Anyone bought from Elite Savings?

GemJar_2

jiminternational wrote: »

I did a little bit of detective work...

Firstly I tried googlestreetmapping the post code... I recommend following the following link (remove spaces) and taking a little afternoon virtual stroll with me down this lovely leafy street of North London:
http : // maps. google. co. uk / maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=51.611381,-0.178699&spn=0,0.01929&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=51.611437,-0.178797&panoid=SZ_SWxigOzwW5itZi9Ao2w&cbp=12,142.08,,0,5
You will find that the first building on the even-numbered (right) side of the road is "300 Ballards Lane" which is a side entrance to a legitimate insurance brokers. Navigate your way down the road (towards and to the right of the homebase lorry) and you'll pass a little blue-roofed church on the right. I presume the CEO of Elite Savings must spend a lot of time in deep prayer here because, wandering further down the road, the next building on the right is a row of 4 terraced houses named 6a to 6d.... suggesting a) that number 4 Woodberry Grove does not exist, and more importantly b) that number 2 Woodberry Grove (the registered address of Elite Savings) is in fact Finchley Christian Spiritualist Church!!

Also, if you try Googlemapping "2 Woodberry Grove, Barnet":
http : // maps. google .co. uk/ maps?hl=en&q=2%20Woodberry%20Grove,%20Barnet&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl (remove spaces)
.... you'll find a list of other companies registered at this address from an incredibly eclectic range of business types, all with rather dubious looking websites!

Without even a hint of sarcasm, I would have no hesitation in putting my full trust in this company. I would perhaps suggest purchasing 3 or 4 different really expensive items from their website, each time using a different debit card so that Elite Savings have as many of your financial details as you can possibly give them. I have no doubt they will use these details in a wholly responsible and legal manner. Good luck with that one!!

store.apple.com/uk/ipad it is then!!

Best wishes,
Jim

That was fantastic. Quite possibly one of the best MSE posts I've ever seen.

wullieb1

Seen elitesavings.co.uk as a sponsored link on Amazon.

Had a browse around and decided to do a little search for the name.

Decided not to bother as sometimes things really are just too good to be true.

jiminternational

GemJar wrote: »

That was fantastic. Quite possibly one of the best MSE posts I've ever seen.

Cheers mate! _party_

BrianCryer

I found jiminternational's post fascinating. Doing a little digging of my own, I have access to the RoyalMail Postcode Address file for the UK, and it contains numbers 4, 6a-6d, but no number 2 Woodberry Grove. So just another indication that the address is bogus.

TheTruthSux

Okay so here is what they have to say for themselves...

Hi J***
Yes we can actually, they are just comments from people who have not
actually ordered from us, instead they're just badly informed
spectators who are using Google street view (of all things) to make a
judgement about us. The fact that we are based in Finchley, and not
Barnet, says everything about the comment you've pointed out to us!
Barnet is in Hertfordshire, we are in North London, so that's quite
some distance.

The fact that we are a professionally registered company & verifiable
with companies house is enough for customers to appreciate that we've
gone to great lengths with our company & we intend to be in business
for a long time to come. Yes we are new, we do not hide that fact, but
what we despise, is being labelled without evidence. All those people
making comments have not placed a single order with us, therefore,
they have no qualifications to make a judgement.

Thankyou for your understanding,
Evening Assistance Team

TheTruthSux

They really are just helping me not believe them as they have been sending me multiple emails trying to convince me that they are legit, would a real company go to these lengths to try to convince one customer?

jiminternational

Thanks for sharing Elite Savings' response with us, TheTruthSux.

Perhaps the "Evening Assistance Team" should in fact be on the "Daytime Assistance Team", as it appears they are very tired at such a late hour and have confused themselves considerably in their desperate and ill-thought out attempt to convince us of their existence. They have omitted to respond to any of the evidence provided that has suggested the illegitimacy of the company.... apart from attempting to differentiate between Barnet and Finchley.

"we are based in Finchley, and not Barnet"

In fact, Barnet is a borough of North London which contains the district of Finchley and the suburb of High Barnet. In other words Finchley is IN Barnet!!

The Evening Assistance Team member also claims that their office is "quite some distance" from Barnet because Barnet is in Hertfordshire. This is simply not true - the Borough of Barnet in fact borders Hertfordshire and is clearly in North London.

