Recourse? Leather that wasn't leather
 

Oh, dear. I was hoping this was going to be a happy occasion. I'm trading in my 05 Cooper S tomorrow for a 09 Cooper Clubman. That part is wonderful and I could not be happier with the dealership and the deal they made me.

Here's the kicker. I found the window sticker in my files that was on my 05 when I got it. I paid for leather seats. There it is big as day. Cruise Control too. My car does not have these items. Seems I have "leatherette" and never had cruise.

Having just gone through what it costs for these features, I'm well aware that I paid about $2k too much for my current car. I've had her for 2.5 years.

Do I have any recourse with the dealership that I bought her from? What should I do? For what it is worth, I had them reappraise the car today, just to check my numbers, and they did NOT mislabel the seating material this time nor did they indicate the car had cruise.

I am, as you can imagine, a bit annoyed.:mad:

In case I was not clear, I did not buy my current Mini directly from Mini, and my complaint is NOT against MINI. I just don't now what my recourse is here.


Thanks-

Go on a drinking binge and just forget the whole thing.

I'd go and request the records from whoever you bought it from, then demand the difference of what the purchase price would be without those options. In which case I hope you haven't gotten rid of the car quite yet so you have some proof.

Who did you buy it from?

I think it is too late for any kind of compensation from the seller.

It probably is too late, but fraud is still fraud, the worst thing that can happen is they say no, the best thing, you get 1500 back

I think you'll probably end up writing this off as a "learning experience". It's going to be hard to get a judgement two and a half years later, and forget about fraud - proving fraud requires that you prove that the dealer intentionally deceived you, and you'll never be able to prove anything beyond the fact that your car was simply misconfigured at the factory and no one caught it.

Just out of curiosity, how did you go over two years without knowing that you didn't have cruise control? Even if you never tried to use it, the missing Multi-Function Steering Wheel controls should have been a dead giveaway.

Thanks for all the interesting replies. I found out two days ago that my seats were not leather, when the MINI dealer was calculating trade in value. Not sure what the fraud laws are, if it is from discovery or event.

It's not that I didn't realize the car didn't have cruise control before now, honestly, I"m not that dense. It's that the selling price was calculated based on the features being present. I paid too much for the car. That is my beef.

The car was purchased from CarMax. I found a complaint online last night from someone else who had the same thing happen to them also a 2005 Cooper S, purchased around the same timeframe. They determined the difference in value and Carmax cut them a check after much hassle. But, they discovered the problem very soon after buying the car.

I have the window sticker that was on the car when I bought it, and I have a CarMax appraisal from yesterday. Both list the same VIN number so it is pretty conclusive. The CarMax that I bought from is right next door to the MINI dealer so I will be paying them a visit this evening, too.

At a minimum, they will give you at least as much of a hassle. More, because of the elapsed time. So depends if you want to go thru that. I think the person that discovered the error recently, probably had some legal recourse leverage. (I'm not a lawyer), but you might not. I would at least talk to them and see their reaction. You can tell them you'll file a complaint and try to negotiate some sort of compensation.

I tried to tell some of you Yahoos on here that the MINI Leatherette looks and feels a lot like leather and it's not the old vinyl you know from cars made 10 years ago.

Well, here's your proof !! :lol:

I'm betting Carmax compensates you in some way. They do have a fairly decent reputation to uphold.

If the Vinyl is anything near the quality of the Mercedes Benz "MB Tex" it is actually preferable to Leather. I have seen old MB leather next to MB Tex and the MB tex looks better by far with age. And it actually feels better than Leather.

But... you pay extra for leather.

Now... this have not that much to do with this situation but I gotta ask... if you had the Window sticker then you had it when you first bought it from Carmax? And so all this time never looked at it?

I certainly hope so. I was really shocked when the MINI salesman told me it wasn't leather. Our other car has leather and I never noticed a difference.

It was in a folder along with all the other paperwork we got with the car. Why would I look at it? I had no reason to doubt that the car they sold me had the items listed. To be honest, I did not realize that cruise control was listed on the sticker until last night. But that's certainly a feature you pay more for. All of this came up because I sat with a dealer on Saturday and saw just how much these features influence the price. When they told me what leatherette seats were, it made me dig out the paperwork.


Now... this have not that much to do with this situation but I gotta ask... if you had the Window sticker then you had it when you first bought it from Carmax? And so all this time never looked at it?[/quote]

So, I did a little research, and in VA, there is a 4 year statute of limitations on this. I'm well within that period.

