Caution urged when buying used cars

A poll of drivers who bought used vehicles from dealers has found 20% had problems with the car.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT), which carried out the survey, said just under 70% of the faults surfaced within the first month and 30% of customers who told the dealer didn't get the problem fixed.

The survey also found around 9% of dealers rely on illegal disclaimers about the car's history and condition, and some "clock" vehicles to show a false mileage, which may make the need to claim on one's car insurance more likely than it at first appears.

The poll found 27% of people find used car dealers very unhelpful and 11% rate them fairly unhelpful.

Consumers spent £425 each, or around £85 million a year in total, fixing unresolved faults that were the dealer's obligation to correct, the OFT said.

The report said consumers could be overpaying to the tune of around £580 million a year as a result of illegal "clocking".

The report also found that some dealers could be in breach of the law by pretending to be private sellers to evade their obligations to consumers, often to unload unsafe or clocked cars, which the OFT reckons account for more than £40 million of second-hand car sales a year.

The report included findings from 600 mystery shoppers who visited dealers.

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