Hi, I just need abit of advice on the situation I am in.

3 Weeks ago i put a £500 deposit down on a volvo. At the point of sale i asked the salesman if the deposit was refundable and was told yes.

Over the past week their has been a change of circumstances with my job so I decided it was a bad idea to buy a new car. Today I returned to back the dealer, explained the situation and asked for my deposit. His answer to this was that now the car had been built there was no way to return the deposit. I explained that he had informed me it was refundable however he stuck to his guns. He gave me a complants number but i feel like im jusst been fobbed off.

When looking over the contract their is no where that mentions that the deposit is non-refundable and the only point I can find which mentions anything about the deposit is if the car has been delivered to the forecourt and you cancel. You may loose some of your deposit if they have to sell the car for a lower price.

Where can i go from here or is it a deal loss.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thankyou for taking your time.

Chris C

Chris

If the car was going to be purchased with any form of finance, you should be able get your money back. This is what Trading standards say on this and the garage should know. If the deposit was taken as part of a sale which was to be completed via a finance agreement, then the deposit must be refunded if the finance agreement is cancelled.

The finance need not have been through the garage. If you were reliant on finance to purchase the car and can no longer commit to the finance agreement, you should be allowed a refund. I think the only get out, is that the garage can retain a reasonable amount to cover their admin costs.

Have a read through the following thread which may help you. http://www.moneysupermarket.com/community/forums/t/refund-of-deposit-on-new-car-36996.aspx

If the garage will not budge, contact your local trading standards office.http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/

Thanks Huckster, im going to go back to my dealer today. I had a look at afew threads and found the following:

I’ll remind the Dealer that the sale was also based on the need to complete a regulated consumer credit agreement, which would only become ‘executed’ when signed by the debtor and creditor. As we have not received any paperwork or signed anything we are entitled to withdraw from the prospective agreement under section 57 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974.

Under Section 57 our notice to withdraw from the sale cancelled the credit agreement which means that any linked transaction to buy the car should be treated in the same way as a cancellable agreement i.e. we are entitled to a refund of our deposit.

If no movement I will inform Trading Standards

So I think I will mention this to him and see what he says then.

Thanks again,

Chris C

Update.

I called up tms volvo and spoke to the salesman. I informed him that I had been doing to more research into the matter and explained to him about section 57 of the consumer credit act 1974. However his response to this was his director needed to sort it out as it was out of his authority to do this and then told me he was not in until Monday.

So now im just going to wait until then and see what happens. Also going to give volvo complaints a call on Monday too.

Have I gone about this in the right way?

Thanks

Chris C