2nd Hand Cars for Sale

Beware the Scams!

This is the story of a scam, a car scam to be exact. Actually it’s more of an account than a story as the word “story” implies use of some literacy license and this story is a true account of an actual and recent event. We begin our scam story in a small suburb of Reading called Whitley where Ahmad Tariq the BMW scammer lives and where the scam took place.

Oh no wait, that’s not quite the beginning. Lets start right at the very beginning, where you are now actually, on the internet. It was a cold morning and we decided it was time to buy a car. Tired of getting the bus every day to take our little girl to school, we needed something reliable, something reasonably smart and under a thousand pounds. So there was our starting point and we hit Auto Trader as well as several other car sites. A BMW caught my eye. It was close to our maximum at Nine nine nine but it had full service history and it looked immaculate. I couldn’t go to see it until two days later though and by that time it had gone.

Oh well back to the net. It didn’t take too long before we found the next candidate. It was just under seven hundred, had been recently serviced and was described as reliable. Perfect! Ticks all the boxes. I called the advertiser, Mr Ahmad Tariq and arranged to meet. He was a pleasant guy easy to talk to and seemed trustworthy. How bad am I at character analysis?

We took the car for a spin and the heavens opened up. It poured with rain as I asked Ahmad to pop the bonnet so I could take a look at the engine. The standard checks all seemed okay and no white smoke from the exhaust. The paint work had seen better days but I expected that as it was stated on the ad. Time to haggle. I offered £550 and we settled on £580. At that price I was quite happy until I tried to get home and Mr Tariq suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth.

Okay perhaps his feet were still firmly planted in Whitley but he no longer answered his phone. How strange. It was so easy to get hold of him before. Perhaps he had gone out without his mobile? Perhaps he had accidentally silenced it. The car had overheated on the way home and I needed to talk to him. I was very very keen to talk to him in fact.

His ad had said the car was reliable and had been recently serviced so I was confused about how quickly it broke down. Was he really unaware of any problems? You see I told him I needed to drive to Wales at the weekend and he’d assured me the car was reliable, no problems.It had only done six hundred miles since the last service in August!

Still no reply to my calls. Had he suddenly gone deaf? Did he drop his phone down the toilet? Time to get a friend to try buying a car from Mr Tariq. Enter three of my best friends. Caller one asked about the car for sale. “Which one,” came the reply. Caller two same question “which one?” Finally on the third call Mr Tariq claimed to have five cars available.

Now I felt really upset. Why was he willing to talk to all my friends but not me? Why was he ignoring me. Was it something I said? Ah, could it be he knew that he had sold an unroadworthy car? Perhaps he now realised that I knew he had lied.

Or maybe he wasn’t aware that by using the word reliable in his ad he had actually miss-represented the cars condition or worse did he really not know that by claiming to be a private seller when he is in fact a trader he had committed a criminal offence? Mmmm the plot thickens. There will be more to this saga. If you’d like to be emailed when an update is posted please send an email to info@2ndhandcars.org.uk

Filed under: Scams & Scammers

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