Not upheld: unsatisfactory quality of goods supplied under hire purchase agreement complaint against Lendable Ltd trading as Autolend

Decision detail

Summary

Mr B purchased a used car through a hire purchase agreement with Autolend in September 2025. The nine-year-old car with 99,897 miles broke down in January 2026 with turbo and O2 sensor issues. Mr B incurred £650 in diagnostic and storage fees at a local garage, and a replacement turbo was lost by that garage. The ombudsman found that the component failures were due to normal wear and tear given the car's age and mileage, not defects present at supply, and therefore did not uphold the complaint against Autolend.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman applied the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which requires goods to be of satisfactory quality at supply. For a nine-year-old car with nearly 100,000 miles, a reasonable person would expect components like the turbo and O2 sensor to require replacement soon, as they were at or near the end of their natural lifespan. The turbo's typical lifespan is 80,000-120,000 miles and the O2 sensor's is 100,000-150,000 miles. Therefore, the failures represented normal wear and tear rather than defects present at supply, making Autolend not liable.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website