[FONT=&quot]§ 2-714. Buyer's Damages for Breach in Regard to Accepted Goods.[/FONT]
We'll see how this goes.
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

That looks promising, especially since it doesn't appear that you have to show that the seller *intentionally* misled you as to the nature of the goods.

The best way to find out whether this was a factory build error that no one caught (Believe me this happens fairly often), is for you to obtain a copy of the actual build sheet of the car and compare that to the original window sticker.

Any MINI dealer can pull out the build sheet with the VIN number. It takes 30 seconds at the most.

I have heard about a Clubman that came from factory with a white roof (White roofs can not be ordered in the Clubman) and the car made it out of the factory, was put in the ship, arrived here at the BMW Vehicle Processing Center and ultimately arrived at the dealership = AND NO ONE CAUGHT IT!
The customer was alerted to the fact that his new Clubman had a white roof instead of the Silver roof that the customer had specified. The customer drove the car for 1 month, hated the look of the white roof, rejected the car and MINIUSA ultimately re-purchased it. Nothing wrong with the car other than it had a white roof. Personally, I would have kept it myself!

In the UK there was a R56 Cooper that was painted in Dark Silver metallic. If you know a thing or two about MINIs, you'll know that Dark Silver is a Cooper S only color. Yet the factory let a Dark Silver Cooper slip by. The car was sold to a customer. That individual today has a "rare" factory mistake car.

In the past few years there was a R53 Cooper S that had the correct Cooper S front bumper cover, but the rear bumper was that of a regular Cooper.

As you can see, the "Just in time" production system is not 100% foolproof and errors in the build configuration can happen. But what baffles me is how certain cars with obvious "violations" make it out the door is simply beyond me....

To me this is clearly an instance of a factory build mistake. If all the evidence lines up correctly, I see why not MINIUSA will take this into account as a repeat customer.

Be nice and calm about it. Avoid issuing accusations and insinuating that you were ripped off or intentionally mislead. Take it easy, be polite and see the chips fall on your direction.

This might sound strange but is there a chance the car was in an accident? Given that there's airbags in both the seats and steering wheel, if there was an accident someone didn't want reported to their insurance they might get the stuff that was damaged replaced as cheaply as possible, ie Leatherette seats, non-MFSW (if for some reason the actual wheel was damaged beyond the airbag and horn system) etc.

Possible, but not very likely. I still think this was an innocent factory build error. If this can be proven he should be due to compensation for the items that were paid but never delivered in the vehicle.

That's interesting - I didn't realize that DS was an "S"-only color worldwide. I know that for the first-gen cars, Electric Blue was an "S"-only color in the U.S., but it was available on the Cooper in the UK. I even saw one at the 2006 MOTD gathering.

That's probably how most flukes slip by, packages and options that are good to go in other countries don't look out of place on a US spec car. Could you imagine if your job was to do quality control on new MINI's coming off the line? After testing the windows in the 100th car that day you don't really care if the paint color isn't supposed to be on that model.

Yep. DS has been mostly reserved for the S model. And you are right about Electric Blue. In the US it was a color exclusive to the MCS but in addition to the UK and other European markets, Electric Blue was also made available in the R50 Cooper hardtop for the 2005 MY in Canada.

When I went to Vancouver, BC back in 2005 I remember seeing an Electric Blue/White roof R50 Cooper in the street. It looked fantastic.

Oh, you don't have to convince me about the difficulty of doing quality control for MINI. My 2006 MINI has a 2007 VIN stamped on it! (and then crossed out, and then joined by a 2006 VIN right next to it).

Build specs are different for each market. For instance, in Europe side curtain airbags and Air Conditioning are sold as "Extras" in new MINIs. Whereas US/Canada builds come with them as standard factory equipment.

In Canada I believe Xenon headlights are standard equipment as well as heated front windshield. Heated front windshield has never been offered in US spec models.

It gets really interesting when you see the "core" differences in MINIs destined for different markets around the world.

I have to beg to differ on the "preferable" remark. Leatherette/vinyl does indeed have more durability than leather... but for some people (me included), it is far less comfortable to sit on. Whenever I've driven/ridden in a leatherette car on a warm day, over a period of time, I always end up with a sweaty back against the seat. Driving my MINI (with leather) on the same day... not a problem.

Leather just plain "breathes" better than leatherette/vinyl. Of course, cloth seats breathe better than both of them. :lol:

Haha:lol:

I would love to see a pic of that. That mistake alone makes your car more valuable!:thumbsup:

Should we start a thread of "MINI Factory build mistakes".:popcorn: