WE’RE WATCHING YOU
TWO months ago, I reported how a nurse ran into problem after problem when she tried to return the car she had leased from Volkswagen Financial Services.
The lease was due to end on April 30, so six weeks earlier she gave VW notice that she wanted to hand back the Volkswagen rather than buy it, but instead of collecting the car, VW helped itself to £4,005 from her bank account, which would have been the balance due for a purchase.
When the nurse complained, VW returned the money, but explained that it could not collect the car because of lockdown. VW agreed to extend the lease so she could still get to work, but soon afterwards changed its mind and scrapped the lease, so the nurse returned the log book papers to the DVLA and cancelled the insurance. This left her unable to use the car, but VW still failed to collect it and ordered her to carry on insuring it.
By July, things got even worse. VW called in debt collectors, claiming that it was still owed £4,005 for the car. Then it finally sent someone to collect the car, but they demanded that the nurse fit a new tyre at her own expense.
Meanwhile, the car sat on the drive at the home of the nurse’s mother. I did suggest that VW pay for a tyre instead of paying storage fees for the unusable car, but it did not like this idea, though it admitted it should never have demanded the £4,005, let alone used a debt collector. And that was how things stayed until the beginning of last month, when VW burst into life again – not with a solution, not with collection of the car, not with the offer of a new tyre, but with a fresh demand for the same £4,005 that VW had previously confessed was not due.
VW has now told me: ‘A letter was automatically generated by our system and sent in error.’ But the best news is that VW also sent someone new to collect the car, and he found the tyre tread had miraculously grown back to well within legal limits. VW has withdrawn all its claims, accepted the car back, and has offered £250 to the nurse as an apology for turning minor mistakes into a serious saga.