anyone know the legality of a dealership selling a machine in which the hour meter has been changed. and then not disclosing that to the seller(myself). they claim they didnt know. bought a skidsteer with 962 hrs on it, had major mechanical failure 10 hrs later (972), another dealer ran the serial ## when i took it to get fixed and it came back with 1988 hrs a year and a half ago. so it has at least 3 times the hours that it was sold to me with. they are undecided what they are going to do about it as of yet but i am wondering what my options are legally. or rather just want to confirm that i am in the right here. thanks Nate
wow, i'd raise hell.
Mdwstsnow I feel you are definitely in the right. I am not any kind of legal adviser, but I would be as fuming mad as I am sure you are. I would think that any reputable dealer would either refund your money and or give you a substantial discount. It looks like you have put 10 hours on the machine but how long of time lapse in days? There are many things I suppose a customer could do to jump start the dealers check book. Go to the papers may be one. Another which is definitely detrimental to any business is word of mouth. I would think with this current "sluggish" economy, no dealer would like any bad publicity. I do respect the fact you did not include the dealers name (no need to go to the wood shed just yet). Hopefully they will come to there senses before it gets bloody. My two cents....... Good Luck and I would sure like to hear how it turns out..
from the time i took possesion of the machine until the time it went down was under 1 week. took possesion on a monday, broke on saturday night. i am truly hoping that the dealer steps up and does the right thing as i know i am in the right. it is both cheaper for them and me and less stressful to all- as i have told them. thanks Nate
and it has been over 2 weeks now since it broke, with the holidays and all answers have been slow. took almost a week just to determine what was wrong and what it was going to cost to fix, $12,000- a lil cheaper if i do it myself. machine cost me 16000 thanks Nate
I know its assumed, but just for the sake of removing any doubt, this failure was not anything that might possible be caused in 10 hours? (run out of water/oil, lifting too heavy of load, ran into something, etc?
I'm a little late , but Welcome to Heavy Equipment Forums Mdwstsnow512! :drinkup
well, motor "blew up" this is what the local dealership said. they didnt actually rip into the motor because i didnt want to pay them like 100/hr to look at it. they believe more than likely it is and oil pump or oil pump related the dummy light came on and it was loaded on a trailer and that was it. no more than a minute of runtime after the light came on. has oil and all that, something internal broke. everyone is saying that is cheaper and better to replace the motor then try to fix this one, since you dont know the depth of the problem and time is expensive, its cheaper to buy a new motor with a warranty then spend who knows how long trying to diagnose and fix an unknown problem or problems. especially do to the fact that the machine has over 3000 hours on it. kinda sucks cause not only is it all a pain in the ass, its costing me money cause that machine could/should be workin right now not sittin. later Nate
thank you Nate
This is just opinion and not legal advise. You need to speak to an attorney for that. I am going to play devils advocate here from the dealer's stand point. Hour meters are not odometers and have never been a legal representation of the amount time the machine has been used. All the dealers I have worked for state that the hour meter is a device to be used to set maintenance intervals "ONLY". In any case most all equipment is sold "AS IS, WHERE IS" unless specifically stated otherwise. Legally the issue I think revolves on how the dealer represented the machine to you. You don't say how old the machine is or its year of manufacture. If the machine is more than a couple of years old and is the type that would see a thousand hours or more a year in normal use, then a knowledgable person would understand that the hourmeter reading might not represent the total operating time on the machine. On the the other hand you might be able to do something if the bill of sale states something to the effect of one so and so machine with XXX number of hours. Did you purchase the machine from a franchised dealer of the machine. If so they may decide work something out. You get what is known as whine time to air your greavance. If you bought the machine from a curb stone dealer, then you might do better yelling at a rock wall. I do hope the best for you.
Sale Terms ? What kinda Sale terms did you get ? 24 hrs, 10 day warranty, 30 day warranty, "as is where is" , No Warranty express or implied . Power train warranty , etc. What kind of reputation does the dealer have ? Even at 2,000-3000 range an engine shoudn't blow up ! Sorry to hear about something like this . Auction items are hard to track, especially maintenance records. See if you can find the previous owner. Find out something about the previous maintenance. Unless you have something in writing, you are stuck, chalk it up to an expensive education.
In my part of the world Non-disclosure is becoming a real issue at the point of sale. It doesn't matter what the meter "may" be for...it comes down to the fact that someone knows the reading is inaccurate and did not disclose it at the point of sale. This has been a well trodden path in some of hour courts recently, mostly on illegal extensions to houses and odometer readings on trucks. In most cases the Judge has determined "failure of duty of disclosure" under our Trades Practices Act applied where it is considered that We all know that hour meters fail, and that engines get changed etc but pointing out the probable or possible inaccuracy can be a duty of disclosure. I believe most dealers have some fine print somewhere in their contracts to try and elleviate any responsibility...and probably rightly so in many cases. On the reverse side I see that as seller its inferring you have to ensure the facts are straight at the Point of Sale...and this is not always possible. I have seen operators disconnect their hour meters and think they are real smart for their machine showing less than true hours. It seems stupid to me because people get to know machines working in their area...and low hours at sale raises a big red flag...de-valuing the machine. I suppose at the end of the day the hour meter is not a guarantee of true hours so you have to treat it that way...unless, like I said above...its obviously a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the machine....and I aint no Legal Weasel!.
