Buying a used car online can be a rewarding experience. Not only can you browse hundreds, or even thousands, of cars from the comfort of your own home, you can also find some fantastic bargains.
How about a 2013 Range Rover Evoque for £11,800? It's got 14,800 miles on the clock, it's in "extremely good condition" and has "superb" bodywork. Take a look at the advert below. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?
There's a very good reason for this -- it is.
Firing off an enquiry to the dealer returns a message (which we've produced below in full) which prompts you to send a bank transfer to a company account. The email goes on to say: "Once we receive the payment confirmation plus the delivery address, we will proceed in delivering the vehicle within 24 hours anywhere in the UK.
"After you receive the vehicle you have 3 working days to inspect and test drive the vehicle to ensure it's [sic] condition is as advertised. If the vehicle is not as advertised, we will return your money the same day and we will arrange for return with the same insured shipping of the vehicle at no additional cost, in the same time when you will get the money back. [sic]"
And if the dealer's shaky grasp of punctuation and syntax didn't start alarm bells ringing, he then signs off the email with a direct quote from the Arthur Daley manual of dodgy dealing:
"You have to decide fast because at this price the car won't stay too much time on the market. [sic, again]"
(Hover over image to enlarge)
So, let's recap. The dealer is offering a Range Rover Evoque (market value: around £30,000) for just £11,800 on the condition that you send him the money up front, without seeing the car.
Of course, there is the possibility that the advert is genuine, in which case the dealer is essentially giving you a car worth £30k for less than half of its actual value AND delivering it free of charge. The much more likely outcome is that he'll simply hot-foot it off with your £11,800 and disappear off into the sunset.
The dealer tries to explain away the price difference, saying: "It is well below other similar vehicle's [sic] price guide because it has served its lease term and this amount clears it value."
Of course, a genuine seller wouldn't try and sell a car for less than half of its list price, regardless of circumstance. Either way, the dealer is either a crap businessman (possible, especially given his weak grasp of the English language) or a con man.
The plot thickens...
We were surprised to receive a phone call from the 'dealer' asking for the adverts to be removed from our site. It turns out that he runs a legitimate limited company which has been 'hijacked' by fraudsters who, using his name and business as a cover, are attempting to extort money from the general public by selling cars they do not own for knockdown prices.
Having reported the issue to Action Fraud, the UK's national fraud reporting centre, the dealer received a crime number but has since received very little cooperation. We also rang up Action Fraud but were told that the centre's systems were down and asked to leave our name and number so a representative could ring us back within 48 hours.
We don't know about you, but we think that the lack of urgency and interest displayed by Action Fraud is inappropriate given the threat posed to innocent consumers by scammers of this type. After all, in 48 hours' time, many buyers could have already been cheated out of their hard-earned by these fraudsters.
What's more, given that the fraudulent email we received actually contained the scammers' bank account number and sort code, we can't imagine that Plod would have too much trouble trying to track these criminals down. A quick sort code check immediately revealed to us that the fraudulent account is held at the Hounslow Central branch of Halifax.
Since then, we've had another email from the same scammers, using a different business as a cover, requesting to list their stock on our website. The wording in the email is quite literally identical to that used in the initial email we received from the first 'dealership' asking for their stock to be listed on the site.
It seems that these fraudsters will stop at nothing to extract money from unwitting customers.
The solution
We'll keep you updated with developments as they unfold; however, in the short term, we'd urge buyers to exercise caution when buying used cars online. NEVER hand over money for a car you have not seen, and remember, if a deal sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Dealers -- and anybody else who runs a limited company, for that matter -- should keep their eyes open for any cars being advertised in their name. A simple Google search could reveal some unwanted activity which at the very least could do significant damage to a dealer's reputation, not to mention their customers' bank balances.
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