Advice re: Dispute with a car leasing company

[Bernard Diomede]

Bit of a long winded one this. I am in dispute over payment of fees with a car leasing company after them fucking up collection of my car on numerous occasions. The details are below in the initial complaint email. They have agreed to wave the additional pick up charge but are still wanting me to pay for the damages to the car. I am not disputing the damage, only the fact that I have lost earnings as a result of their incompetence and am now unwilling to pay the remaining £340. Anybody with any similar experience or expertise in this area? They have proper pissed me off over the whole debacle so I would like to push it further and am likely to contact the financial Ombudsman just out of principle. Any thoughts?

 

I am writing to register my complaint regarding your services and in response to a sundry invoice and your letter relating to damages dated 24/9/18. 

 

First of all I would like to register my disgust at the level of service that I have received from you and the partner collection company that you associate with and am detailing the list of failures on your part below. 

 

I originally arranged for my car to be collected on 30/8/18 and received no email correspondence to confirm this, other than a text message detailing date of pick up and post code of pick up which I have attached for your information (Image 1). Prior to that collection no terms and conditions were sent to me and as far as I was aware this was the procedure that you used to confirm the collection of my vehicle. 

The pick up took place and the collection agent informed me that he could not take the vehicle because the front left tyre was illegal. This was despite the vehicle being serviced and MOT’ d on the 22/8/18 (Incidentally this MOT was completed by the independent mechanic who regularly appears on BBC One’s Watchdog). When I informed him of this and expressed my surprise the collection agent smirked and responded by saying that ‘this happens a lot’ Having refused to take the vehicle I returned it to the garage who felt that the tyre was still legal, however I was told in no uncertain terms by your operatives on the phone that the vehicle would not be collected unless the tyre was replaced. Having replaced the tyre I arranged for the vehicle to be collected on 3/9/18

 

To my great surprise I then received email confirmation of my arranged pick up (Image 2) informing me that any failed collection would result in a charge of £136.50 plus VAT. Obviously this was the proper procedure for arranging collection that I had failed to be informed of initially. Having arranged to be off work for the 3^rdI waited until around midday and had received no contact or correspondence from you, I therefore contacted you for an update. The operative on the phone explained he would try and get in touch with the collection agent and would call me back. He called back explaining that he was having difficulty doing so because their systems were down but would contact me once he did. An hour and a half later I called back to again enquire having received no response and was told that they would chase this up. I received a call back explaining that the collection process had not been properly booked in and no pick up had been arranged. 

 

I am sure at this point you can understand my obvious frustration however I arranged for the vehicle to be collected again on 6^thSeptember at my home address (Image 3) and again arranged to take another day off work to wait in for the collection. On the day of the collection I received a phone call from my friend who had informed me that the collection agent had arrived at his address and not the correct address and was about to leave and register this as another failed pick up. I spoke to the collection agent and informed him that he had been given the wrong address and asked him to come to the correct address , which was a 7 minute car journey down the road. He informed me that he was not allowed to divert from his schedule and asked me to bring the vehicle there. I informed him that because of the multitude of failed pick-ups I was no longer insured to drive the vehicle and he would need to come to me. He said that he would need to contact his office and I expressly asked him to inform me of the decision by phone call once he had spoken with them.  He failed to do so and despite me calling him 3 times he failed to answer. 

 

As I am sure you can appreciate by this point I was absolutely furious and contacted you to inform them of this. They passed on my details to the collection company who contacted me to arrange another pick up and I spoke to an exceptionally unhelpful women in the complaints department who was unable to provide any alternative pick up times to avoid me taking another day off work. Having accepted the fact that I would now be forced into taking another day off collection was arranged for 11/9/18 and I was patronisingly informed to ‘go and have a beer’ by the complaints operative.  The vehicle was finally collected on the 11/9/18, 12 days after the original pick up date. 

 

As a director of a small company that provides educational services to schools my 3 days enforced absence as a result of your incompetence has come at a cost to my company of £750 in services that I have been unable to fulfill.  So you can imagine my outrage at now being faced with a bill of £500 in related charges from your company. I am writing this email to inform you that I have absolutely no intention of paying the additional charges you have invoiced for in light of the loss of earnings suffered by my company and the additional stress and inconvenience placed on me during the period stated in this email.

 

In addition to all of this, I cannot help but feel I have been the victim of a wider scam that is in regular operation by leasing companies in manufacturing charges against clients that they have little or no recourse in paying. If I do not receive a satisfactory response to this email I will be referring this complaint onto the financial ombudsman, in addition to this I will be investigating whether there are any customers have had a similar experience to myself and if necessary am willing to pursue this in civil court. 

 

I can only finish by expressing my shock and disgust at the level of service that I have received from a company of your stature and await your response with interest.