MR P's STORY - justice is done!

Monday 9th February 2009.

I bought a car from this company over a year ago, which included the 'one month warranty'. After three weeks the car broke down whilst I was driving at 70 mph in the fast lane of a busy motorway! It had a broken head gasket. After paying £140 to get it towed back to the garage, they had the car for five weeks. After demanding a courtesy car for my work they gave me a Ford Fiesta. I was happy with this until I was stopped by the police, who informed me that the car had no insurance,  even though Excel had assured me it had fleet insurance and I would be covered.

On return of my own vehicle, it lasted about another three days before the same problem happened again. When I contacted the Excel they said it must be the way I drove it and refused to fix it - you can’t blow a head gasket just driving fast. I then contacted Trading Standards who told me the correct procedures. First I got two independent mechanics to come and assess the car, one being the RAC. Both told me the gasket hadn’t been fixed properly and to return it to Excel. Lo and behold, they didn’t take the car back and legal proceedings had to start.

When I asked for the company address I got a different address to one that was on the Excel site. It was “Botterill Motors” with director Steven Botterill so the letters from me and Trading Standards both were returned unopened.

When I took them to Court I went through the process under the name of Botterill Motors. When I had no response I did more investigation because I didn’t think anyone would ignore a Court letter. I went onto www.creditgate.com where they confirmed that the name of the business is Excel car sales and the director is definitely Christopher Christoforou, so I changed this at a cost of £70 to the registered name and thought this would change matters.

They then ignored it again as so many of you on this website have stated, so I set out a warrant of execution and levied goods. This was when I first got a response and a Court hearing was set for 3rd February. Their defence was that the car had never belonged to the garage or to either of the directors (even though the log book states it), so this is just another stall tactic.

He didn't turn up in Court so the Judge put the defence aside and the baliffs are going ahead with the levied goods. I have got Chris Christoforou's address as it is on www.creditgate.com where you can find out the directorship and company details. It shows that Excel is a registered company at that address but it also shows many others.

Tuesday 10th March 2009

You will be happy to know that I got all my money on Friday. The balliffs went round with a tow truck to take the cars they had warrants on, at which point Mr Christoforou said he had changed the company into his son's name so he wasn't going to pay it. When the balliffs asked for proof he went into his office and brought back a plain piece of paper saying "I Christopher Christoforou hand directorship to my son," obviously a legally binding document! When the balliffs explained that it didn't matter as it was the company being sued not him, he refused to hand over the keys to the cars with warrants on. So the balliffs left and returned with the Police saying if needs be they would break into the vehicles and take them. Christoforou then said he would go and get the money and he had to pay extra charges of £500, due to the Police having to be called, and also the two tow trucks having to be taken to pick up the cars. This meant that in total he had to pay £4129.00.

RESULT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!