Is this company genuine? RF Motors Ltd.

knightstyle

They have a car I am interested in at a very good price.  Emails from mrftgarage@gmail.com and they seem to be in Scotland.  Will deliver for £90.  I have asked for location of car for an AA report so will see what they come back with.
Also  https://google_reviews/purchasing-a-vehicle-safely.co.uk

Penguin_

RF MOTORS (SCOTLAND) LIMITED overview - Find and update company information - GOV.UK (company-information.service.gov.uk) 

Car_54

They will deliver for £90. Who will pay to transport it back to them when it goes wrong?

Momanns

That review is almost certainly fake. The review is written in a very strange way (posting details of Co House) & what kind of car company phones a customer everyday to make sure they don't want to return the car?!

The business is registered to a virtual office (Can be a red flag but not necessarily) although the director did have a previous motor company that is now dissolved - https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC366451/filing-history. Again, can be a red flag but not necessarily. 

For me, I would expect a one man bad/sole trader to not always disclose their location (May not have one) but it would seem a little strange that a limited company would be operating under clandestine circumstances. 

No trace of a "Mercer Artois" on Google either. Personally I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

user1977

Which company is it? There's an RF Motors Ltd and an RF Motors (Scotland) Ltd, which don't appear to be connected. The former doesn't look Scottish and has only existed for about 7 weeks...

The_Unready

As above, that review is almost comical in its composition, and that alone would stop me from shelling out any of my hard-earned on what is likely to be a lucky dip in terms of customer service should anything go wrong (assuming you get the car in the first place).

knightstyle

Thanks all, this has confirmed my suspicions,   I am waiting for a reply to my request for the location so I can arrange an inspection before buying.   As I said earlier that should sort out if it is a scam which seems likely.
It is Rf Motors (Scotland) Ltd registered in Glasgow.

CliveOfIndia

To chuck in my two-penn'oth - no legitimate business will use a gmail account.  Sure, your small local one-man-band gardener, joiner, plumber etc. may well use a gmail/outlook/whatever account.  But pretty much all medium/large businesses will have their own email, something like enquiries@mrft.com or similar.

Exodi

Hahahaa, ignoring the absolutely laughably suspicious wording of the review, even the URL has me resting my palm on my face.

https://googlereviewspurchasingavehiclerfmotor.wordpress.com/2022/12/01/purchasing-a-vehicle-from-rf-motors/

So a wordpress site that anyone can create, (very poorly) designed to imitate google reviews? They haven't even changed the indexing system of the page. I could make one now called 'honestly-this-is-google-reviews.wordpress.com' and fill a page of glowing reviews in an afternoon.

I also find it interesting that a review dated December 1st 2022, has most of it's responses dated before the review was written.

I was very pleased with the customer support Mr. Mercer offered, as he called me every day for next 2 weeks, till I decided to keep the vehicle, as I was unable to find any damage.

Wow what exceptional customer service, how do I learn more?

they do not have an website as they do prefer to deal in person, but also they ship and deliver their vehicle UK wide

Erm, OK perhaps not the best business decision for a company that claims to deliver their product nationwide. Even if they strictly required in person contact, you can still have a website right? Maybe this person is not very tech positive, as they also use a random gmail account.

But anyway, I don't want to be mean, as I said they may just not be very tech savvy. So where were they registered again? 2nd Floor, 22-24 Blythswood Square, Glasgow, Scotland, G2 4BG. Central Glasgow, very impressive.

In fact, the building must be absolutely massive, because apparently when I enter that address on companies house, it shows 94,953 companies registered. Surprisingly, the only significant shareholder, Ross Campbell Fernie apparently lives in this building with all these companies, talk about cramped.

--

So to be serious, in reality I'm not sure if it is a scam (as it is a very poor one without a website showing off flashy cars that don't exist) or just the worlds worst business person (given the above and that his previous similar business was dissolved).

I can see he owns it with his wife and his actual address isn't too hard to find on the internet, so it would be relatively easy to catch up with him.

Nonetheless, after thinking, my money is on it being a scam. Mainly because, there's actually no way of knowing whether the random wordpress site or random gmail account are actually related with RF Motors.

Wouldn't entertain this if my life depended on it.

lopsyfa

Plus that is not a genuine google review, it is a made up website in WordPress - look at the logo of the address bar of the browser (may not be visible on mobile browser but visible on the computer).

Plus the web address is an attempt to pass it on as a genuine google reviews (https://google_reviews/purchasing-a-vehicle-safely.co.uk but this actually points to https://googlereviewspurchasingavehiclerfmotor.wordpress.com/2022/12/01/purchasing-a-vehicle-from-rf-motors/). So it looks like the WordPress page was created on 22-Dec-2022 but there are comments going as far back as Mar-2022.

They are already trying to impersonate google reviews, I wonder what else they will be trying to impersonate.

I will 100% avoid.

Exodi

knightstyle said:

Thanks all, this has confirmed my suspicions,   I am waiting for a reply to my request for the location so I can arrange an inspection before buying.   As I said earlier that should sort out if it is a scam which seems likely.
It is Rf Motors (Scotland) Ltd registered in Glasgow.

I can almost predict the responses:

"We're based in Scotland, where are you?"
> you respond with a location in Scotland
"We're actually based in [opposite end of Scotland to where you said]"

"We're based at [random garage address]"
"Great, I'll see you next week?"
"The garage is actually closed to the public for a while due to building maintenance, but I can still access the cars"

"We don't hold every different car at the garage, we organise delivery from our trusted partners"