The guarantee follows the seller

How we work

Why the capacity is stated before you commit

A professional selling a vehicle on its own account to a consumer owes the legal guarantee of conformity. For second-hand goods the duration can be reduced by agreement but not below one year, and a lack of conformity appearing within the period the law fixes is presumed to have existed at the moment of delivery, which puts the burden of proof on the seller rather than on the buyer. That presumption is the part that matters in practice, because the question in almost every dispute about a used car is not whether something is wrong with it but whether it was already wrong when it changed hands.

A commercial intermediary is in a different position entirely. An intermediary acts in the name and on behalf of another person, and the contract of sale is concluded between the buyer and that person. Where the person being acted for is a business, the guarantee runs against that business. Where the person being acted for is a private individual, the consumer guarantee regime does not apply to the sale at all: it is a private sale, governed by the ordinary rules on hidden defects, which are a far narrower and far harder route for a buyer. Nothing about the premises, the signage, the staff or the appearance of the paperwork reveals which of these is happening.

That is why the capacity is stated before a buyer commits and recorded on the invoice rather than left to be inferred. It is also why the rest of the information given about a vehicle is handled the same way. What is said about history, recorded mileage, known damage and maintenance comes from the documents actually held and from what is actually known, and where there is a period for which nothing is known, that is said out loud. A silence where an inconvenient fact might sit reads to any buyer as a quiet reassurance, which is exactly what it is not. Alongside that sit the harder obligations: the mileage document without which a second-hand sale to a private individual is void, the roadworthiness certificate where the sale requires one, and the principle that nothing written in any document here reduces a consumer's statutory rights.