A woman says she is taking legal action after discovering the van she bought had done more than 250,000 miles - three times as many as shown on the clock. Madlen Mierzwiak, 45, bought a Peugeot Partner van for £3,650 from a trader in London in August.
She wanted to use the vehicle for work, and saw on the dashboard that the 2008 reg had done 79,790 miles. But, when Madlen took it in for a service, she says she was told the Peugeot was riddled with problems.
And, after investigating further, she discovered the van had been 'clocked' - listed as having done more than 250,000 miles two years earlier. An online MOT search shows that the van's mileage was listed as 257,310 on May 5, 2020. It is then listed as 76,895 on May 8, 2021.
Madlen, a hair and make-up expert who works on films, is now pursuing legal action against the seller. She said: "So I bought the car on 79,900 miles, or so I was told.
"It was an 08 registration, so I just wanted something reliable and cheap to run my stuff around in. It's just a small van because I do hair and makeup in the film industry. I have a lot of kit, so I needed a car to transport my stuff around the country.
"I purchased the car on the Friday and had it serviced on the Tuesday. But when I went to pick it up they told me I shouldn't be driving it and that it wasn't roadworthy. They listed all the problems, there was about nine or ten of them, and all of them were issues that should have meant the van would fail an MOT and weren't even advisory.
"Then I called up the seller and gave him examples of the problems the service found. He claimed that [the garage] was making the problems up and that I should get another opinion.
"It just seemed odd for him to claim that I should believe him over a reputable company. He then told me that he was not giving me a refund and that it was not his problem."
After confronting the seller, Madlen called the police - who she claims said that the issue was a civil matter and not their problem.
But then, after contacting a local solicitors, she says she was told that the sale was fraudulent. Now - on the advice of Citizens Advice - she's taking the seller, who she has asked not be named, to court over the sale.
Madlen said: "So I'm just filling in my paperwork now, and will hopefully be able to get back my money and some money for damages. The seller also gave me an invoice with a fake address, which I only found out about when I tried to directly contact his company and it did not exist.
"So I also had to spend money tracking him down too so I could present him the legal papers."
Now she wants to warn members of the public that scammers can easily take your money - and nobody seemingly does anything about it. She said: "As a woman I quite often expect to be pushed around a bit by scammers, it's a shame but it's just the way the world is sometimes.
"What I'm just so disappointed with though was the fact nobody did anything about it. Nobody seemed to care, I contacted dozens of people and I was just shocked that nobody knew this car was on the roads and didn't do anything about it.
"Any normal garage would have failed that car on it's MOT, so I can only imagine the seller is cooperating with the garage or something to fake old cars tests. The bigger issue for me really is that I sold my car when I got this van, so I have no car and I'm having to borrow my boyfriends - which leaves him without one.
"If he had advertised the car as having that many miles I wouldn't have bought it, but to lie about it, sell it to me and then charge me more than he should have is disgusting.
"People just get away with stuff like this, and that is what is really annoying."
