Sometimes, as dealers we have no option but to give a customer their money back, and in some circumstances this might be after they’ve had the car for some time, and made some significant use of it.
As I’ve mentioned before, for up to six months after a sale, any fault that develops will, in law, be presumed to have been present at the time of sale unless the dealer can prove otherwise. After that, the burden of proof moves to the customer. While it’s important to understand that contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t amount to 100% responsibility by the dealer for anything that may occur during that six-month period, it is strong customer protection – and rightly so – and however careful and thorough you are about pre-sale preparation, sometimes things will go wrong.
But six months is long enough for a customer to get quite a lot of use out of a car, and it’s perfectly reasonable for them to cover a reasonable cost for the use that they have had of the vehicle. Even at an average of 12,000 miles a year, they’ll have had 6000 miles of use out of the car, and some deduction for that is reasonable.
The question, though, is how much. I’ve seen some cases where dealers have charged up to 45p a mile. This is probably, though, appropriate only for nearly new premium vehicles – 45p-a-mile is what HMRC allow as a tax-free mileage allowance, but that includes fuel.
The Financial Ombudsman Service have, however, said that 25p-a-mile can be charged for use if a car bought on finance must be rejected/returned. Their remit covers only finance agreements, and thus the 25p-a-mile figure has legal status only in the case of cars bought on finance. But the fact that it’s what a government body think is reaso
