1:20 pm, November 21, 2022
The BBC’s Morning Live programme has uncovered a dodgy used car dealer that ripped off customers by not paying off their car finance.
CVF Rochdale took in a number of cars in part-exchange and didn’t settle the previous owners’ finance agreements.
It then sold some of those used cars on again with outstanding finance on them, leaving customers out of pocket.
In a segment in today’s show – which you can watch here on BBC iPlayer starting at 08:10 – Matt Allwright investigates the dealership.
‘Every now and then I hear a story that really grinds my gears,’ said Allwright.
‘We have been hearing from customers of a second-hand car dealership, CVF in Rochdale, about some particularly dodgy practices which have left some customers out of pocket and in some cases without a car.’
He spoke to a number of CVF Rochdale customers who have been left paying two finance agreements after the car dealer failed to settle their agreements.
One couple swapped their Mercedes for an Audi and realised a few weeks later that they were still being charged for their Mercedes.
It had £18,500 of outstanding finance on it that the dealer never paid off. When the customers contacted the dealership, they were told it would be sorted but the dealership then blocked their messages.
The couple set up a Facebook group to see if others had been conned and the ‘Were you ripped off by CVF Group Rochdale?’ page swelled to 89 members.
Another customer traded in his Jaguar for a cheaper Hyundai and again the finance wasn’t paid off.
The police were notified and put a stolen marker on the car, which led to the new owner – who bought the car from CVF – being pulled over by officers and the car seized.
They are both still paying for the car as two finance companies argue over who owns it.
The BBC named two directors and a sales manager in the programme.
CVF has now gone into administration and was wound up on November 1.
Allwright added: ‘Customers have been blocked, the CVF showroom has disappeared and on their website it says due to circumstances beyond their control CVF has now gone into administration – well, do you know what? This is not my first rodeo. It’s also not my first rogue you know. I am aware of how these things work.’
Allwright explains in the programme that investigations by the BBC suggest a new company has been started up by some of the CVF team, called Gotham Motors.
Its investigations suggested some of the cars being sold at Gotham were previously for sale at the CVF site and said they should have been liquidated by administrators.
Allwright said: ‘It’s called “phoenixing”, where one company is burnt to the ground, declaring it cannot pay its bills and forces it into liquidation, and then it rises out of the ashes.
‘Lo and behold, a new company is born. That company is called Gotham Motor Group, set up in January this year by CVF director Dave Ward.’
The CVF sales manager also joined the team, but Ward has since resigned.
Ward told the BBC in a statement that at the end of last year the company ran into ‘serious financial difficulty when a credit facility closed’ and as a result its ‘main finance company stopped working with it’.
He said the ‘credit did come back’ but by that point it was ‘too late’.
Ward told the BBC that some of the company directors put some of their own money in to save it but the company was ‘forced into liquidation’. He said he ‘does feel for the people affected’ and said he ‘did try to stop the problems’.
He resigned from Gotham Motors in September and has since had ‘no association with the company’.
In tomorrow’s Morning Live, Allwright is set to meet the Gotham Motors team and hear their side of the story.
A statement on the CVF Rochdale website said: ‘Due to circumstances out of our control and with a heavy heart we were forced to close our business and we would like to apologise for the effect this will have on our customers.
‘On Friday 9th of September the company was forced into administration from a company we previously had a credit facility with. This had the add on effect of our credit lines and bank accounts being immediately frozen.
‘The director and shareholders over the last 12 months put hundreds of thousands of pounds into this business to prevent this but due to the filed partition we just could not stay afloat.
‘We understand that a handful of creditors are currently in limbo with where they stand with CVF Rochdale but the company is being handed over to liquidators (B and C associates) and they will get in touch with the relevant parties as soon as possible.
‘We are sorry CVF Rochdale LTD.’