it was sold as-is where is no warranty but it was sold to me with 962 hours from a dealer that is not a franchised dealer of this brand of machine, but of another type of machine. - who from all records and dealing is reputable(pretty large 5 or 6 locations) i found out when the franchised dealer i took it to for repairs ran the service record( public knowledge to a dealer) wasnt that hard for me to do, should have done it first but didnt think i needed to- cause thats part of the reason to buy a machine from a dealer- a little trust. the machine is an 2002 and i have seen many with as little as 500 hours or as much as 5000 so it was not unreasonable for this machine to have the hours it was sold as. it did look a little rough but it was just paint and i was told the previous(original) owner did some forestry work and that would explain most of it. in my eyes, it is similiar to buying a car from a dealership driving it home. getting pulled over and arrested a few days later because the vehicle is reported stolen, going back to the dealer and them saying " we didnt know, we didnt check - sorry your screwed." thanks Nate
heres what they are sayin i pull the motor, ship it to them i am responsible for any rental machine all of this on my bill. they will repair the motor or replace it if necessary and ship it back to me they pay for all of this they cover the motor only with a 6 month warranty i put it back in. does this sound fair? im just a little worried about the rest of the machine, the hydraulics and all, not to mention the motor down the road(after 6 months) thanks Nate
That sounds faily reasonable to me, if you bought it "as is" with no waranty. I would not doubt that somewhere in the fine print of your paperwork it says they do not guaranty the hour meter to be correct. Maybe you should paint it up while it is down, and then sell it once it is back together if your worried about future issues. Just my 2 cents.
Options I may ask the dealer what they will give you for it after the new engine is installed. Both of you know the history of the engine now. Hydraulic system would be harder to track but not impossible. You could pull an oil sample but who's to say the fluid wasn't recently changed. Check any service history as you did but if it was a parts only deal to previous owner, tough to track. Maybe you can tell them you would like to "demo" one of their other machines. New machines have some pretty attractive finance rates with 0% interest. This may some how force them into giving you a decent trade number....... My 2 cents
im also a little worried about the quality of work going to be done, i mean they have proven themselves to be untrustworthy. and whos to know what there going to do, they could half-ass it and itll break again in a couple hundred hours. i thought about sellin it, i think that even with the actual hours i can get out of it what i have into it. i dont want to screw someone like i got screwed. later Nate
I think if they are willing to repair or replace the motor then that goes a long way towards helping you. I would chalk it up to experience and be a little more careful next time if you buy used equipment. I am awful leary buying used just for that reason. It is usually my luck that stuff like this happens. I bought a nice looking F150 from a friend and less than a month later the engine blew. I knew the history of this vehicle and it was well serviced but stuff just happens sometimes. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and would like to think that the dealer wasn't playing games but who knows. They probably took it on trade. I would pull the motor and let the dealer go at it. Tell them that when they give it back if it is not a new motor then I would insist on a service record of what they did to it and the parts that they replaced. My 2 cents Good luck Alan
what type of machine are we talking about here? if its a skidsteer, thats a lot of overall hours in my opinion.
not too bad for a 5 year old machine hours wise.
from his first post: 1988+972= 2960 hours total possibly
Generally speaking, the little diesels in a skid-steer are not worth repairing unless it is a relatively minor situation. Having to go into the engine will cost big bucks in labor, so it is usually better to just replace them with a new "crate" engine. With the crate engine you get a much better warranty, plus you know everything in it is new. It's also much faster to replace than to rebuild. It sounds as tho the dealer is trying to make amends, but were I you, I'd insist on a new engine, at as much their expense as you can get. As for buying used equipment, I always took my own oil samples if I could before buying. If I couldn't, then I did them immediately after getting the machine home to the yard. I never trusted the sellers samples, unless he had a long history of them with none missing towards the sale date. I also checked with the manufacturer's dealer for service data and hourmeter readings, anything they might have on hand. That's not hard these days, was difficult 20 years ago. Getting oil samples really saved my butt a couple of times. For a small contractor or equipment owner, paying 15 to 20 bucks for a sample is good insurance, and better proof. Good Luck with this deal. Let us know how you come out. Keep the heat on your seller for relief!
Was there an add for this machine- if so what does it say? If they Misrepresented the machine in add they could have a problem- just my uneducated opinion.
yes it had an add and yes it was misrepresented, and surfer- i have def. learned a lesson. so much for trusting a dealership ill keep you all posted, i think i am not going to except the offer. i want more. i dont trust them thanks Nate
I'm not sure how you like the idea of turning wrenches yourself? A friend of mine got himself in an almost simmilar situation with a used dump truck. Had it for a few weeks when it toasted a piston (air cooled Deutz V10) The shop "fixed" it and two hour after we picked it up from their shop it seized up on us. Got into a heated discussion that didn't help when we did some investigations and found a lot of shavings in the oilfilters. A mechanic confessed that they forgot to change oil and filters after the "rebuild" So after a lot of forth and back my friend settled for a 50/50 break kind of deal. He was responsible for the cost of work and the shop would supply all parts for a total rebuild (a new engine was too expensive for the dealer) But we did something that caught them by surprise, we did the job our self. Since the shop and mechanics have showed themself unreliable about doing this kind of work we simply didn't trust them. So we showed up at their parts department with a huge list of wanted parts. Of course it got into a heated discussion again since the managers had in mind to first to make a buck from my friend by billing hours for the job and most likely by doing another hack job. Showed them the contract that my friend would pay for the work, but it didn't say wich to do the work. He just calmy replied that either give us all the parts we need or talk to my lawyer. Well, we got all the parts we needed. After a complete tear down we cooked out the block in acid and almost all moving parts where put in new, I think we only turned the crank, but everything else where brand new. Took us a week doing this job on evenings. I'm sure it would have much cheaper for them buying a crate engine, but my friend got a cheap engine since he only had to pay me for the job. So if you are comfortable doing this kind of work, try going this route, because then you know what has been done to the engine, most likely they will just ship you a crate engine instead. Ans as some other have mentioned, sell it off ASAP and get another one with a known history.