Car Hire - too good to be true?

jamesbrownontheroad

From today's Guardian. I've copy-pasted some of the more important points (with my emphasis). We now know that RentMAC posed as part of the Guy Salmon Group to obtain £114,000 advertising credit from The Guardian alone. Not a penny has been received by the paper.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jan/08/rentmac-car-hire-offer?INTCMP=SRCH

Did Rentmac's car hire offer take you for a ride?

Rentmac's advert appeared in December promising bargain car hire for the Christmas holidays – but motorists were left out of pocket

Patrick Collinson
The Guardian, Saturday 8 January 2011

Police have launched a fraud investigation into a firm trading as "Rentmac" which ran prominent adverts during December in the Guardian, Financial Times and radio stations across the country promising "Xmas Special" hire rates for quality vehicles at bargain prices.

People typically paid between £100 and £250, plus a £500 deposit, and were told the car would be delivered to their home. But as Christmas approached, the alarm was raised as the promised vehicles failed to materialise. Irate customers were initially told the heavy snow was preventing delivery, but even after the snow cleared they were left empty-handed.

...

There is, though, a glimmer of hope for a small number of customers. Monies paid by customers to Rentmac went to accounts operated by HSBC and NatWest. The HSBC account saw a large number of credits come in from 14 December.

Most of the money was then withdrawn, as cash, but on 23 December HSBC "inhibited" the account, barring any more withdrawals, after it began receiving complaints. It is understood that a small amount of money remains in the account, but HSBC says it can only refund cash from an account if it is formally told by the police that the money was obtained from criminal activity. Any refund would be on a "last in, first out" basis.

Some victims have questioned why major national newspapers and radio stations carried the Rentmac adverts, but it appears that the media were duped in the same way as car hire customers. In the Guardian's case, Rentmac booked a total of £114,000-worth of advertising, on 28-day credit terms. The Guardian has not received any of this money.

Rentmac was able to obtain credit and pass standard checks by posing as another company. In its submission to the Guardian before credit checking, it gave its name as "Guy Salmon trading as Rentmac", giving Guy Salmon's company registration number and the name of its company secretary.

Guy Salmon is a reputable business, part of the Sytner Group of car dealerships, and after checks were carried out, credit terms were extended. But in truth, Rentmac had nothing to do with Guy Salmon.

The group financial controller of Sytner, whose name was given on Rentmac's form to the Guardian as the "accounts payable name", says he only became aware that Guy Salmon's details were being used on 23 December, when he was contacted by Global Radio (whose stations include Heart, Classic and Capital), which had also taken advertising. "We are innocent bystanders who have suffered corporate identity theft," he says.

...

The Metropolitan police were notified by the Guardian of its concerns on 23 December. A spokesman said: "We can confirm that police have received an allegation of fraud and misrepresentation by a company going by the names of Rent-me-a-car or Rentmac, which is being investigated by detectives in Islington. Anyone with information should contact the Telephone Investigation Bureau on 020 8345 393. There have been no arrests at this stage and inquiries continue."

Edit: MSE user sussex1 has corrected that phone number - it was printed missing a digit: 020 8345 3931

dacouch

Great post Jamesbrownontheroad.

I'm not an expert on business bank accounts, but if they are withdrawing large amounts of cash from the account hopefully they would have had to produce ID to the cashier. Whether the ID is bonafide or not remains to be seen but may help the boys in blue.

gossi

Quick note - all the advertisers affected failed themselves here. If they were going to run credit checks against a different company name (Guy Salmon) (and they did) but book the advert in the other company name (RentMeAnyCar Ltd) they should have rang the original company name (Guy Salmon) and checked it was valid.

They failed, so everybody got scammed via those adverts.

This is a massive failure in the way adverts are vetted and unless this is fixed via procedures, this scam WILL BE repeated. I'm saying this because I know both The Guardian and the FT are reading this topic.

dacouch

gossi wrote: »

I know both The Guardian and the FT are reading this topic.

If the Guardian are reading the thread, perhaps we should include some spelling mistakes so they feel at home.

Gilly-ray

dacouch wrote: »

If the Guardian are reading the thread, perhaps we should include some spelling mistakes so they feel at home.

Ha!!!!!!:T

Gilly-ray

So are The Guardian implying that if we paid rentmac after the 22nd/23rd then we may be able to get our money back? how exactly do we go about doing this??? The money went from my partners halifax account...and they are hopeless. I bank with HSBC so should I call them to discuss this???

gossi

Go via the police, I think. The chance of getting somebody on the phone at HSBC who knows what they're doing is probably small. (But feel free to try anyway).

GoAndPutTheKettleOn

Is there nobody here that works for HSBC or Natwest that can have a look on their systems to find out an address?

gossi

They would never do that. The accounts are protected under the Data Protection Act. (Yes, I'm serious!).

sussex1_2

jamesbrownontheroad wrote: »

From today's Guardian. I've copy-pasted some of the more important points (with my emphasis). We now know that RentMAC posed as part of the Guy Salmon Group to obtain £114,000 advertising credit from The Guardian alone. Not a penny has been received by the paper.

Telephone number is 0208 345 3931