Does bad smell need regassing?

Try this a few times and see if it still smells:
About 5 minutes before you arrive home, go to the climate section and switch the AC part off. Leave the fan running, the higher the better. By the time you get to your destination, the ac will no longer be very cold and there will be no condensation. If you do this consistently the smell will be gone. Are you in a high humidity area?
The smell is a common thing in many cars. Some more than others. I've had it in cars and following the above procedure will get rid of it.

 

You have to keep doing it every time. It will get less over time. It will take a while if it got really bad. And yes London qualifies as humid so you get lots of condensation when your ac runs. This is normal. It gets nasty when that condensation heats up after you park the car and causes mold to grow.

 

I am not trying to be funny here, but if you are not using the A/C or fan, why are you leaning to blaming the A/C for the smell?

Could it possibly be something else? I was thinking of a leak may be in the rear seam near where the hatch hinges are. Check in the rear underneath the 12 V battery for standing water. If it is this, there are a few posts about the cause and how to fix.

Just some thoughts.

 

There was a bit of a weird smell in my new (to me) Prius since I bought it. Last week I attacked the seats and carpets with a carpet cleaner. The dirty water was filthy dark brown and the smell is now gone. Perhaps your car just needs a bloomin good clean!

You might also try:
- heat and fan on MAX, leave car running (Ready mode) for 20-30 mins while you're not in it. Maybe not feasable depening on your neighbourhood. This would dry out any dampness in the interior.
- check under the carpets and in the boot, under spare wheel for damp/water/mould, remove/cleanup as needed

At this point, personally, I would forget trying to get the dealer to sort it.

 

Perhaps a mouse died somewhere under the hood or in the intake even. Did you check the airfilter area ?

And yes, seats do smell. Even with leather. Mine smelled funny too until I treated all the leather with leather conditioner. Smell is completely gone.

 

It could be anything. As pointed out, a mouse will do the same thing. As will a mouse that peed somewhere and the smell will come back for ages and just when you think it's gone, it comes back.

If you can turn the vent on without the AC and still get a smell, I too vote for this not being an AC problem. Go find an interior detail shop. Spend the 150GBP to have the inside cleaned. Spend the extra to get the ozone generator in there and get all the smells out.

 

The ozone generators work amazingly well I've heard.
Does it get worse when it's rained a lot ? I owned a car a long time ago where this happened. Every time it rained it smelled like crap. It was leaking at a window. The water would run down under the floormats and soak the carpet. Because the floormat covered it, it wasn't very obvious AND it made the smell worse becuase it could not dry out due to the floormat blocking any ventilation to the carpet.
Just throwing out a scenario.
ANY car I've had before w the bad AC smell would always get resolved by venting without AC on before I stopped the car.

 

it might give you a case of something! sounds like you got the O without the B.

 

body odor. but you got the odor without the body. seinfeld saab series.

 

Mould is everywhere... Seriously. It is in the air you breath, the food you eat, the vents in your house, everywhere. Very little of it is actually dangerous, but fear is an excellent sales technique.

You are in the UK, so the legal rights could be different. But here and in Canada (which I assume would be more similar) you are on your own. When you buy a used vehicle it is AS-IS. There could be a hive of bees living in the passenger seat and a dead body in the trunk. It is your responsibility as the buyer to have the car inspected and make a decision if this car is worth the price they ask. Most people do not take the car to be inspected anywhere, they trust the seller to give them all the info. That's a stupid idea, but within your rights. As long as the seller doesn't commit fraud, you are 100% responsible. By fraud that means you specifically ask him "does this car have mould, I have bad asthma" and they specifically respond "no this car doesn't have mould". Then you get mould, and now they are fraudulent. If you ask "what's wrong with the car" and they say "nothing! It runs great", then they are just telling you what any salesperson would say, and there is no fraud.

Lets assume you did specifically ask and received a specific fraudulent response back. Now what do you do? If you turn the car back in, as some jurisdictions allow, you don't get all your money back. The dealership rented you a car for all this time. You put miles on the car, you took time off of it so it is now older. The value is less. Sometimes you would get back all but the difference between what they could sell it for now and what they sold it for then. More commonly you get everything back minus a rental fee plus mileage fee.

You've had the car for 4 months now right? Setting aside you usually only have 3-days, 14-days, 30-days, or in some very very generous jurisdictions 90-days, all of which you are way past, if you were entitled to a refund you wouldn't get much back. I just looked up renting a full size in London now and it is $70USD/day. The same car in my town is $40USD/day. I did not see a Prius available to rent, but here the Prius is $55/day, 137.5%. It makes no sense, but it is more for a hybrid. And considering you don't (or didn't?) have to pay congestion charges with the Prius I am sure there is a premium rental fee there too so lets say $96.25USD/day or £61. 4 months, so lets say 120 days and you are at £7320.

If the dealer offered to take your car back for purchase price minus a £7K fee, would you do that? Probably not. So lets drop the ridiculousness of trying to get a refund. It won't happen, and even if it did for some strange reason, you won't be very happy about that either.

Work on getting rid of the smell. Drop a few hundred quid on a good ozone treatment and interior detail and consider it to be a life lesson.