Advice on Dodgy Car Dealer

Hi all,

As you may remember a while back I bought a car from a dealer. The car quickly started showing signs of problems with suspension, driveshafts, gearbox and engine.

The dealer would not honor their warranty and when I wrote to them explaining I would be returning the car they changed their company name. I have been lied to and mislead and now I am not only out of pocket from the money I spent buying the car but also 2 months of insurance as I've not been able to use the car whilst this was ongoing. This works out to be over £300 that I have wasted just on insurance costs alone. The car was meant to be my winter transport but I have instead had to re-tax my ZX9 and risk that in this weather just to get to and from work.

Trading Standards did get involved but when the company changed their name they also changed the registered owner. Now the new owner has told trading standards that they are not willing to accept the car back or have anything to with it. I still have the suspicion that the same people run the business but have just switched over the registered owner to get out of it.

I'm now stuck on what to do. I have contacted my bank and they are looking into it but after what Trading Standards have said I'm not getting my hopes up.

I think I may have to take a trip back down there and see if the same people are still running it as when I phoned them shortly after the name change I was told that they no longer worked their.

They have done this in the past and I have lost too much money to just let this slide.

Any advice is very much appreciated.

Thanks

Pay someone with no job to sit outside with a large banner telling people about them, they'll get no trade and might come to an arrangement

What frustrates me the most is how changing the registered owner of the company removes them from all previous liabilities. The fact that this "new" owner has also ignored all my attempts at contacting them suggests that they are part of the same group of people that run the business.

I don't think I've ever been this p***** off before. The fact that I have done everything by the book and still have no end in sight. Sometimes I wonder if doing something by the book is actually of any help.

[Wideboy]

I'd seek legal advice TBF, CAB or the like. I can't see any legal way of getting your money but someone legally minded would know of some route to go down.

[pookie]

you could try this contacting watchdog and upload your story https://ssl.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mg74/contact
Do they have a facebook / twitter page ?

You could go down there with a large bottle of brake fluid and talk with the owners! Might be just enough of an implied threat to get your money back

Better than painting cars lol

I don't know if I can afford to pay anything extra. I'm already applying for a second job just to cover the additional costs of not being able to use the car but still having to insure it as well as keeping my ZX on the road.

Thanks. Worth a try. Nothing else has worked in my favor yet, maybe this will.

You could go down there with a large bottle of brake fluid and talk with the owners! Might be just enough of an implied threat to get your money back

Better than painting cars lol

It just so happens that I have a 5 litre tub with me now.

No I couldn't do that. I'd end up destroying any chance I had at getting my money back.

[Tomor]

Fill a water balloon with brake fluid and do it from afar they would never know who it was!