever again enter any contract to buy a vehicle
without having viewed it first, for as long as I live.

Once I've recovered from my experience, I'll begin the hunt again, but
it'll be strictly the old fashioned way from now on :-(

--
Stuart Sharp
.

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