How to recognise this scam
- You have advertised a car for sale.
- Someone contacts you (often by phone) and wants you to pay a fee, and they will put you in touch with a number of ‘genuinely interested’ buyers.
How does it work?
- Someone contacts you from a company that claims to have lots of buyers interested in exactly your type of car, and for that price.
- For a fee they claim they will sell your item.
- You pay them for their services, but they never get back to you with any buyers. The reason for this is that they have no buyers, they are only interested in robbing you of your money.
Note that there are a number of companies and individuals doing this scam. The most notorious is a UK company called Vehicle Centre (sometimes they call themselves MotorHelp). This type of company is a total waste of your time, and money.
Vehicle Centre, and other similar companies, are currently under investigation by the Irish and UK consumer enforcers and the Garda fraud squad in Ireland.
Please contact the European Consumer Center in Ireland or the UK or if you have a complaint about this type of company, they co-ordinate the pan-European investigations of these companies with the local police.