Its amazing what you discover online. I have recently bought another car to add to my private hire fleet in Colchester. I already have a Vauxhall Zafira, so decided to buy another one of these, as its always better the devil you know, don't they say?

Well, having trawled the internet for good value 4 year and younger cars, I found a decent one to enquire upon in Sittingbourne in Kent. What coincidence, I used to live in Sittingbourne and my brother lives only half a mile away from this actual Garage and to add Ironicy to the story the garage owner's name is the same name as my brother Nigel. How much of coincidence is that aye!

The car that I have purchased has turned out to have some pre sale complications as follows:

The back passengers door wouldnt open and the road spring has broken. I had experience of the road spring, even in other cars its common but the back door was news to me. So, after two days I called the garage to ask how things were going on the pre sales work and they reported that the main dealer at vauxhalls were requesting further authority to spend extra 2-3 hours on the wiring loom in the back door and seating area. This would mean a lot of money as main dealers are expensive on their hourly rate,its got to be serious. This made me consider whether the car has serious damage due to maybe an accident or something.

My wife and a driver, explained that day, that you can check details of pre owned cars for previous history such as a previous write off, accidents and the like on the internet. I then decided to look on the internet and found the AA do vehicle checks for £19.99. I proceeded to check my vehicle and found no specific situation had occurred to bring on concerns. I then thought there must be someone else that has had this type of car fault. So I continued to search the internet.

I found that the wiring loom in the back passenger door, has been found by others to be faulty and break in some situations and takes just over the hour to fix. Its the wire that goes between the door and the car as it flexes every time the door opens.

I am only glad that I checked to see if all the doors opened and found that this fault exists before I bought it , otherwise it would be me paying for the repair. Lets just hope that they put a better quality wire loom in. There is one good thing, the wiring will have a guarantee/warranty from the main dealer.

To add one last thing to this story, over the years I have bought cars and I have found within a short time you find out things. Such as heater or air conditioning, don't work, so now I always open doors, windows, turn on heaters, air conditioning etc as a pre check. The AA vehicle check wouldn't have picked up this door problem or any of the other things above.

On top of all this, when I was once a car salesman, in my spare time I used to go over each of my cars I had for sale and find the good and bad points especially to find out how they work. When I went over the Vauxhall Zafira above, I checked that all the seats laid back, folded to allow people in and out checking all in operation. The car salesmen didn't even know that the seats did all this and that surprises me because if you are a good salesman you should always know your product.