My autistic son brought a van from a private seller. ( there was 5 other cars on his drive and another van, plus loads of machanic tools in his hallway,  so he probably is a unofficial dealer).  He gave the van a once over, he checked for any warning lights that might be on, there was none. He checked underneath for any rust etc, it all looked fine. The body was rough, but you'd expect that for the age of the van.  He got his brothers machanic to give it a pre mot check, as the van was old so he expected it to have a few problems. The van is a deathtrap, the seller had blacked out all the warning lights that were on the dash,  and I mean all.  He had also painted some kind of black stuff on the underside, to hide all the damage there.   My son drove it for over 2 hours to get it home. The machanic said he's surprised my son is still alive, and an untrained eye would not of seen what the seller had done.  Iv asked the seller for a refund and for him to have the van back, but he is refusing. Is there anything we can do.   

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First of all it sounds as if your retailer is very decent and very responsible. This itself is unusual in these kinds of circumstances and I think we need to bear this in mind. The guarantee is not particularly relevant and in fact the dealer had a statutory duty to exercise a certain responsibility for your computer – probably for several years as their obligation under the consumer rights act. The dealer may not have known this and it simply acting out of a sense of moral responsibility and that is even more noteworthy. You've already suggested earlier that you didn't really want to cause problems for your retailer. I think that you will need the help of your retailer as well in order to get information and evidence. I suggest that you proceed against DPD – but before you do that – I suggest that you have a discussion with the retailer. Tell them that this is what you are going to be doing and you would like to have a copy of anything they have which relates to the special instructions which apparently your dealer has already informed you about in relation to where item should be left. Secondly, maybe you should tell your dealer about this site and also about this thread. I can imagine like many dealers who are frequently sending items by means of couriers, they have had things go missing. Tell them that we will be very happy to help them recover money for lost or damaged or stolen items – and that is regardless of whether or not they have purchased insurance. Apart from being very pleased to help your dealer recover items which have been lost by irresponsible parcel delivery companies, I think we need to encourage the complicity between you and them so they will be pleased to support you in your claim against DPD. It will be helpful if you can get a copy of the instructions that you have referred to above, and also if you can get some written evidence of your own instruction that your laptop should be left in a safe place. Have you done the reading on this sub- forum? You will need to do lots of reading of many of the similar stories on this sub- forum. They won't necessarily be against DPD but the principles will broadly be the same. Also read the pinned topics at the top of the sub- forum in order to understand many of the principles involved. Getting your money back but be quick – but your chances of success are better than 90% that you can bank on it taking anything up to a year. Have you got anything in writing from DPD either refusing you or telling you that they won't discuss with you?  

Thank you for telling us the text of the letter you had from the police. As we don't seem to have come across this before, it would be really useful for us to see the original please. HB

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