"Fair and Honest Property Advice" - Are they scammers?

TheAceOfClubs

Today I received an unsolicited email from "Fair and Honest Property Advice". ( A copy of the email is included at the bottom of this post.)

It appears they have emailed a lot of homeowners like myself who pay ground rent to "Estates and Management Limited". (Estates and Management Limited act for various freeholders to collect ground rent and other such fees).
This "Fair and Honest Property Advice" are claiming that "Estates and Management Limited" charge unreasonably high fees for doing simple admin tasks, they also seem to be suggesting that they can help people like myself reclaim money from "Estates and Management Limited" and are offering to sell me a guide to reclaiming these charges for £12.

I am smelling a very big rat here.

Firstly this company "Fair and Honest Property Advice" doesn't seem to exist anywhere.
Their contact email is an "outlook.com" address which clearly no professional company would use.
Their suggestion that I could reclaim excessive fees from "Estates and Management Limited" seems to have no substance to it.

I think they are scammers trying to con people into paying £12 for some "guide book" which doesn't exist and would never be received.

BUT MY MAIN QUESTION IS... How have these people got my email address and how do they know I have an account with "Estates and Management Limited" to pay my ground rent?

My email address is pretty private, and I would suggest that the only way anyone could know that my email is linked to an account at "Estates and Management Limited" is if they have stolen the information from "Estates and Management Limited"....

Although google turns up no such organisation as this dodgy "Fair and Honest Property Advice", I did find a cycling forum where several others have received their unsolicited email.
(This forum won't let me post a link to it)

Is there something criminal going on here?


The email received by everyone is:-

To Whom It May Concern,

We write to you on behalf of Fair and Honest Property Advice.
Our aim is to make homeowners aware of hidden and unreasonable charges they may have paid to Estates and Management Limited upon the purchase and during the ownership of their property.
As you may be aware, Estates and Management Limited act for various Freeholders and Rent Charge collectors. They are known for their unreasonably high fees for very basic administration tasks. What you may not be aware of is that many of these fees can easily be avoided.
Estates and Management Limited prey on the fact that many homeowners are unaware or unable to understand the wording of most lease clauses or Transfer documents and how easy it is to dispute their unreasonable charges. Your solicitors who acted for you during your purchase may also be at fault for not making you aware of these charges.
Estates & Management Limited generally charge the following fees for their basic administration tasks which generally take no longer than 10-15 minutes (fees circa 2017, you can verify by calling Estates & Management Limited);
Registering as a new owner:
Registration of a new owner - £125.00
Registration of a remortgage -£125.00
Register at Land Registry if consent is required from E&M £205.00
Renting out your property:
Registering of new tenant for letting your property - £130.00
Renewal of a new tenant for letting your property - £65.00
Written confirmation that letting is not required £70.00
Selling your property:
Sellers pack for prospective buyers when selling your property - £135.00
Permission/Consent to sell your property - £175.00
Consent for Pets and Alterations:
Consent for a Pet £80.00
Consent for Major alterations - £395.00
- Removal of walls
- Conservatory
- Porch extension
- Parking bollard
- Driveways
- Stair lift
- Solar Panels
Consent for Minor alterations - £195.00
- Wooden flooring
- Window replacements
- Gas central heating
- Relocation of Boiler/Flue
- Bath to shower conversion
- Satellite Dish
- Addition of Stud Walls
- Fence
- Sheds
General fees
Statement of your Ground Rent - £65.00
Purchasing a copy of your lease - £185.00
From the information above you can see the prospect of spending hundreds of pounds for ‘consents' from the landlord with very little, if any, services in return.
We have therefore created a detailed guide on how to avoid and in some cases reclaim money that has been paid to Estates and Management. The guide will include the following;
- Where the charge has arisen from and what they do for the work
- How to dispute and demand a reduction or no fee at all and in some cases ask for your money back
- How they will argue and justify their fees
- How you can respond to their arguments
- How to transfer all rights relating to approvals for consents from the landlord to the leaseholders creating your own management company and appointing your own managing agents
Our guide is £12.00. To order, please email remittance.fahpa@outlook.com with your request and we will provide you with our BACS details.
Please send all confirmations of payment to remittance.fahpa@outlook.com, please ensure you have included your payment reference.
Thank you to everyone who has already purchased a guide, please send any feedback to enquiries.fahpa@outlook.com. Please note that any additional queries will be answered free of charge.

