Used car bought 3 months ago, deemed not roadworthy by the AA

[Sara MeLo]

Hi everyone,

I have 3 questions that I hope someone can help me with:

Q1: I've been driving the mentionend used car for 2 months now (technically 3 from the purchase date, but less than 1600 miles driven by commuting), which has some faults that I reported to the trader during the 30 first days and that I can prove weren't fixed correctly. This faults make the car unsafe to drive (deemed by an AA vehicle inspector a week ago) and it is unlikely that it would pass an MOT with all the other extra failures encountered. Could the trader blame me for the other faults (which I can't entirely prove that were there), and refuse to take the car back? Or in this case would it be him who had to prove I "wrecked" the car in these two (3) months? (which I haven't, of course, but the inspector said there was internal evidence that the car had been in an accident, and the police have no record of any past accidents in the history of the car, it could be hard to prove who had it).

Q2: If I didn't do a very "formal" request for a refund during the first 30 days, but I stated it on an email (mentioning the Consumer Rights Act 2015) and the trader refused to take the car back, am I still entitled to get a refund?

Q3: We have now investigated a bit more the trader. The invoice number on our receipt is invalid (since before the sale) and he is striking off its company (I guess that means dissolving it?). The store has changed its name already, and it appears that he has dissolved many other motor companies in the past. He sometimes replies through an email account with the new company name, although they ask me not to write them directly (saying they have nothing to do with the sale, although they are using the same adress and same text descriptions on their website). Past companies of his are a combination of words used for the new company's name, which makes me believe they are closely related. Could this mean he's systematically dissolving companies to get away with this kind of behaviour? And could this somehow help my case or worsen it?

Thank you for taking your time to read this!

S

Ps: I'm in Scotland by the way! In case the law is different here.

[ostell]

So you can get on to companies house and object to him winding up the company

[Sara MeLo]

So you can get on to companies house and object to him winding up the company

Thank you! I've just checked the "Companies house" website and it appears that the proposal to strike-off has been suspended.
However, I've found out that the person to whom I've been addressing the complaint letters/emails, had resigned as director of the company in 2017. The store staff were the ones who directed me to him by telling me he was "the person from whom I bought the car", although it was his fiancée who closed the sale (I've checked their profiles on facebook just now and it was quite easy to find out). Interestingly, the new company name has the fiancée's surname on it, although she is not listed as director (it might be some other family member). I can see, then, where the relation of the trader with those combination of words (or "surnames") comes from.

They've got a lot of companies registered with similar names, where their own names have spelling mistakes or have omitted a middle name and things like that, making it very difficult to trace or relate the different companies. Even now I have serious doubts about who should I've sent the complaint to. I hope that this is not something that they count on, which might help them in court (saying that I wasn't complaining to the right person or something like that, and that they never knew about all the events that I reported...).

Thanks again for reading and helping!