Our van did not pass the safety check   

We have had very abled people park in handicapped spots, and they did not even have a handicapped passenger with them and it certainly was not a gift left for a handicapped person who was in the store. So no one was going to go into the store and go up to the guy in the wheelchair and scream "Surprise!"
There are so many handicapped and disabled people and even then they may have to walk a few steps and yet someone who can do somersaults goes ahead of them.
We do have people here who are nice, but it hurts when there is that one or two bad one who cheats the disabled.

It makes me upset as well. We will have to pay at least five thousand dollars for the repairs, and it may be that after all said and done, I will not have any savings left. I do hope that it can be done cheaper, but we have not finished paying for the time we stayed in the motel yet.

suspenseful dont just take this and fork out your hard earned money,get a
pro bono lawyer and sic him on these people and make them pay your costs
instead.

I hope we can do that. The trouble is that who do we sue? The van has gone through at least three former owners. We should have suspected something when a lady in B.C. who wanted to use it for driving was refused. My husband and our friend suspected that she was too far gone, but since men usually get ALS more then women, I have come to the conclusion we that they checked the van and told her it was not safety certified and she did not have enough money to fix it.
And the trouble is our friend does not have that extra money either, so he cannot help us. He has health problems and much of the work he is doing for us is for free and we are just paying cost.

I think you should sue the people you bought it from... they did not disclose what was wrong with the vehicle... you may not get anywhere with it, because most sales are as is...unless otherwise stated... but this looks like a crime to me to cheat you like that.

I hope we can sue them. They said they were taken as well. We are getting it fixed up so this does not happen to another person when my husband dies and I have to sell the van. I cannot drive so it will do me no good and besides I do not have the money to keep it. Not having had a license except for a year kept me out of getting those good jobs out in the industrial district.

The trouble is that the van was bought in a different province and each province has their own set of rules. If we had lived in Alberta and bought the van there, then we would have recourse, but this van has been from Quebec to British Columbia to Alberta and now Manitoba and I sort of figured that that is how they got away with it, selling to someone out of the province who needed the van desperately - after all they could not sell to someone in the province or else they would have had to have a real safety check.
So now since my husband and I are honest, we will have to get it fixed up. My husband's condition is bad so that we will only have the van for about two years (considering that his als was far advanced when it was officially diagnosed) and I would like the van to be in perfect handicapped condition when I do have to sell it. I will see what can be done.

The trouble is the people we bought the van from wrote that they got the van from British Columbia, and the people who owned it then got it from Quebec and we do not know who was originally responsible or whether in Quebec back in 1998, they did not have that high standards or whether the Quebec owner did all he or she could and it needed fixing in British Columbia - but I doubt it. We used to live in British Columbia and back in the 70s you had to have a safety check every two years. I suspect that the former owners lived out in the country and just used it to go to town and they did not bother.
We can talk to our friend if he knows anyone who can help us get it right.

If our friend had been able to stay in Alberta for a week (as he planned to do - but he had to go back to work( he could have gotten it safety checked and found out and they would have flown back and said that the van was no good.
The trouble is it was in another province and we learned it was not the province it originally was from. So it could have been jerry rigged at any of the three provinces it was in.

If they were in the same province, we could take them to court. Unfortunately they are not. We are trying to find a cheap way to get the van fixed up, because we do need it. But it will cost a lot and we already paid more for it then we had planned for.

You have had it much harder than you deserv, and I pray you can find some good Samaritan to fix the van for you.

Our friend is looking into a body shop that will get the van fixed at cost (that is after hours) so we can save a little that way. We were also talking about who to sue to get the money back, but do not know who is really at fault. It was not registered in Alberta, that is one thing I did learn.

We have no idea whether they did it deliberately or not. They wrote our friend who picked up the van and said that is the way they got it, and they also said it used to belong to someone in B.C. and then our friend checked the records and found it originally came from Quebec so we do not know whether the Quebecer did it, the B.C one did it, etc. And then there is the buyer beware (I watch Judge Judy) but I do not know whether that also applies to vans sold to handicapped people. If it does, we are stuck, but if not, we could get, but the lawyer would be expensive.

The trouble is that he lived in Manitoba like we did, and he was also told that the van was safety checked, so it is not his fault. Now if he lived in Alberta, that would have been different because then he could have gotten it checked and then written to us, but he had to take time out of his work to fly to Alberta and drive the van and then once he got here, there are not that many places that do safety checks on converted vans so they had to take it someplace special and only after an appointment.

Our friend is trying to get someone to fix it under the table or he and his sons can do some of it themselves. We could also go to a smaller body shop and have someone do it under the table and avoid the tax. There was another van that was a few years younger that had been totaled in an accident, and if the owners would be willing, we could remove the handicapped part from their van and put it in ours, but unfortunately the owners want that van. It does seem a mess. My husband thinks that nothing can be done - as it is buyer beware. And I heard of this happens a lot.

That is what we feel. My husband cannot leave the province because he does not own his wheelchair and if he did, in his condition it would not work as he is getting worse and soon will have to get a reclining wheelchair. So our friends had to fly out there to get the van and they did not have enough time to get it checked there and they were also told it had been safety checked already. all of us got screwed over quite badly.
The trouble is that we have not finished for the motel bill and the tv and dvd player, we were almost finished and we had to get a microwave and a dishwasher. So instead of having an extra 1500 that we can pay off in a month, that means an extra five thousand on top of that. I do not want to have my savings to go down to almost zero. My husband says he will use the retirement fund as he will not live to 65 anyway, but even then we will lose out.

And we got our credit card bill today and since we had to put more stuff on it, it still has not gone down. Makes me rather upset. He has not asked me to take money out of my account and pay it down - I am considering paying for the groceries - after all $300 a month is not bad since I put the rest in savings anyway - but I sure do not want to take out all the savings I have in my high interest savings account, especially now that the interest rate is only a little over one percent.