V&J call in the administrators

[Nige123]

In my experience V & J were a bunch of unprofessional liars and charlatans. I bought my Suzuki Burgman 650 from the Mudford branch in December 2009 and soon regretted it. I took the bike in there one time for a service and fault diagnostic on a burning smell. When I went to collect it the next day they couldn’t find a fault and FORGOT to do the service! I had to take it back a week later incurring more taxi fares for which they wouldn’t reimburse me.
I had a long standing claim in with them for warranty work due to corrosion on the wheels, rear shocks and final drive casing cover which they took an absolute age to get a decision on. They eventually told me that Suzuki had agreed to pay for the work and then took about five months to book it in because they were having trouble booking the powder-coater for the wheels. They eventually got me booked in but the Mudford branch closed, so they sent a van to collect my bike and do the work at the Bridgwater branch. That was in November.
Over the next four months I had to phone them regularly to find out why they were taking so long only to be told that I should appreciate that they were paying for the work themselves as a goodwill gesture! Bit of a change from Suzuki paying for it, even if they did lose the franchise! I was also told that the final drive casing cover they received back in 2010 was the wrong one and they were waiting for the new one to arrive. All the other work, they told me, had been completed.
The next information I received was in the week before they closed. They told me that it would be finished on the following Wednesday and delivered back to me on the Thursday or Friday. When it didn’t show I mentioned it to a friend who told me that they had gone bust!
I found the information online in the Bridgwater Mercury and MCN and contacted the administrators Hilstead Langdon who told me that I should contact the landlord, London and Southwest Estates, who were arranging for owners to recover their property. I did this and asked that they confirm for me the condition of my bike. The landlord’s agent phoned me and told me that it was in pieces and the wheels were not fitted!
So, where does this leave me? After a few phone calls it seems that I should have no problem with claim to my property but retrieving it will be the problem. My insurance (Chaucer through Bennetts) want nothing to do with it. Riders will send a technician over to see what is required to recover it to their workshop and rebuild it for me but the landlord’s agent hasn’t contacted them as agreed to arrange a time for this to happen. There is also the problem with the landlord’s agent apparently charging people £100 each to get their property back!
So it seems my only course of action is to pay what it takes to get my bike back in working order and put in a claim to the administrator for reimbursement as a creditor, but as an individual I don’t expect to get anything.
The alternative is to wait for the administrator to sort it out but as the landlord appears to be denying them access to the property I don’t know how or when they will be able to.
It’s only since this has occurred that I’ve started to hear others saying how they have suffered from V&Js incompetence over the years. Why couldn’t they have spoken up before? I would have avoided V&J like the plague that they obviously were.

[scorcher]

pleased to meet you too! ;)

[Nige123]

Apologies for my bad manners Scorcher! I should have introduced myself first as I’ve just joined the forum.
Hello to you all. Just found this forum by doing a search for V&J Superbikes administration and there you were. As you can tell from my rant I have a vested interest in the topic and wanted to share my knowledge/experience/vent my spleen.
Nige.