Thread: Insurance Write Off Car - garage wont refund the money

Hi everyone this is my first post here and it is a desperate (in need of help) one.


We purchased a Ford Puma car from Adlington Used Motors, Adlington, Lancs on 6th August after agreeing price of £1200 and paying a deposit of £100 by bank transfer a few days before. We paid for 6 months car tax £100 and filled the car up with petrol at the adjoining garage a further £50 = a total of £1,350.
A payment of £1200 was paid by Visa card on the day.

The V5 documents were not shown to us and the garage owner kept them to send to the DVLA. We did return with the MOT documents and a receipt from the garage for payment of £1200 and a receipt from the Post Office for the road tax payment.

On the return trip after buying the car it became obvious things were not as they should be – no controllable heating in the car (the heating was fully on), the passenger side wing mirror fell off (it had been glued on with silicon), the drivers window glass would not stay up once lowered and there was no radio cassette player in the car as advertised. So far from mint condition as the advert said.

On returning home a careful look at the car produced the view that the car had been re-sprayed on both sides a new bonnet had been fitted (badly) with a new bumper, these had not been obvious at the garage.

We then did what we should have done on day one, had a HPI check run on the car which produced the results that the car was an insurance write off (category C). Speaking with our insurance company (Tesco) we were told the car was not insured to drive on the highway and they would require an independent engineers report before they could consider whether to insure the car or not. There was no guarantee the car would pass an inspection or be insured without an increase in the annual charge for insurance.

Visa confirmed the payment had gone through and to ring them if we could not get our money through agreement with the garage owner.

We immediately rang the garage and after about 2 hours were rung back by the owner, we informed him we wanted our money back as the car was not road worthy and with all the faults would cost too much to get back on to the road. He agreed to come down to Telford and give us our money back on his return from holiday in 2 weeks time.

After 2½ weeks of waiting we finally caught up with the garage owner to arrange our refund and he stated he would come down on 4 dates following our conversation with him on Tuesday 1st September (2nd, 3rd, 5th and 8th) but every time he was due to arrive, after chasing him, he stated he could not make it. On the final attempt to sort this out he promised a visit on Tuesday 8th September but cancelled, when asked to agree a time, stating he could get to the bank in time to get the money.

He had offered the night before to pay by cheque which we said was not acceptable.

He was then asked to make a bank transfer on 8th and was supplied our bank details but again no payment was made.



Is there anything I can do now ?

Have you got any of this in writing, his agreement to a refund that is. If not put eveything in writing to him, including details of whats wrong and the arrangements you had made for him to return the money etc. formally reject the car nad dont use it any more. give him 7 days to return all monies paid or you will take him to court.
Now your other course of action is to do a charge back on your CC, probably better than the court route. you need to send them a covering letter explianing whats gone on and the reason you are claiming together with the letters you have sent to him and anything he may have sent you including any emails. may take about 3months but you should get your money in the end, if he does not pay up before.

Thanks you very much for the advice very helpful, I will give it a go. The CCC had already said to give him a chance to refund the money but as this hasn't happened after 4 weeks of trying as far as I am concerned that is it.

The car concerned hasn't moved off our drive as it cannot be driven legally on the road.

Best regards