- Original Poster
- #1
Sorry, this goes on a bit but stick with it......
The story begins in March last year, 2012, when we had a call from someone claiming to be from Gumtree and saying that we owed them £1000 for job adverts we had placed with them. At the same time, we started to receive calls from people who had supposedly seen adverts for jobs that we had placed, but the jobs were in an area we were not working and did not actually exist.
I should add, at this point, that we have never advertised with Gumtree, do not have an account with them, and never will after this fiasco. Anyway, to continue:
I told the person on the phone they were mistaken, assuming that it was just some kind of scam and not to bother us again. Another phone call followed a couple of weeks later and the caller was told the same thing, then asked why, if we supposedly owed them money, had we never received an invoice for it? And where was this 'order'?
Efforts to actually contact Gumtree were like pulling teeth - at first I tried to contact them through an online form, and had an answer back saying 'so sorry, we have cancelled the order and you won't hear any more'.
All went quiet for a couple of months (July last year) when we had another call from Gumtree demanding payment once again, so I told them to go away and stop wasting my time as we did not owe them anything.
On 17th July we had a call from Arvato, the collection agency for Gumtree, demanding payment of the money, so I explained the situation and asked why we had never received anything in writing for this money we supposedly owed them?
The next day - hey presto - Arvato emailed to me the alleged order we had placed, which I took one look at and burst out laughing.
The 'order' was on Gumtree stationery and at first glance might have seemed genuine, but then when I started to read it the catalogue of errors on it was laughable:
They had our company name wrong
They had put our address down as our accountants
The email address on the order does not exist
The contact phone numbers on the order are not ours
The signature (which was alleged to be mine) bore no resemblance to mine and in fact was in exactly the same writing as the person who had signed the order on behalf of Gumtree.
Enough is enough, I thought, so I reported the matter to the police as fraud and obtained an incident number, which I duly passed on to Arvato, and also emailed to support at gumtree. I think in total I received about 8 or 9 emails from various foreign bodies at Gumtree, none of which seemed to grasp the problem, but in the end one of them suggested that I contact our 'account manager' at Gumtree and gave a phone number.
We were now into November, so I rang the number I was given and spoke to a person who was an 'account manager' for an account we did not have, and I explained about the errors on the alleged order and gave them the Police incident number.
Jump forward to December, and a letter arrives from Arvato, sent to our accountant's address (the one on the 'order') once again demanding payment of the £1000.
Another call to Gumtree, this time answered by another person who had 'taken over' our 'account' so I had to go through the story all over again and was told a manager would ring me back and sort it out. Needless to say, no such call was received.
Subsequent to that, two more letters have arrived from Arvato, one on 15 Jan, and one on 9 Feb, each getting more threatening in nature, so calls were placed to Gumtree both times and I was fobbed off with excuses and false promises that it would be sorted.
Today was my last call to Gumtree and I advised them that should I have any more correspondence from Arvato or demands for payment on an account that Gumtree have accepted is fraudulent, I would be going straight to a solicitor and sending them the bill.
What would you do?
The story begins in March last year, 2012, when we had a call from someone claiming to be from Gumtree and saying that we owed them £1000 for job adverts we had placed with them. At the same time, we started to receive calls from people who had supposedly seen adverts for jobs that we had placed, but the jobs were in an area we were not working and did not actually exist.
I should add, at this point, that we have never advertised with Gumtree, do not have an account with them, and never will after this fiasco. Anyway, to continue:
I told the person on the phone they were mistaken, assuming that it was just some kind of scam and not to bother us again. Another phone call followed a couple of weeks later and the caller was told the same thing, then asked why, if we supposedly owed them money, had we never received an invoice for it? And where was this 'order'?
Efforts to actually contact Gumtree were like pulling teeth - at first I tried to contact them through an online form, and had an answer back saying 'so sorry, we have cancelled the order and you won't hear any more'.
All went quiet for a couple of months (July last year) when we had another call from Gumtree demanding payment once again, so I told them to go away and stop wasting my time as we did not owe them anything.
On 17th July we had a call from Arvato, the collection agency for Gumtree, demanding payment of the money, so I explained the situation and asked why we had never received anything in writing for this money we supposedly owed them?
The next day - hey presto - Arvato emailed to me the alleged order we had placed, which I took one look at and burst out laughing.
The 'order' was on Gumtree stationery and at first glance might have seemed genuine, but then when I started to read it the catalogue of errors on it was laughable:
They had our company name wrong
They had put our address down as our accountants
The email address on the order does not exist
The contact phone numbers on the order are not ours
The signature (which was alleged to be mine) bore no resemblance to mine and in fact was in exactly the same writing as the person who had signed the order on behalf of Gumtree.
Enough is enough, I thought, so I reported the matter to the police as fraud and obtained an incident number, which I duly passed on to Arvato, and also emailed to support at gumtree. I think in total I received about 8 or 9 emails from various foreign bodies at Gumtree, none of which seemed to grasp the problem, but in the end one of them suggested that I contact our 'account manager' at Gumtree and gave a phone number.
We were now into November, so I rang the number I was given and spoke to a person who was an 'account manager' for an account we did not have, and I explained about the errors on the alleged order and gave them the Police incident number.
Jump forward to December, and a letter arrives from Arvato, sent to our accountant's address (the one on the 'order') once again demanding payment of the £1000.
Another call to Gumtree, this time answered by another person who had 'taken over' our 'account' so I had to go through the story all over again and was told a manager would ring me back and sort it out. Needless to say, no such call was received.
Subsequent to that, two more letters have arrived from Arvato, one on 15 Jan, and one on 9 Feb, each getting more threatening in nature, so calls were placed to Gumtree both times and I was fobbed off with excuses and false promises that it would be sorted.
Today was my last call to Gumtree and I advised them that should I have any more correspondence from Arvato or demands for payment on an account that Gumtree have accepted is fraudulent, I would be going straight to a solicitor and sending them the bill.
What would you do?
