Beware

[roykeane]

Just got off the phone from a guy in the UK (00442089893669), who wanted to charge me €79.99 upfront for arranging prospective buyers to call and see me and the FTO for sale for €125 more than I had advertised it for. Is this taking the urine or what? Obviously they saw the advert in the Autotrader and decided lets take on 'Paddy'. When I told him that I was not parting with any money he decided to split the difference, and asked for €41, cheeky bastard.!!!!

[kevinod]

Jeez, some people will try anything!

Was he just some guy or supposed to be with some business or what was he up to?

[roykeane]

Seemingly they are operating within the law and are allowed to canvass for business because you have placed your number in the public domain ie autotrader etc. Unless you specify on your advert "no canvassers". Spoke to the UK Autotrader helpline and they told me that there has been reports of abusive phone calls etc and repeatedly calling you just for the harassment value. You can actually report them to a site called www.ofcom.org.uk but how effective that is remains to be seen. Lets hope that is the end of it

[soc]

This was on the news recently - they are supposed to have a large database of propsective buyers from which they match potential buyers for your car. The problem (as described on the news/prime time) is a lot of people have gone down this route and not had any calls at all - the company simply claim that did match up the buyers with the car for sale and it's not their fault no one called....

If you ask me its a scam and I'd just tell them to p!$$ off.

[Mustang]

Just got off the phone from a guy in the UK (00442089893669), who wanted to charge me €79.99 upfront for arranging prospective buyers to call and see me and the FTO for sale for €125 more than I had advertised it for. Is this taking the urine or what? Obviously they saw the advert in the Autotrader and decided lets take on 'Paddy'. When I told him that I was not parting with any money he decided to split the difference, and asked for €41, cheeky bastard.!!!!

This is not isolated to Ireland, I remember seeing a program about it before based in the UK. The service they are purporting to offer does not make a whole lot of sense. If you are advertising in the mainstream media -carzone, cbg, autotrader, buy and sell, etc (the place in which they will have gotten your phone number!). Then you have a great deal of exposure to the car buying public, and your car is viewable in a prominant location in the market place where propective punters would be looking. Why then would a propective punter go to a third party agency, to find a car for them If you take it at face value (without the bias of knowing it's a scam) it's a service that just does not seem to make any sense.

I had the same experience recently, I was selling my car and got a phone call from this crowd in the UK. Told them I wasn't interested. They must have rang at least three more times over a course of weeks, when I saw the UK number on the phone I just didn't answer.

Carzone sent me an email specifically warning about this crowd and their ilk.

They are not the only canvassers out there though. CBG were also canvassing for business as well. All the more annoying the first time they called as I also had the car advertised with them at the time
(OT advertising a car for sale has gotten very expensive IMO, you really don't want cowboys like these messing you around )

[roykeane]

This guy had the cheek to ask me when I refused to pay any monies to him or his ilk "why did you take out an advert with the autotrader in advance of a sale?". My reply was simple, 'at least with the autotrader I could see my advert'
Canvassers in general are a pain the rectum - any time I have placed an advert in/on any forum, the majority of feedback i have received has been canvassers asking you to advertise with them. My wife has had similar experiences with her line of work

[JJ]

They're doing it with houses in the UK now also. They charge an up front fee of maybe £250 for a drive by valuation. They guarantee you can sell your house to them almost immediately, but the valuation is normally hugely under what the house is worth. So you can't accept the offer and you've lost your valuation fee.

[roykeane]

These guys are unreal, they have been onto me again and this time from the angle of helping me buy a vehicle assuming that my fto had been sold. He asked for an email address to post me stuff. The details I shall send to CJ but in the short term, this is who they are www.vehiclematch.org