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Online bike purchase scam!!
28crewchief
Posts: 6 Forumite
Bikesarena.co.uk
After plenty of research on the web I settled on Bikes Arena to buy the new bike for a Birthday Present from my wife to myself. I chose the Boardman Pro Full suspension model (rrp £1600, my purchase price £1072, less 5% for paying by bank transfer. It had 33% off, which is not unusual for this time of year. I duly set up an account & purchased the bike. I was given a few payment options using card etc. However I decided to use the bank transfer option as they were offering an additional 5% off. Payment was transferred on 28th October 2017
The bike had a latest delivery date of 8/11/17. It has not arrived & I have started contacting the seller via their 24/7 customer service page. They are not making any contact despite very good contact & information during the purchase. Further investigation shows that there is no full address or telephone number, the business is registered to a partial postcode in Keighley BD20. The website appears to be linked to 30 Highfield gardens, Wigton, Cumbria CA8 7BT. The bank transfer was made to Andrei Laza Ltd. Barclays Sort code 20-15-96, account no.03649393.
I have contacted my bank 1st Direct Fraud dept 9/11/17. They told me that the payment was made to Barclays bank based in Burton on trent. I have also contacted the Barclays bank fraud line, they mentioned that they had had previous complaints on this account/seller. They could see the transaction, & that the money had already been withdrawn.
:(:(
After plenty of research on the web I settled on Bikes Arena to buy the new bike for a Birthday Present from my wife to myself. I chose the Boardman Pro Full suspension model (rrp £1600, my purchase price £1072, less 5% for paying by bank transfer. It had 33% off, which is not unusual for this time of year. I duly set up an account & purchased the bike. I was given a few payment options using card etc. However I decided to use the bank transfer option as they were offering an additional 5% off. Payment was transferred on 28th October 2017
The bike had a latest delivery date of 8/11/17. It has not arrived & I have started contacting the seller via their 24/7 customer service page. They are not making any contact despite very good contact & information during the purchase. Further investigation shows that there is no full address or telephone number, the business is registered to a partial postcode in Keighley BD20. The website appears to be linked to 30 Highfield gardens, Wigton, Cumbria CA8 7BT. The bank transfer was made to Andrei Laza Ltd. Barclays Sort code 20-15-96, account no.03649393.
I have contacted my bank 1st Direct Fraud dept 9/11/17. They told me that the payment was made to Barclays bank based in Burton on trent. I have also contacted the Barclays bank fraud line, they mentioned that they had had previous complaints on this account/seller. They could see the transaction, & that the money had already been withdrawn.
:(:( 0
Comments
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Alarm bells should have sounded as soon as payment by bank transfer was mentioned."You were only supposed to blow the bl**dy doors off!!"0
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Even before that.maninthestreet wrote: »Alarm bells should have sounded as soon as payment by bank transfer was mentioned.
No reputable business would be running in the UK without the minimum of their full registered address (as required by law) and most would have a contact phone number and possibly other details such as a registered company number.
https://bikesarena.co.uk/
Add to that the fact that every single bike offered for sale is 30%-40% cheaper than any other online retailer and it just seems too good to be true.
All you can do now is to report it to Actionfraud
https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/
and if they get enough reports, they may well investigate.
When you report it, tell them that BikesArena appears to be run by the same people who did a similar scam not very long ago:
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/discountbikesdeals.co.uk
If you look the properties for the photos on the "about us" page for BikesArena you will see that they are from Discountbikesdeals.0 -
No Address and no phone number. those things alone are reason not to do any business with them.
This is another thread that highlights this issue and for consumers to be aware0 -
Equates to "after spending time looking for the cheapest possible amount I can pay for this bike".28crewchief wrote: »Bikesarena.co.uk
After plenty of research on the web I settled on Bikes Arena to buy the new bike for a Birthday Present from my wife to myself.
As stated, even a glance at this site would put me off.0 -
They have such an impressive warehouse, to judge by their About Us page.
Quite similar to a few other companies warehouses in fact
http://www.ambirad.co.uk/en/uk/cabinet-heaters
http://www.sp-international.co.uk/warehousing/
http://news.ctp-inc.com/surge-or-flow-optimize-your-classification-strategy
And the other photo shows they have loads of bikes in stock. So many that they seem to be doing the warehousing for a charity in Houston
http://road.cc/content/news/73641-charity-give-away-its-135000th-bike-underprivileged-child-year
I know it's a bit late for the OP, but it often pays to do an image search of impressive looking photos on questionable ecommerce sites
https://images.google.com/
Open the photo in a tab on its own and drag the image into the google images search box in a separate tab0 -
28crewchief wrote: »less 5% for paying by bank transfer.
:doh:28crewchief wrote: »I decided to use the bank transfer option as they were offering an additional 5% off. Payment was transferred on 28th October 2017.
:doh:28crewchief wrote: »no full address or telephone number.
:doh:28crewchief wrote: »The bank transfer was made to Andrei Laza Ltd.
:doh:28crewchief wrote: »the money had already been withdrawn. 0 -
I see the domain name was only registered on the 17th October this year through namecheap.
https://www.nominet.uk/whois/?query=bikesarena.co.uk#whois-results
Data validation:
Nominet was not able to match the registrant's name and/or address against a 3rd party source on 31-Oct-20170 -
I can't find Andrei Laza Ltd on companies house website.
Looks like you've been scammed and will more than likely never see your Money again0 -
Not a bad looking website, but no full business address and no phone number, so definitely dodgy.
A harsh lesson, but I would kiss goodbye this money.Should've = Should HAVE (not 'of')
Would've = Would HAVE (not 'of')
No, I am not perfect, but yes I do judge people on their use of basic English language. If you didn't know the above, then learn it! (If English is your second language, then you are forgiven!)0 -
Just experienced the same issue. Have contacted Barclays and they have suspended the account. Whether they can return money will be down to whether there are funds available, but suggest you follow up with your Bank.0
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