Looking to make contact with people who have been ripped off by Campervan restorers

My partner and I have been living through a nightmare that you usually only read about.

We thought we'd made our dream come true buying our first Campervan- a 1972 VW Devon, who we named Gwen. She needed a fresh spray of paint, but was mechanically very good.

In November 2014 we found a guy based in Norfolk to do it for us. After meeting him in person at his workshop and agreeing a price we handed her over for her new coat of paint in December 2014.

This is where the nightmare begun. From that point on we were told lie upon lie and sent photographs of work that he'd completed that wasn't of our van. This guy was a good lier and it wasn't until July 2015 when we were on our way to collect Gwen, having been told she was finally finished that he confessed that he hadn't been honest with us. But by then we had paid him a lot of money. When we turned up she had been taken apart and only a day of work of work had been completed. We were heart broken and angry. We had booked a Campervan holiday to France which we were now going to have to cancel. And worse still, we had given him all our money put aside to restore her.

At first he promised he could finish her in two weeks, that we would have her for our holiday. When we said no we just wanted her back, he promised to pay us back within 3 days. When he stopped picking up the phone to us and no money appeared in our account we went to the small claims court.

The judge found in our favour and we put our case in the hands of the bailiffs. It's now the end of February 2016 and we haven't seen a penny. This guy's business has been shut down and he says he is now unemployed.

If anyone out there has also been ripped off by a Campervan restorer or you have any information about this guy please get in touch on here or on my email adrianwellsrippedmeoff@yahoo.co.uk.
Thanks,
SusieH

 

Hi. I feel your pain. I had similar happen to me, also in Norfolk and also with a guy called Adrian (different surname though). Having trouble sticking a link in but if you search for 'AWOL restorer' you should find my posts, which I really should finally update. Anyway, I got my bus back in pieces and finally got a guy in Norwich to finish the body and mechanicals, so now have a great bus. The other guy went out of business with bailifs taking his gear, had a bit of a breakdown, got a court judgement from me after taking my money and, last I heard, was working as a labourer in Gabon or somewhere!

This sounds like a different guy, but if you want to PM me we can make sure. I am a Norwich boy originally (not now though) so can ask around old friends. Anything I can do to help, please ask.

 

http://thelatebay.com/index.php?threads/awol-restorer-the-next-chapter-resto-update.14672/

 

Thanks Mr Dodger sir!

 

Hi Fronkjunior, thanks so much for getting in touch and sharing your story. I will send you a PM as there seems to be a few things in your story that make me suspect they are the same guy. So pleased you got your bus back and she's looking so good!

 

Thanks!

 

I feel very sorry for you. It seems when you rely on photos it presents the restorer with the opportunity to make the work look good (if some is done) and might be terrible in the flesh. And obviously the opportunity to go further and send pics they might even have downloaded from a google search after doing precisely nothing but pee your money up the wall.
If there's a lesson it's get recommendations and visit every time before paying out any money.

 

And another - pay nothing in advance - if your chosen restorer runs his business so close to the hilt that they need money up front surely they must be in debt already?

As a restorer, getting and spending money before doing the work is a disaster in action - you would still have to do the work but there's now no payday at the end. So now you have a situation where you need more money for more bills and 2 jobs in front of you - one that will result in no money (you already spent it) or one with a payday - what would you do?

I'm in no way excusing thieving restorers, but I think sometimes customers while trying to help things along with cash, unwittingly do precisely the opposite.
99 times out of a hundred when offered an advance I turned it down - I'd rather borrow from the bank and still have a payday, even if that just paid off my overdraft.

 

I totally agree with you, we made it easy for him to rip us off, which only makes us feel worse ! I hope your wise words will help others not make the same mistake that we did.

 

A sad sad story but needs telling as I for one tend to forget just what utter utter bs are out there!

It's difficult not to trust people sometimes

 

Yeah I've never paid up front ever.
Hope everything comes right

 

Have you got your van back?

 

Was he trading as a limited company or as an individual? I'm assuming the former, if not you need someone to track him down and find out if he has any assets to secure against. I had a bloke who failed to pay my fees once and the court placed a charge on his house, imagine his shock when he came to sell the house! I of course had a very angry guy shouting at me down the phone, I suggested he spoke to my solicitor and put the phone down on him.

In hindsight we should all know better, I paid a guy half up front for painting my bus the paint job was OK-ish but lesson learnt. And paid a guy for half a job (never came back to finish it) on my bus I ended up doing it, but that wasn't the plan.

All I can say is there is a lot of them about

 

It's awful when this sort of thing happens but more and more the scrotes know how to play the system. Their car's leased or owned by their daughter. The house is only in their wife's name. Nothing in the house belongs to them, even their laptop and phone are in their wife's name. Their tools are owned by someone else and they always have receipts to back up their claims. It's as if they knew what was going to happen. Oh, wait, they're lying cheating scumbags so they did know, because they've done it before.
Unfortunately the law abiding citizen goes to court to get their money back. When they win and it's not paid they spend extra money to get court bailiffs involved and when they go round they discover the scrote (on paper) barely owns the shirt on his back.
It's enough to make you start cultivating some friendships with big strong dodgy geezers, and researching foolproof alibis.

 

I doubt it.

 

Yes thank goodness. We have managed to find some more money to finish her!

 

I'm always on the look-out for some more money but I never find any!