BUYER BEWARE...

8 July 2020

We bought our vehicle, a 2002 Opel Astra Classic 1.6 CD A/C, from Prima Motors for the total price of R29000. We paid the full amount, in two instalments. He offered to have the car put through a roadworthy inspection, and put the car in our name; licence and registration is on the invoice. Before we signed anything, he promised that if something goes wrong within 6 months of sale, he'd have it fixed.

9 July 2020

He delivered the vehicle to our house, after taking it through roadworthy and putting it in our name at the traffic department, as per agreement.

15 July 2020

I sent him an email, reporting that the engine started to miss, and that it felt like the car was running on 3 spark plugs, not 4. We’d taken the car to our mechanic, who suspected that it was the coilpack that was causing an electrical issue, causing the timing to miss.

21 July 2020

I sent him a follow-up email, since I’d received no feedback.

22 July 2020

Hennie rep**** to my email, stating: Die 6 maande cpa waarborg is in plek op alle voertuie wat verkoop word maar is meer vir groot probleme soos n gearbox of motor wat oppak. Maar stuur Asseblief vir my die Kwotasie van julle mechanic af dan kyk ek wat ek kan reel.

So now he's trying to convince me that the warrantee is only for certain issues.

27 July 2020

We provided him with a quotation for the coil pack.

Shortly after this, the car started to smoke from the exhaust pipe. BADLY.

6 August 2020

My husband received a traffic fine. The smoke coming from the exhaust pipe had drawn the attention of a traffic officer. When my husband pulled over, the traffic official further noticed that two of the lights in the rear were not working. In the end my husband received a R600 fine for the lights not working; the traffic official decided to let us go on the issue of the smoke. At this point, the car had been through roadworthy less than a month earlier.

I sent him a follow-up email, as we still hadn’t received a reply to the quote we’d provided on 27 July 2020.

Shortly after this, Hennie phoned me to discuss the matter, and agreed to pay half the to repair the coil pack. We weren't really satisfied with this, because that wasn't what he'd promised when we bought the car. WE STILL HAVE NOT RECEIVED THIS AMOUNT FROM HIM (16 September 2020).

We took the car to our mechanic, and he started to work on the car. When he started taking the car apart, we discovered that it wasn’t the coil pack that was broken. The piston rings were worn and needed to be replaced, hence the smoke (something that can be temporarily hidden with an oil additive), the ruined spark plugs (the brand new spark plugs we’d put in were immediately ruined), the missing, the reduced performance, and more. The engine needed to go to the engineering services to be reconditioned. We returned the coilpack to the spares, shop and used the credit to buy parts to fix the actual problem.

When the mechanic was reassembling the parts, he also discovered the water pump was leaking and had to be replaced; there’s no point in putting the car back together again with broken parts.

The one tyre at the back had a slow leak and had to be inflated every two days. We took the tyre to a tyre dealer, hoping it was just a nail and it could be plugged; turns out the edge of the tyre had come loose from the rim. That was another R70 to have it repaired.

And when the mechanic checked out the reason the back lights weren’t working, he discovered it wasn’t a fuse or a bulb that was the matter – THE LIGHTS HADN’T BEEN BLUGGED IN! There is no reason for anyone to have unplugged any lights in the boot since we got the car. We’d barely even used the boot, because it LEAKS. Don’t ask me how a car can pass a roadworthy inspection, without functioning lights.

And just to add that comedic “well what else could go wrong” element to this tale, my husband drove this car home from the mechanic, and when we both parked in the driveway, he showed me the gear lever knob had come off in his hand while he was driving. In an Opel, this meant the car permanently wanted to shift into reverse instead of first gear.

We’ve tal**** up all the expenses we’ve incurred after buying this car. It is now exactly two months, to the day, that we’ve had this vehicle (this was 9 September 2020). The total comes to R 7 620,75. This falls within the 6-month warrantee period he promised when he sold us the car, and even with the later disclaimer he made via email that this warrantee is only for if something goes wrong with the engine or gearbox. It is not normal for a car to fall apart so spectacularly within weeks of buying it, and certainly not after so recently getting a roadworthy certificate.

We simply cannot afford the extra expense on a car we believed to be mechanically sound when we bought it. This car hasn’t ended up costing R29000; so far it’s costed us over R36600.

I have receipts for everything.

I've emailed Hennie from Prima Motors every day for the past week. He's ignoring my emails, he's ignoring our text messages. I have to say, his after-sale service is non-existent; where can you run a business, and not reply to emailed customer complaints for more than a week?