Defects and exclusion of warranty when buying a used car

If you then turn to the dealer, claims are not infrequently rejected with phrases such as “bought as seen”, “sold without any warranty” or with reference to your own, supposedly faulty driving style. However, the fact is: The commercial used car dealer as an entrepreneur can only shorten warranty rights to consumers to an extremely small extent, for example by reducing the limitation period for defects to one year. Furthermore, the car dealer has to observe special duties to provide information and information.

The retailer therefore often tries to circumvent this limited scope for exclusion of warranty, for example through so-called "agency business". Used car dealers claim that they are only selling vehicles "on behalf" of a private person, i.e. a consumer. In this case, the sales contract would come about between two consumers - an exclusion of the warranty is actually conceivable and legally possible.

But even in this case, there may be an inadmissible circumvention transaction on the part of the retailer, because here too certain requirements for the permissibility of such an agency business must be met - for example, the “commissioning consumer” must be assigned the financial risk for the sale.

It is therefore worthwhile to exercise particular caution before buying in order to avoid problems later. Therefore, our lawyers are at your disposal at every stage of the sales contract - from the initiation to the enforcement of warranty rights!