Lavertons website - real or not?

battleborn

I placed a fake order under the name Mr We know ur scam.

Turnip13

I recently tried to email lavertons only to find that the email address no longer exists. I tried to visit the website and was redirected to abelectricalshop. The "Contact Us" part of this website provides the following information: AB Electrical Shop, High Street, Acton, Sudbury, Suffolk. CO10 0AU. Tel: 020 8144 7197. VAT No. - 133 8402 32. A google search for the VAT number brings us a few results, e.g. cookwarerange, gomagpie, lightingandsecurity and gogeorge - all of which have a similar design. All of these websites are apparently designed by Designs Direct, with the cookwarerange being advertised on their website at designsdirectdotcodotuk/index3a. The contact for Designs Direct is Matthew Mottram, Corona House, High Street, Acton, Sudbury, Suffolk. CO10 0AU, Telephone: 020 8144 7197 - the same, or similar contact details listed on the other websites. The Designs Direct website does look legitimate, with other legitimate businesses using it. I am sure that Matthew Mottram would not want to be associated with such criminals?

Mr_Crunch

Turnip13 wrote: »

I recently tried to email lavertons only to find that the email address no longer exists. I tried to visit the website and was redirected to abelectricalshop. ..................... A google search for the VAT number brings us a few results, e.g. cookwarerange, gomagpie, lightingandsecurity and gogeorge - all of which have a similar design ................... All of these websites are apparently designed by Designs Direct, with the cookwarerange being advertised on their website at designsdirectdotcodotuk/index3a. .................... The Designs Direct website does look legitimate, with other legitimate businesses using it.......

Yes Lavertons website seems dead now, it's just on a parking domain which carries advertising links.

I think that you may have hit on a suite of web-based businesses which are possibly genuine. It's impossible to tell.

They do at least have a street address, and doing BT Phonebook and 192.com searches on that Sudbury address shows someone with the same surname living there. Doing a Whois search on the websites shows that they are registered to an address in Bournemouth again with that same surname. People don't usually use their own name or a traceable address in this sort of situation. But US-based hosting (GoDaddy in all cases). And that 0208 London area phone number.

I haven't tried the purchase process on any of these sites, but they claim to provide PayPal and MasterCard/Visa payment. Which of course should be the only payment methods to use, never money transfer....

In these cases, perhaps, innocent until proven guilty? You might want to edit your comment slightly??

sabretoothtigger

I have another for the list which looks very similar to me. Again it has a trail of breadcrumbs left by way of surprisingly cheap prices for some items. Again google is funneling people towards this as the best price.

Payment is taken via nochex which will go via a credit card but since its a form of cash nobody has any care or obligation to return your money apparently, even though you thought it was to buy a physical item

gomagpie.co.uk


Its quite likely the muppet himself is reading this thread

bod1467

Turnip13 mentioned gomagpie in his/her thread, although it's easy to overlook.

nicola99

Hi guys

Sorry to say that my hubby and I were fooled by a few reviews into thinking this was a genuine site. Paid £59.00 for a coffee machine,by bank transfer (I know - the alarm bells should have been loud enough) and tried to check delivery today only to find the website gone. This thread was missed when we originally checked!

There is no phone no website, no £59 and no coffee machine. Feel like a complete wally... lesson learned. Lavertons is a rip off.

nicola99

Mr_Crunch

nicola99 wrote: »

There is no phone no website, no £59 and no coffee machine. Feel like a complete wally... lesson learned. Lavertons is a rip off.

nicola99

Sorry that you were done.
Report to http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/ I doubt that you will recover anything, but at least it's a further piece of evidence if these people ever get caught.

fingerbob7

:AI'd like to think that maybe we on MSE had something to do with hastening the demise of the Lavertons website. Still, a lot of people have lost money in a very short space of time.

I'd love to meet Mr Lavertons, I bet he's a greasy !!!!!! with a comb over who drives a Bentley. :mad:

fraudwatch

fingerbob7 wrote: »

:AI'd like to think that maybe we on MSE had something to do with hastening the demise of the Lavertons website. Still, a lot of people have lost money in a very short space of time.

