Car Hire - too good to be true?

Gilly-ray

Morning all
Thought I would let you all know our story and add to the posts in here. My boyfriend saw an add for rentmac in the guardian around 21/12/10 and called them regarding hiring a 4x4 over Christmas. We live in London but I was in Plymouth over Xmas visiting family and his plan was to drive down on Xmas day and then drive back to London on the 27th. Unfortunately our car has a brake issue which is why he wanted a hire car, particularly a 4x4 because of the snow.
He paid a £500 deposit and £128 hire via bacs payment. Normally he wouldn't thought twice about this but because they advertised in such well know national papers, he thought it would be ok.
The car was meant to be delivered to his mums house in Slough on Xmas eve by 9pm and they said they would pick it up on mon 27th at 9pm. Obviously, like every one else, it didn't turn up. Luckily my boyfriend was able to use his mums car over Xmas but we are now £628 down!
I have sent numerous emails to rentmac from Xmas eve onwards... I have received failure notices for all of them, none of them have been delivered.
We called them last week, yesterday and today NUMEROUS times and spoken to their "out sourced call centre" who have advised someone will call us back but no one does.
I have given all of our details to Mark at the Guardian and spoken to the police as well. I called the police again this morning and quoted the crime reference. I was informed that this is currently with Islington police but that it will be passed on to whichever police force are closest to the crime.... They think that it's going to be Surrey police. He said that they have traced the rentmac telephone number and they think it's based in Surrey and that the HSBC account that we paid the money in to is HSBC Sutton.
My boyfriend banks with halifax and they have been hopeless to be honest. We asked if they could raise a dispute and they won't even do that because they say the payment went through BACS Faster Payment scheme.

Trading standards have sent me a template letter and advised us to send it via recorded delivery to the 100 pall mall address.

Has anyone been able to speak to someone at rentmac? Not just a girl in their , so called, call centre? Has anyone had a call back from them?

I have also submitted all our details on the watchdog website and I urge everyone else to do that as well if you haven't already.

Lifes_Grand_Plan

Don't know if this is relevant but may be helpful...

About 10 years ago I ordered some Ralph Lauren shirts after seeing an advert in the News of the World newspaper.

The company went bust shortly after cashing my cheque and I lost all of my money. At the time I seem to remember reading that (some legislation stating) newspapers carrying these adverts can be held liable in some way and partly responsible for the refund or something like that....

Did a quick Google but came up with nothing so not sure what the score is with that, but might be worth a check by someone.

gossi

Just to be clear, this is *NOT* a company. There's nobody to speak to who does customer care etc. It's a criminal (or criminals) behind it. They don't have any cars, VAT registration etc.

I've spoken to a few of the newspapers and indeed they too haven't been paid.

sussex1_2

Likewise I paid using the same method, BACS, having been advised as to payment issues using debit/credit cards etc, on 18/12.

The amount is also similar to the figure that I paid through to the account listed previously, can you post up the account details (was it the HSBC account I listed previously) that you used to enable the overall picture to be updated by gossi.

I also tried to call them this morning and got the call centre receptionist again who is still manning the phones despite the fact that previously they were reporting the office re-opening today.

gossi

HSBC Account
Account name: DBD Ltd (Diamonds By Design Ltd)
Sort code: 40 43 26
Account details: 21866117

(They may have more than one account, I don't know).

The people answering the phones work for a company called Regus, they provide 'virtual office' space and telephone answering to RentMeAnyCar.com at a cost of £229 a month.

Gilly-ray

gossi wrote: »

Just to be clear, this is *NOT* a company. There's nobody to speak to who does customer care etc. It's a criminal (or criminals) behind it. They don't have any cars, VAT registration etc.

I've spoken to a few of the newspapers and indeed they too haven't been paid.

Think we have worked that one out now.... The question is, where do we go from here?!!

Gilly-ray

Oh, also, the person my partner spoke to when he made the payment said that his name was Jason Day.

gossi

The police, basically.

Jason Day joins Terence Smith and Gary Smith as made up employees.

Gilly-ray

gossi wrote: »

The police, basically.

Jason Day joins Terence Smith and Gary Smith as made up employees.

Indeed.
Well the police have said that they don't expect to be in touch any time soon and that they first need a force, more than likely Surrey, to take ownership of the crime.
They also advised that we speak to citizens advice bureau or a solicitor to discuss whether we should be seeking compensation from the papers who advertised rentmac...although I don't know how far we would get with that.
Feeling sorry for the girls taking the calls right now..... They haven't got a flippin clue. Arrrgh!

gossi

Here's my latest tracking update. Updates in green.

Different 'employee' names we have are: Anthony Stevens (director?), Lee Stevens (director?), Simon Tate (CSR), Derek (CSR), Jenny (CSR), Andrew Ryan (CSM), Jason Day (CSR), Terence Smith ("main shareholder"), Gary Smith (CSM).

The main company registration in charge of this is RentMeAnyCar.com Ltd

Registered No 07421608
Incorporated 28 Oct 2010
Registered Office 2ND, FLOOR BEREKELEY SQUARE HOUSE, LONDON, W1J 6BD
Owner Anthony Stevens (possibly fake)
Date of Birth 08/06/1967

Directors information - PDF download.

They also have no VAT registration.

So far all the financing appears to be through Diamonds By Design Ltd.

Registered No 07407417
Incorporated 14 Oct 2010
Registered Office 154 Eastern Road, Brighton, East Sussex BN2 0AE
Owner Mubassar Ahmed Mirza
Date of Birth 07/11/1978
Occupation Jeweller

Company formation document.

Photo of house.

We know they [RentMeAnyCar.com] are hosted from a 'virtual office', i.e. it doesn't exist. This is through a company called Regus. They're paying for virtual office assistant so some (all?) of the people answering the phone are actually not Rentmac employees right now. The package details are here.

Bank details

HSBC Account
Account name: DBD Ltd (Diamonds By Design Ltd)
Sort code: 40 43 26
Account details: 21866117

Natwest
Account name: Unknown
Sort code: 54-30-36
Account details: 39127753

Newspapers
I have confirmed with several that they too have been defrauded.

Police investigation
The Guardian confirmed they reported the issue to the police.

Despite people reporting to police, there does not yet appear to be an active police investigation ongoing.