Archives for May 2011

If you fork out for a brand new car, you’re paying a lot of money for something you hope will keep you on the road for years.

So we decided to investigate why Margaret Price’s brand new Ford has been spending so much time back at the garage.

Independent expert Gareth Rees with X-Ray's Rhodri Owen

Mrs Price from Caerphilly handed over £12,000 for her C-Max in June 2009, but with the first sign of rain came the first sign of trouble, as she noticed she was getting wet seats and foot wells.

Then in January 2010, after a particularly bad bout of rain she found the inside of her car soaked with water. The seats, the wells, the carpets, everything was drenched. “The only thing dry was the boot! This isn’t right”, thought Margaret.

She called Evans Halshaw in Treforest and asked them to take a look, but several phone calls and four months later they returned her car with mould on the seats.

So she sent it back again. It was returned in June, but the same problem was still happening. Evans Halshaw had now her car for six months. It has spent half its life in the garage and still wasn’t fixed!

Margaret felt short-changed by the way she’d been treated by Evans Halshaw. She told us, “Their attitude was, well you’ve bought the car, that’s it. They really haven’t given me the service I deserve”.

And it’s not just Margaret who’s been in contact with X-Ray. Taxi driver Stewart O’Shea bought a brand new Chevrolet from Evans Halshaw in Cardiff last April.

Within weeks hazard lights started to appear on the dashboard. He told us, “That worried me as it means there’s something wrong with the brakes.”

Stewart’s car also started flashing the service light even though it wasn’t due for another five thousand miles.

With the car back at Evans Halshaw they carried out a service anyway and asked him to come back to have the other problems looked at.

Stewart took the car back but again was told that they couldn’t sort it. In fact Evans Halshaw didn’t fix his car when he left it overnight for a third time or a fourth time - when he left the car at the garage for a week!

As a taxi driver, Stewart told us it’s been hard for him, “For me it’s no car, no pay”.

X-Ray asked Gareth Rees, a consultant vehicle examiner to look both cars over.

First he told us about Stewart’s, “When Stewart took it to Evans Halshaw they’ve carried out a ten-thousand mile service at five-thousand miles. They’ve returned the car to Stewart and lo and behold they haven’t addressed the problems of the illumination of the breaking and antiskid lights.

And then Margaret’s, “I looked at the vehicle myself and used a common garden hosepipe and within 10 minutes found the source of where the water was coming in. It wasn’t rocket science”.

In its response Evans Halshaw says it is aware of the issues raised in both cases, “We regret that these situations have arisen but we will continue dialog directly with both customers and we will use our best endeavours to resolve these matters satisfactorily”.

In these tough times, we’re all looking out for a bargain. And Linda Wright from Chirk is no different. She decided a year and a half ago to update her kitchen.

But months of problems and missing parts have now lead us onto the trail of Britain’s biggest kitchen conman, could he be a part of the problem?

X-Ray's Rachel Treadaway-Williams with Linda Wright in her kitchen

In November 2009 Linda thought all her Christmases had come at once when Doncaster company, Kitchens 4 Less quoted her just £800 for brand new units and doors. She said, “I've always wanted a house like this but it's taken a long time to save…it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done”.

She says that because 18 months on, it’s still not finished.

Linda told us the units had to be cut down because they were too big for her kitchen - despite it being measure up by the company  beforehand, the legs they sent for the bottom units snapped, she’s missing drawer fronts and 21 door handles, and some of the doors have expanded because they weren’t watertight.

So of course she complained, “Every time I was ringing up they were saying “cut the cupboards down” or “there is nothing we can do”.

“The only way I could get through was to put on a posh voice and say I would like to buy a kitchen. Every time I would say who I was, my post code and my address, the line would just go dead”.

At this point, we got involved. We wrote to Kitchens 4 Less at their Doncaster address, but the letters were returned to sender.

So we called the Customer Services line and were told their Head Office was actually based in Oldham, at Maple Mill.

That rang alarm bells, because Maple Mill is owned by Britain’s biggest kitchen conman, Vance Miller.

Mr Miller was issued with a Stop Now Order back in 2002 by the Office of Fair Trading after his customers complained about shoddy kitchens and missing parts. It means he could be sent to jail if he’s found doing the same again.

In fact in 2003 he was jailed for breaching the order after a further 180 complaints were made against him. He then received a suspended sentence and a £90,000 fine in 2008 for more breaches of the order.

And when we called Mr Miller’s sale number from his website and asked for Kitchens 4 Less, we were told they were the same company.

All of which is bad news for Linda, “I'm just too scared to ring up the company and be fobbed off with something else…it's just wore me out, 18 months of constant ringing and not getting nowhere”.

Neither Vance Miller nor Kitchens 4 Less has formally responded to our investigations.

Retired shop owner, Madhukant Amin pinned all his hopes on a revolutionary technique after a stroke lead to him losing part of his sight.

But thousands of pounds later and after months of effort, he’s no closer to regaining his driving licence.

Madhukant described what happened when he had a stroke during a visit to family in Indian last year, “They took me to hospital, there was no movement on the left hand side. At the end of the day I found out I had lost my vision”.

Madhukant Amin

When he returned home to Wales, Madhukant realised life would never be the same again.

He told Rachel Treadaway-Williams, “My vision at the moment is like a tunnel, you know, everything I have to see I have to keep on moving my head, you can just see straight and that's it”.

Around 7,000 stroke patients a year in Wales will experience problems with their vision and often one of their biggest concerns is the fact they can no longer drive.

Madhukant described how he felt, “I was losing my temper all the time. The worst effect was that I was house bound 24 hours a day”.

So he turned to the internet and researched a company called Sight Science, which claimed to help people regain their sight after a stroke. It was going to cost him £2,500 but as Madhukant said, “I was very desperate I didn't care about how much it was going to cost me”.

Sight Science asks patients to sit at a computer and respond to patterns on the screen which they say stimulate the injured area of the brain. It looked like the miracle he needed. 

But unfortunately Madhukant’s vision didn’t get any better. After months of following the Sight Science regime, he hadn’t experienced any improvement.

And three months later an eye test confirmed his suspicions. His optician had to break the news – that Madhukant hadn't regained his sight sufficiently to be able to drive.

So Sight Science offered him a further six months treatment for an additional £1,500. Madhukant turned them down, “I lost confidence in them said I don't want any more of your treatment”.

Sight Science claims around three quarters of people who've undergone its therapy have reported improvements in their abilities to manage day to day activities, and 10 per cent regained their driving licences.

And they say although they can never guarantee the extent of recovery, they insist their clinical data shows Madhukant's visual field has indeed improved.

We showed Madhukant’s results to Doctor Charlotte Lawthom, one of Wales' leading consultant neurologists. She told Rachel: “He's now picking up some visual things that perhaps he couldn't before.

“From a practical point of view that doesn't translate into anything terribly meaningful for him and certainly won't have any bearing on the driving restrictions. I would not have recommended him to go ahead and pay for this treatment”.

And we asked her what she thought about their offer of a further six months treatment for £1,500, “I think ethically that is questionable really. If there has been no improvement at six months there is no reason to think they're going to have a late improvement”.

With little chance of regaining full sight, Madhukant is resigned to the fact he may never get behind the wheel again.