I'd love to meet Mr Lavertons, I bet he's a greasy !!!!!! with a comb over who drives a Bentley. :mad:

It's probably unlikely that MSE had anything to do with the demise of Lavertons, however it will certainly have deterred a number of potential customers from becoming victims.

If you look at the bigger picture, this is just one of a number of scam sites that open, trade fraudulently and then vanish without trace. It's highly improbable that anyone will ever be arrested or charged with any criminal offence as the people behind this will certainly have planned it well enough using false names, address and even fake identities. The hosting, domain registration and even the bank accounts will lead nowhere, the police know that and they won't even waste their time investigating it properly.

But we can learn from it. We can learn that if something looks too good to be true then that's because it is!

The truth is that in most cases the victims must have seen a red light flashing when asked to pay by bank transfer. Most people who have come forward and admitted to being a victim are saying the same thing, that they are kicking themselves for being so stupid, and I must agree.. it's plain stupidity to pay by bank transfer for a product from a website that you have never done business with and that has no track record except one or two fake reviews.

If a company was really selling massively discounted goods and offering free shipping then it would have lots of positive feedback from happy customers, this is so obvious that it doesn't need to be said.

Yes, sadly a LOT of people will have lost a LOT of money. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of pounds. These fraudsters move from site to site and make millions of pounds along the way, and often they are not even located in the UK at all. Sometime they hijack accounts, often they steal identities to open accounts. They may have set the whole thing up years in advance, and they may have 100 more websites and bank accounts waiting for their future scams.

Scam websites are a fact of internet life, they won't go away anytime soon so buyers need to wise up and stop taking chances in order to try and save a few pounds. Credit Cards offer protection, as does PayPal. Paying by bank transfer is worse than sending cash through the post, at least when you send cash through the post you know where it's going!

frenchygirl

fraudwatch wrote: »

It's probably unlikely that MSE had anything to do with the demise of Lavertons, however it will certainly have deterred a number of potential customers from becoming victims.

If you look at the bigger picture, this is just one of a number of scam sites that open, trade fraudulently and then vanish without trace. It's highly improbable that anyone will ever be arrested or charged with any criminal offence as the people behind this will certainly have planned it well enough using false names, address and even fake identities. The hosting, domain registration and even the bank accounts will lead nowhere, the police know that and they won't even waste their time investigating it properly.

But we can learn from it. We can learn that if something looks too good to be true then that's because it is!

The truth is that in most cases the victims must have seen a red light flashing when asked to pay by bank transfer. Most people who have come forward and admitted to being a victim are saying the same thing, that they are kicking themselves for being so stupid, and I must agree.. it's plain stupidity to pay by bank transfer for a product from a website that you have never done business with and that has no track record except one or two fake reviews.

If a company was really selling massively discounted goods and offering free shipping then it would have lots of positive feedback from happy customers, this is so obvious that it doesn't need to be said.

Yes, sadly a LOT of people will have lost a LOT of money. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of pounds. These fraudsters move from site to site and make millions of pounds along the way, and often they are not even located in the UK at all. Sometime they hijack accounts, often they steal identities to open accounts. They may have set the whole thing up years in advance, and they may have 100 more websites and bank accounts waiting for their future scams.

Scam websites are a fact of internet life, they won't go away anytime soon so buyers need to wise up and stop taking chances in order to try and save a few pounds. Credit Cards offer protection, as does PayPal. Paying by bank transfer is worse than sending cash through the post, at least when you send cash through the post you know where it's going!

It's easy to criticise others for their mistakes when you have the hindsight, but who would expect a professional looking kitchen site selling ordinary household items to be fraudulent? Cameras maybe, or high end designer goods might be more circumspect to the average user. Add to this that it was hosted through Google shopping, and came with 5 or more highly visible positive feedbacks from shoppers which can only be left by shoppers using google checkout?

Sites like this target the vulnerable. Have some compassion.

Many legitimate websites offer discounts for paying by bank transfer.
It's not the most obvious sign of a fraudster. Some people have just lost hundreds of pounds on Lavertons. It's not their fault and they are not stupid. They were conned.