At Albany Senior High these three are studying for life
outside the classroom. I can see you driving that. Their
school offers classes in what it calls Adulting 101.
See look this one's got 80,000 Ks. Today's lesson buying your
first car. That seems too good to be true. Yeah. There's a lot to
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learn every week. The Fair Go inboxes are packed with sorry
tales that began at a car yard or in a driveway and are headed to
the disputes tribunal or going nowhere. To be honest, it's
revision for these guys. Each one of them has already taken
the plunge about 11 months ago and bought their first set of
wheels. I bought the car for 5 grand, 7 grand. I paid 5,800 for
it. Rebecca went to a lot of car yards. I knew that I wanted
a small and economic car. We took it for a test drive and it
had a pretty good history on it. Mackenzie bought private but
not from a total stranger. The car we bought off one of my
dad's colleagues. We knew that they didn't really drive it
around a lot because it was just one of their like backup
family cars. Matthew carts around a lot of sports gear. So
I knew I really wanted a car that had lots of space. We took
it to one of our family friends who does car maintenance. Um he
helped us out. He looked around at it and made sure everything
was safe. None of them has had any problems yet. But your
first car can become your first big consumer headache so just
like a defensive driving course can help keep you out of
trouble maybe some defensive buying advice is what we need
now.
No, not from Tina. She's an actor. This is Greg Hedgepeth.
He's the boss at Turners Cars. They told him his first waka.
Uh with my father, he helped me buy the car at auction, a
little Honda Civic. Now, Greg's agreed to let me try to sell
him a car so you can hear the kind of questions a pro asks
when they're buying. Yeah, she looks alright. He's softening
me up. Was there any accidents or anything that went on in
Japan that could've affect the performance of the car? No,
dealer didn't didn't mention that? What about service
history? He's probing. And Warrant of Fitness? Has it got a
warrant of fitness? Uh I need to get it sussed out probably
in a couple of weeks time. Okay. Okay. I'd certainly would
would want a warrant of fitness before I would consider
purchasing the vehicle for for at least six months. Then the
ouch question. Tell me why are you selling? Oh well it's so no
issues that you're aware of in regards to the vehicle. And to
be sure. Would you mind if I go pre-purchase inspection done on
the vehicle? A pre-purchase inspection is when you book an
independent assessment with a mechanic. It might cost you
$100 to $200 dollars and you might need to take the car to
them. Exactly. If the seller's reluctant to let you get one.
That's definitely a red flag I would say. Even with that
inspection, there are no guarantees which is when Fair
Go hears about it. It is difficult to find every issue
in a car. There's a lot of mechanical working pieces. A
lot of those are encased and aside from actually taking
apart the engine or taking apart the transmission it's
really difficult to to to know so your best protection might
be to know your rights if you bought from a dealer it comes
down to what's fair and reasonable in relation to the
age of the vehicle the mileage the condition of the vehicle
that you know is shown by I guess the price that was paid
for the vehicle so when looking at all of those things you have
to say is it fair and reasonable that this car would
have this issue within that time frame since purchase.
For our trio it's been a year of trouble free motoring so
would they still feel confident to go back to the seller now
with a problem? Probably not now because I've I have had it
for a while. No I wouldn't actually. No well I've had it for
almost a year. Possibly if it was really big something that
could have been there when I got it then I'd definitely
consider it. Sounds fair and reasonable. Any last words of
advice? The biggest thing I'd say is know what you're looking
for. To save early and stuff like that. We go for something that's
economic and cheap to run like you don't need to get the most
expensive car for a first car.