The below image shows the borough of Barnet in the county (or region) of Greater London. Just go to Wikipedia and search for Finchley and Barnet for further disambiguations of the actual whereabouts of these places.
http /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/LondonBarnet.svg/200px-LondonBarnet.svg.png (remove spaces)

It is quite clear to me that the response that has been offered by ES does in no way detract from the clear fact that their premises at the address they provide on their own website simply does not exist!

A laughable attempt at pulling the wool over the eyes of MSE contributers!

Nice try Evening Assistance Team. Keep assisting.

TheTruthSux

jiminternational wrote: »

Thanks for sharing Elite Savings' response with us, TheTruthSux.

Perhaps the "Evening Assistance Team" should in fact be on the "Daytime Assistance Team", as it appears they are very tired at such a late hour and have confused themselves considerably in their desperate and ill-thought out attempt to convince us of their existence. They have omitted to respond to any of the evidence provided that has suggested the illegitimacy of the company.... apart from attempting to differentiate between Barnet and Finchley.

"we are based in Finchley, and not Barnet"

In fact, Barnet is a borough of North London which contains the district of Finchley and the suburb of High Barnet. In other words Finchley is IN Barnet!!

The Evening Assistance Team member also claims that their office is "quite some distance" from Barnet because Barnet is in Hertfordshire. This is simply not true - the Borough of Barnet in fact borders Hertfordshire and is clearly in North London.

The below image shows the borough of Barnet in the county (or region) of Greater London. Just go to Wikipedia and search for Finchley and Barnet for further disambiguations of the actual whereabouts of these places.
http /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/LondonBarnet.svg/200px-LondonBarnet.svg.png (remove spaces)

It is quite clear to me that the response that has been offered by ES does in no way detract from the clear fact that their premises at the address they provide on their own website simply does not exist!

A laughable attempt at pulling the wool over the eyes of MSE contributers!

Nice try Evening Assistance Team. Keep assisting.

You are priceless! They now will not answer my emails after i again questioned them with your research!

m2476

I was looking for a new phone and came across elitesavings. nearly half the price of other sites i av looked at. does seem to good to be true. checks out with companies house, but updating their phone system? not sure about that bit.
I do know a few people down london way just not sure they would actually visit the building to check it out.
After reading the above posts I don't think I'l bother, though I did laugh at the responses. Inevitably some one will get scammed.

Alex_May

(bit of background for the shill-paranoid: I'm the developer of Eufloria (eufloria-game dot com) and you can feel free to email me or otherwise contact me via that site or this one if you want to)

Hello, I have potentially fallen foul of this via Google shopping's exhaustive price search revealing their incredible deal. It was £100 or more less than most other places. Watched the stock levels go down by about 1 every 4 hours and finally gave in and bought. I paid in total just shy of £280 including shipping for an HTC Desire, on the 1st of July. I have a three-figure order number. Paid by credit card so I guess if it's all a scam I am insured... I think...

When I completed the transaction I had no idea why the price was so low. Four days later and no shipping message, I decided to check them out a bit and came across this thread. I have now read up on the following pages:
(add these to the elite savings co uk url)
index.php?main_page=conditions
index.php?main_page=page&id=1

So it seems as if they have some supplier (presumably in the Far East), who every 15 business days loads a bunch of electronics onto some shipping containers and has them placed on a boat to the UK (that'll be the "low priority" style mentioned in the links above). That boat arrives in the UK some indeterminate time later, I guess the originally-quoted and customer-scaringly-long 35-odd business days, now presumably removed from the site to give way to a much vaguer "We'll SHIP it within 15 days by SHIP", where they unpack the goods and ship them out by courier or whatever, to us.

So total shipping time would be the 15 business day turnaround PLUS the time taken for a ship to get to the UK from wherever it is the suppliers are, PLUS overland shipping from the port to our homes. What are we looking at there, about 12 weeks maybe, say three maybe four months-ish.

I guess I'll post back as I have more information, but I'm not getting a refund now as they charge 7.9% + 50p for that - maybe that is where they intend to make most of their money, although having said that it doesn't seem like a viable long-term business plan.

I hope it's real as I don't want to stay in this iPhone-shaped prison for another three months only to be disappointed and have to go about getting compensation and then buying a Desire for near 400 quid anyway