obi

I went to view a Forester at the week-end with the intention to buy . As the vehicle may be of interest to some members of this community I'm posting the bare facts of the discussions between the vendor and myself. I leave it to the reader to draw a conclusion and the moderators to edit as appropriate.
The car is a black Forester S/Tb Type A and the vendor lives on the outskirts of Leigh-on Sea. The car had recently had a new decatted exhaust but during the test drive it felt flat. I asked if the ECU had been remapped for the exhaust. I was told it had been, " Everything that needed doing was done". Also I was told that a full service had been done at the same time. At the end of the test drive he showed me the V5 which show that the car had been brought in by a local importer and he was the first owner. I checked with the supplier of the exhaust. They had not remapped nor done a full service. Through a different Website I found someone else who had viewed the car, about four months earlier and with a different owner! I phoned the vendor and told him I now knew that the car had had a previous owner and that it hadn't been serviced. He got quite annoyed and said he had got the service done when he bought the car six weeks previously. The service was done by the specialists "scoobysomeone in Basildon...the specialists". I asked if he meant Scoobysport and he said "yes". As I tried to point out that they'd gone out of business long before he hung up on me. Because the car was what we are looking for I made one last attempt last night. By text I outlined what I felt needed checking and doing and made a low offer which was the market value less the cost of doing this work. The vendor called me. He said he'd spoken to his friend who imported it and that he now had all the paperwork about the previous owner. He was unconcerned that his friend had apparently lied to him in this area. He said he was insulted by the offer and I tried to explain that with its unknown history I had to have the car checked properly. Now he was saying that the previous owner had only had the vehicle for two weeks before selling it back to the importer. Based upon knowledge from the other viewer I asked how the previous owner had managed to advertise it in Autotrader for at least a month if he'd only owned it for two weeks. At this point he got annoyed "thats what I meant...thats what I meant...he had it for two weeks, advertised it for the month and then sold it back". I would have pointed out that I'd been sent a picture of the car, sitting outside the previous owners house with a for sale note in the windscreen and that this photo was taken several weeks after the Autotrader adverts ceased but he had got into some serious shouting at me and then hung up.
I offer this as a bit of background knowledge should anyone want to view the car.