Please Read before you buy a car from Kevin Clarke of Herts.
Then make up your own mind it could save you a lot of money and Grief
We bought a Kia Carens 53 plate it was sold to us with some service history, the car was priced under £1000
Kevin Clarke stated that it was a good car and had been checked over by a mechanic as All of his cars have a 64 point check done, but as i later found out He wont let you see it.
anyway we bought the car on the 14/01/14 with a bit of discount for cash.
over the next 3 weeks, 7 faults were found on car which included, window washers ,steering wheel shakes , Knocking noise., boot catch fails, rear wiper wont work, rear screen does not heat and difficulty starting when cold.
Kevin says bring it in i will fix that, but before a day is sorted for these repairs to happen the worst fault possible happens The STEERING COMPLETELY FAILS, it locks up suddenly, totally and utterly, this happens whilst it is being driven down a local street and the car is stuck steering left at 30 mph.
By sheer luck and emergency breaking the car is brought to a stop on someones drive. and misses all other cars, garden walls and pedestrians.
shaken by the near miss and with the car now stationary on some poor persons driveway we are unable by pulling or pushing to move the steering wheel, it feels as though it has completely locked in this position after some 30 or so seconds we turn off the engine, so we can ring Kevin.
We cannot get an answer and we cannot abandon the car on some poor persons driveway so try starting the engine and again moving the steering, and it suddenly becomes free, so slowly very slowly it is taken back to Clarkes of Herts .
it is now the 06/02/14 this is day 23 of our ownership and Here is where it all starts.
No worries mate, we are told they will fix it all and we will have it back for you in 48 hours.48 hours later we ring and are told we have not done anything yet it will go in to the garage first thing Monday which is another 48 hours away.
so tuesday afternoon we ring and are told it is still here but will go into the garage this afternoon.
Then on thursday Kevin leaves a message on our phone.
Car is still in garage, but they have done Full power steering change, pipes have been cleaned and everything is working, i will get a full report for you as you requested.
Saturday 15/02/14 we go to get the Car back.
It is immediately obvious that Nothing has been done, the steering pump, Rack and all pipes are still dirty, no new parts,no finger marks in the dirt, no-one has even touched the cars steering at all.
all the other faults are still faulty as well. Kevin tries to avoid us but I really don't like being lied to and as it is such a dangerous life threatening fault things get heated until we play back his message, then he immediately calms down and changes his story to what i meant to say was that the oil had been completely changed.
and he does not have any report from the Garage but he says he will get us one at some point.
So as we can see that nothing has been done and as the car is too dangerous to be on the road we refuse the car and state we now want our money back.
after lots of emails phone calls and texts which he ignores we go to see him and he offers us half our money back which we refuse.
during this time i write to the garage concerned which is part of a major chain and got confirmation that they had the car 3 days and never got authority to work on it so they did nothing to it and after 3 days Kevin collected it.
So Kevin knew when he rang us to collect the Vehicle that no Repairs had been done,
after many weeks and Kevin upping his offer by £25, we start getting evidence together and this includes a kia Main dealer senior mechanic stating what had to be done.
Kevin had dumped the car back at the Garage and it stayed there with nothing getting done for another 35 days, during this time as the car was moved the steering failed again.
this was until I sent him a registered letter stating that i was getting the car inspected for use in court procedings, he suddenly got the steering pump changed but nothing else was done, he took it stating he would get someone else to check and fix the other faults and he took the car back to his car lot 4 days before the inspectors were due and then refused the car inspections people access to the vehicle.
To go to County Court to get your money back you have lots of hoops to go through, and these take time and money and we did this one by one.
so on 28/05/14 we started court proceedings.
On the 23/06/14 it was ruled in our favour and we duly paid for the Bailiffs to get our money back and await confirmation they have been able to collect the money owed.
This is the abridged version, i am only allowed 5000 words, but I have all texts emails, registered letters, costs, receipts and proofs filed to show that this is a true version of events.
Please read also others who bought from him.
Good luck to them all
Richard read more
