A crook selling dangerous cars with fake MOT's
When I found my ideal hard-to-find car here, I unfortunately let the excitement for a new car get the better of me.
My initial instinct based on Windsor Car Centre's few short months in business and the dreadful 1* and fake 5* reviews he had, was that this was not a good place to buy a car from.
Zain however was insistent that the reviews were all coming from a local competitor and a disgruntled recently fired staff member.
Look at all the names and locations of his 5* reviewers, All of them from Pakistan, all fake, paid reviews. I have proof from the IP addresses too.
Even his relatives and employees leaving 5* reviews.
He claims to have 500+ reviews, but his other garage "Surrey Motors has 10 reviews, all are fake too, from Pakistan, even his old accountant
I should have followed my gut instinct and walked away.
Zain insisted the car I wanted to buy had been AA inspected and his own guys have checked it over too, but this is where the lies started!
I saw many red flags that this was a lie. But I wanted the car (White Ford Kuga FH66 LGE).
I went to view/buy the car on a Sunday, and sadly it was raining hard. I took the car for a test drive, the car was heavily pulling to the right.
Upon return, Zain showed me that the rear right tyre was so flat, it damaged the wall of the tyre. He lets customers test drive cars without even preparing them for basic safety.
I look under the bonnet and find a screwed-up ball of brown parcel paper sitting on top of the alternator!
"I thought the AA and your guys had inspected the car? Why has nobody noticed this? The cabin air intakes were also blocked and filled with pine tree rubbish.
Clearly, the car hasn't been inspected, cleaned or prepared for sale at all, by anybody. I shine my torch down into the engine bay and immediately discover an oil leak. Plain to see.
Again, it starts raining, so the vehicle inspection is cut short. We then find the electric tailgate opens but doesn't close.
We agree that he'll get the oil leak fixed and the tailgate and that I can borrow one of his cars, and he will deliver the Kuga to me in a few days.
He then tried adding a £200 admin fee...
His driver called me on Wednesday to arrange delivery. I said Thursday would be better as it's raining hard and isn't going to stop. He agrees and tells me he will get the car MOT'd ready to deliver.
He then called me a few hours later to say he had done the MOT and was on his way to deliver the car!
He delivered the car and it's raining so hard we had to go to the local petrol station so that I could look under the bonnet and see if the oil leak had even been touched. It looked like something had happened, but no idea if it had, he showed me a sketchy fake receipt for £480 for a new oil pump being fitted. No VAT/Labour.
No sign of the car's logbook; he hasn't shown me the V5 at all at this stage nor has the driver bought any of the service history with him at all. I insisted that he needs to get it to me by the end of the week or else the deals off.
It stopped raining, so I check the sunroof. It opens, but it refuses to shut! 25 minutes of repeatedly trying, it eventually closed, but I have no idea how or why. Not opening it again, as there is heavy rain forecast for the next 6 days!
I told Zain immediately that there was no paperwork and the sunroof didn't close. He accuses me of lying.
I did point this out to the driver that I wasn't going to open the roof otherwise we'd get soaked!
Still pulls to the right, I then find the car has 3 bald illegal tyres! 1 of them has split with the metal threads showing! (See pics) The car has a fresh MOT (No advisories), but was delivered with 3 illegal tyres on it!
I had to threaten Police action for the illegal MOT to get a full refund! He collected the car the same day on a breakdown truck and asked me not to leave any reviews.
I contacted his other bad reviews he had removed, all of them were real, not fake. MOT inspector reported to DVSA, Zain and his 8 current and 8 failed companies reported to the Police for fraud.
2 August 2023
Unprompted review