Whatever happened to the X-Trail, we would rather hear it.
A buyer who spots panel work nobody mentioned stops trusting the rest of what they were told, and prices for the version of events they have just imagined.
Said first, it is one fact among the others, and the person who comes out already knows where to spend the time.
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The panel
Telling us is not the same as confessing
The choice was never between mentioning it and having nobody know. Somebody who looks at cars all week is going to see it.
It is almost never anything dramatic. A trolley let go in a shopping centre carpark. A post that was not there the week before. A stone off the back of a truck. Hail one afternoon in summer, or somebody reversing into it while it sat outside your work all day. It got fixed, the car went back to being the car, and you have not thought about it since. Then you decide to sell, and it turns into the thing you are quietly turning over on the way to the phone.
Here is the part worth knowing before you ring anybody. Repaired panels are one of the things a person who does this every day can see, in the way a panel sits against the ones beside it, the way the colour takes the light, the edges and the fasteners. So the real choice in front of you is between telling us and being found out, and those two produce completely different afternoons. In the first, it is a fact about the car sitting alongside the kilometres and the service history. In the second, everything else you said quietly comes into question.
What actually happens with the answer is narrower than most people expect. Nobody on the phone is going to tell you what a repair takes off, because nobody can know that without looking at it, and a figure invented at that distance is worth less to you than no figure at all. What the inspector looks at is how it was done and what was done, which is a different question from what happened. A car that was hit and repaired properly is not the same car as one that was hit and made to look alright, and saying it up front is what gets yours assessed as the first of those instead of assumed to be the second.
Before the visit
What we ask about a repair
Six questions, and not one of them is hunting for a discount. They decide where the hour goes once somebody is standing beside the car.
- Has any panel on it ever been repaired, even a small one?
- A bumper that was resprayed after a carpark counts. So does a door somebody else paid for. Tell us which panel and roughly when, and that is enough to be going on with. Nobody is asking you to write a history of the car.
- Was it an insurance job, and have you still got anything in writing?
- An insurance repair leaves a paper trail behind it, and that trail is worth more to you than it looks. If you can put your hand on the claim or the invoice, have it in the car on the day. If you cannot, say that instead and it is looked at rather than argued about.
- Who did the work?
- A smash repairer the insurer sent you to, the panel shop up the road, a friend in a driveway with a spray gun. None of those answers ends the conversation. They tell the inspector what kind of job to expect before the bonnet ever goes up.
- Was the panel repaired, or was it replaced?
- Plenty of owners have no idea, and not knowing is a perfectly good answer. If you were told at the time, tell us what you were told. It changes what gets looked at closely, which is not the same thing as changing what gets paid.
- Is there anything you have been told about and never had looked at?
- A noise on cold mornings, a light that comes on and then thinks better of it, something a mechanic mentioned in passing two services ago. It is not a trap. It stops the day turning into a discovery, and it reads far better coming from you.
- Has the car ever been written off and repaired?
- If the answer is yes, say it at the start of the call rather than the end. It changes which paperwork we need and how the transfer gets handled, and it is not a reason for anybody here to stop. Hearing it late is the only version of this that causes trouble.
Whatever the answer is
Three things a repair does not change
- A repaired car is still a car we buy. It moves the number the way everything else about the car moves it, alongside the body, the service history, the kilometres and a battery that gets looked at properly rather than assumed about. It does not decide whether there is an offer.
- Nobody puts a figure on it over the phone. We will not tell you what it costs you before anybody has seen it, because that number would be invented, and an invented number is the thing you came here to get away from.
- You are not expected to know its whole life. If you bought it second hand and cannot say whether it was ever hit, that is an ordinary position to be in. What you cannot tell us gets read off the car instead, which is a large part of why somebody comes out to it at all.
The awkward one
Three questions people would rather not ask
It was fixed years ago and you honestly cannot see it. Do I still have to say?
Yes, and it takes one sentence. Old work that was done properly is an ordinary thing to find on an ordinary car, and it reads completely differently as something you mentioned than as something we noticed.
Will telling you cost me money?
We are not going to pretend a repair never affects a number. What we will not do is decide what it affects before somebody has looked at it. The version where nobody says anything is not cheaper for you, it is only later.
I bought it second hand and I have no idea whether it was ever hit. What do I say?
Say exactly that. It is a common answer and it is a complete one. The inspector is coming to read the car either way, and nothing about the offer depends on you holding its whole history in your head.
Say what happened to it, and let somebody come and look properly.
Or call us on 03 9000 0075 and talk it through first.