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Dodgy Transport Company

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markheneghan

2/5/2017 17:37 EST

As a former ex-pat now living back in Ireland, I wanted to share a most unpleasant experience with a transport company who I entrusted with all of my worldly possessions. In doing so, I hope that as few people as possible suffer the same fate as I and around 15 other people have endured.
In June 2016 I was moving back to Ireland from Istanbul. I managed to find a transport company run by an Englishman operating out of his base in Bulgaria, who specialised in transport by road from Turkey to the UK. Having done my research on the internet , everything about the company seemed to be above board, and the owner appeared to be an honest individual. The cost for this service was £5 per Kilo for shipment to the UK and a further £2 a kilo for onward delivery to Ireland. I therefore boxed up my possessions and on June 22nd 2016, the company in question collected 11 boxes at a total weight of 160KG. For this, I completed a bank transfer for £1,120.
From this point everything went wrong. The owner of the company sub-contracted the work to a Turkish driver, who subsequently refused to deliver the goods of 15 people (myself included), because the owner of the company was refusing to pay him what he was owed.
To date, 1 year on, 15 people still await their goods. The owner has referred the matter to the UK police, who seem disinterested in the whole matter and have stated on several occasions that it is a civil matter that will need to be dealt with in a court of law. The owner of the company has not offered to pay a single penny back to anyone, despite not providing the service he was paid for. He will not provide us with any documentation or the name of his solicitor or insurance company, so that we can make a legal claim for re-imbursement of our money.
To date he continues to advertise his Tr-GB-Transport service and refuses to acknowledge any responsibility to the customers he has let down. He ignores our messages and if anything is put up on his website that he disagrees with, he deletes the message and blocks the person from his site.
Please, I implore everyone. Do not use this company. He provides no receipts, he clearly has no insurance and he takes no responsibility for things that have gone wrong.
If anyone needs to know the name of the company they can email me at thehappyhatters@gmail.com
Mark (Ireland)

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britsabroad

2/6/2017 04:27 EST

There has been a sad conman doing the same UK-Bulgaria. I contacted Action Fraud, my local constabulary and Gloucester Constabulary, the area in which the remover held goods. I would be interested to know if this is the same man. Action Fraud took details of the case (we lost £7000 by the time we'd paid again ourselves to retrieve our goods) and gave me a reference number. I had hoped that other victims would also report but because the con man kept stringing them along with plausible excuses they were frightened if they reported they might lose their goods. Both constabularies originally declined to even give a crime ref number. I did some research and reported that the remover had fraudulently accepted money for a job he knew he was not going to carry out. In other words attempting to get your goods by deceit. I 1 person contacts action fraud and gets a reference number then if all 15 of you make a report linked to the original they might act. Btw this happened last year and a week ago I finally received a crime reference number from Gloucester Constabulary - seems now they've decided to investigate! I also stressed that the money transactions occurred out of UK bank accounts and in UK. PM me if I can help

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bryan1324

3/28/2017 11:32 EST

Being an ex Policeman I can tell you this is a very grey area. It is a civil matter unless you can prove the person set out to commit fraud, if the deal was done outside UK then you will be unlikely to get any Police help.

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