A Bidfood delivery lorry reversed into my car outside my house in January. Bidfood used a fleet management company, VMS, to arrange repairs and provide a hire car. Since then, I have had no meaningful updates from VMS. The manager assigned to my case is unavailable when I ring, and promised callbacks don’t materialise. In the meantime, I have received five penalty charge notices (PCNs) for unpaid Ulez (ultra-low emission zone) charges, indicating that my car has been driven without my knowledge.
BN, Brighton
Thus begins one of the most extraordinary cases I have ever investigated. Soon afterwards, I received an almost identical complaint from NC in Hertfordshire. Her car was damaged by a lorry belonging to food wholesaler Bidfood in June.
VMS, which is contracted by Bidfood to log claims and manage repairs after such incidents, towed it away and provided a hire car. Like BN, she is still awaiting news of its return and has to continue monthly personal contract purchase payments for a vehicle she has no access to. “I’ve had radio silence from VMS,” she writes.
This is where the tale darkens. Both vehicles, I discovered, were taken by VMS to its contracted repair shop in Kent, called Cobra Coachworks. The repairs were duly carried out and paid for.
They have been held effectively to ransom there ever since, along with about 23 other vehicles, because of an unrelated commercial dispute between Cobra and VMS.
How do I know? Because VMS and Cobra both readily told me.
Cobra’s managing director, Greg Ebeling, said he was refusing to release them because of money he alleges VMS owes for unrelated contracts. He added that he was also retaining the 23 other vehicles brought in by VMS on behalf of other clients, including Iceland.
VMS confirmed this figure but won’t tell me how many of those were owned by members of the public. Iceland declined to comment.
According to VMS, Cobra is demanding it pays £189,000 in arrears, that have nothing to do with the vehicles, but has failed to provide evidence of any debt.
VMS, which is paid hire fees by Bidfood for the vehicles it provides affected owners from its fleet, seems to have been remarkably cavalier about the saga.
It appointed a solicitor to write to Cobra demanding the return of BN and NC’s cars the day after I intervened last month, and only then appears to have considered upping the ante. The solicitor tells me: “We have highlighted that our client may be forced into seeking an injunction for release of vehicles, and that any separate alleged monetary dispute should be dealt with under normal court procedure and protocols, as opposed to using vehicles as attempted leverage.”
Extraordinarily, Bidfood says it wasn’t told of NC’s case until August, a month after her car was repaired and paid for, and was unaware of BN’s predicament until I alerted it in September.
“There have been unacceptable delays by VMS Global and the withholding of vehicles, following disputes with garages they engaged to undertake repairs,” it says. “These issues were not escalated to us as they should have been. Given the unacceptable service that both members of the public and Bidfood have received, we have ended our relationship with VMS Global.”
It says it would continue to work with VMS to secure the release of the two cars, and advised the vehicle owners to report them to the police as stolen. The police told both it was a civil matter.
And what of the PCNs issued to BN for unpaid Ulez charges while his car was in Cobra’s possession?
Ebeling, who tells me all the vehicles were being “securely stored”, claimed a Ulez camera happens to be bang outside the entrance to the premises where cars are taken, and therefore triggers a fine each time they are removed for out-of-hours parking.
But how come the five PCNs show BN’s car was clocked in various parts of London: in Tooting, North Finchley and a housing estate. Ebeling, who has paid the fines, did not respond.
Ebeling promised VMS and me that both cars would be returned two weeks ago. They weren’t.
BN finally got his car back a week ago, nine months after it was taken, with 46 extra miles on the clock.
NC was promised hers this week, but on the day of delivery was informed that Cobra had lost the keys. It was returned the following afternoon.
Both drivers suspect that without press intervention they would still be waiting.