Yours sincerely
Sarah Lane
Fair and Honest Property Advice

theartfullodger

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/sarah-lane-988200148

Ask her for the name of the company as registered at Companies House.

I'd not trust anyone involved with this further than I could throw them, and I'm 69 with a bad back.

IAmWales

I got this email too. I've no idea where they got my address from. The only company that would know I was one of their clients is E&M (who are utter scumbags).

Newbury9

I went on another forum and it looks like "Sarah Lane" may have done this via a LinkedIn mailshot.... I've complained to LinkedIn. "She" is on there, but has no connections which is always suspicious. It could just be a phishing exercise. There's no way of telling whether it's come from an E&M mailing list or it's just a stab in the dark to see who responds. Either way, think Action Fraud should be informed.

IAmWales

Newbury9 wrote: »

I went on another forum and it looks like "Sarah Lane" may have done this via a LinkedIn mailshot.... I've complained to LinkedIn. "She" is on there, but has no connections which is always suspicious. It could just be a phishing exercise. There's no way of telling whether it's come from an E&M mailing list or it's just a stab in the dark to see who responds. Either way, think Action Fraud should be informed.

I'm not on LinkedIn.

My 83 year old neighbour has had it too.

Very very odd.

IAmWales

Lots of people reporting the same thing here.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/just-got-an-email-about-estates-and-management-unreasonable-fees-anyone-else

There has to have been a data breach at E&M.

TheAceOfClubs

Yes. I've seen that "singletrack" forum. I couldn't post a link to it as I'm a new member of MSE and I'm not allowed to post links.

My situation is exactly the same as being reported on there.
The email from Sarah Lane has come to my personal email which doesn't receive spam and is only used for important things (like paying utilities including ground rent).
The emails are targeted to people with accounts at E&M, so ther must have been a data breach at E&M (they have either sold my details or they have been stolen from them).

Should I report it to E&M and/or the Police?

Newbury9

For those of you who've had problems with them there are 2 ways to really hack them off:

(1) Setup your bank payment to pay them automatically on January 1st - they rely on the fact that no-one banks that day and that way they can't apply late payment charges
(2) Absolutely refuse to pay them any additional "admin" charges unless they send you a properly constituted bill. A lot of their business model relies on bills "sent" (allegedly) but challenge it if you haven't had one. As I gather many people haven't. I have successfully challenged it twice now - once with my solicitor's help and been successful. And don't pay any attention to their solicitors - they're trying it on and in my case they actually misquoted the law to mine so he put them straight.

And finally, if you've had enough, complain to the Property Ombudsman. If they get enough complaints, we might just get a result!

Newbury9

It might not be a data breach - could it be that E&M are looking for a new revenue stream??? :rotfl:

IAmWales

TheAceOfClubs wrote: »

Yes. I've seen that "singletrack" forum. I couldn't post a link to it as I'm a new member of MSE and I'm not allowed to post links.

My situation is exactly the same as being reported on there.
The email from Sarah Lane has come to my personal email which doesn't receive spam and is only used for important things (like paying utilities including ground rent).
The emails are targeted to people with accounts at E&M, so ther must have been a data breach at E&M (they have either sold my details or they have been stolen from them).

Should I report it to E&M and/or the Police?

E&M
Action Fraud
The Information Commissioners Office

Action Fraud won't do a lot. The ICO will investigate if they get enough complaints.

Newbury, nothing would surprise me with those cowboys!

maxs

(Sorry, I don't post here anywhere near as much as I read!)

I got this too. And it was to an alias email address set up specifically for E&M, so the mailing list has definitely come from them somehow.
I'm half-tempted to reply to the email to see what happens (that email address is 'disposable' and now not used anymore). I mean, I'm actually quite interested in the information! (Although it seems a lot of it is available in places online anyway)

The mail was sent via a mailing list email sender based out of France...

Edit to add: I would also suggest that - just in case there has been some kind of breach - anyone who has an online account with E&M change their password. Log into your account, click on My details in the menu bar at the top, then at the bottom of your contact details page is a button to change your password.