Would you buy a used truck from this man?
Page 5
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by Charles Young
Brian Palmer, the Essex dealer exposed by CM for selling dangerous trucks, has been ordered to pay out more than £13,000 following his refusal to offer a refund to a customer who unwittingly bought a faulty vehicle.
Last month Colchester County Court awarded judgment of £13,512 to ownerdriver David Murray who had bought a flatbed rigid fitted with a six-tonne Hiab
crane from Palmer in August 1998. Palmer failed to turn up to the hearing.
The sale was agreed in July last year, says Murray. on condition that it would include an old brick grab, a body panel would be replaced and the truck would be plated at 26 tonnes.
But Murray says when he returned to Palmer's yard two weeks later the truck's tachograph was not working. "It was not plated at 26 tonnes and the panel had not been replaced," he adds. "The diesel tank was also leaking."
Palmer refused a refund and then disappeared, leaving Murray stranded at the Hythe Quay site in Colchester.
Murray could not leave the area as his car had already been loaded onto the back of the truck before he spotted
the faults. He finally managed to contact Palmer again the next day, having spent the night in a local hotel, and Palmer agreed to sell the truck on Murray's behalf, or to provide him with an antic instead. This, says Murray, never happened.
When CM tried to speak to Palmer we got through to his father, Brian George Palmer, who said his son did not bother to turn up at court because he didn't think he stood a chance of winning after what CM had written about him.
He added that CM would never stop his son trading, claiming that Brian Palmer is still advertising trucks in CM's Truckmart section under a different name. But Brian Palmer later claimed that he had stopped working. "You've destroyed me—I'm finished," he said, adding that as far as Murray was concerned "I'll be squaring him up".