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News and Comment April 2024

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14 April - No Trading Standards has consequences

Now that Bexley Council no longer has an accessible Trading Services Department and the Citizen’s Advice Bureau is not always an adequate replacement, scammers can roam the borough with impunity. Yesterday the crooks who spent 40 minutes fixing my displaced block drive after quoting for four men taking a whole day were looking for new mugs in Crayford.

If you see a maroon coloured van emblazoned with ‘Lion Steam Cleaning’ steer well clear and if you are given a quotation haggle it down to about 20% of the initial figure and then watch their every move.

Thanks to Conservative Bexley being a Trading Services free zone Lion Steam Cleaning are not the only charlatans on the prowl. When my criminal friends were first featured here, @tonyofsidcup told me he had met more than his fair share of shady operators but conceded that his were not convicted burglars and rapists.

His tale of woe included a Sidcup based plumber who failed to fix a leaking tap but broke it instead and walked out leaving chez-tony to flood. A so called flooring specialist from Abbey Wood was asked to lay wood costing £50 per square metre but sneakily bought an inferior product from B&Q at less than half the price.

Opening up an old fanlight proved to be too much for a Sidcup based window company but @tony’s big squabble has been with Bexleyheath based Kent Rendering and Repointing Ltd which he eventually took to the County Court. He was not the first to do so, there had been four unsatisfied judgments made against the company in the previous seven months.
Court judgments Court judgments
@tony added to Kent Rendering’s travails with another £1,500 judgment. (Extras brought it up to £2,300.)
Judgment Getting judgment and getting the money are of course two very different things. Along the way @tony managed to get two emails from the company owner…
Email Second email
…the second of them conveying a menacing message. The police paid the company owner a visit.

The foregoing is a totally re-written account of @tony’s submission to BiB. To read his original words, names and all, click here. (PDF.)

Bexley Council cuts have consequences. I used their Trading Services when it existed; a man came out and immediately took action against the offending business. They ceased trading soon afterwards. Now there is little standing between residents and the con-artists and when they put up illegal adverts on Council lampposts, Bexley Council doesn’t care.
fixmystreet

Five adverts in the vicinity of the Danson underpass, reported August 2022.

FixMyStreet.

 

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