Wife scammed taking someone to court

Henrique14

Apologies if in the wrong section (admin please move if in wrong forum) but hoping someone can help. 

My wife (very stupidly) found a Facebook page selling disocunted clothing and footwear items. 

The seller had their own page with over 800 likes, they are also a registered business as they had their own actual independent store not too far from us.

My wife purchased 3 items from this 'business' via Facebook messenger and sent the money via bank transfer for £80. This was on September 27th. We heard nothing for a couple of weeks so messaged the seller again to get an update, ignored. 

We did a bit of research to find out a few other people had also been scammed by this lady via Facebook and not received their goods. 

We finally got a response on October 11th, with the lady claiming she'd check on it for us, she sent us a tracking number from royal mail that said the label had been generated on October 11th. But to me the tracking just shows the label has been created nothing has been received by royal mail. 

Fast forward to today and still no update in tracking and she's still refusing to refund saying it's out of her hands and is still in transit. 

We have already begun the early stages of getting a crime reference number and reported to the police, but my main question is are we able to go down the small claims court route? 

Would we have a leg to stand on if my wife paid by bank transfer? We have all the screenshots of the messages of the lady promising us a refund if no update in tracking, but she's now saying it must have been lost by royal mail and she's not liable. 

It's only £80, we can do without the money, but it's the principle for me of someone scamming my wife and that lady getting away with it. 

My wife already feels terrible and knows she made a mistake sending money via bank transfer. 

What's the process of a small claims court route? Is it not worth it for just £80 and should we accept it and move on? 

born_again

Do you have their address details etc to take them to court.

How you paid makes not difference to taking them to court. But you need to send a letter before action before you start the process. Given them 14 days to resolve to make it fair.

saajan_12

Unfortunately probably not worth it.. the fee is £35 for claims under £300. While you could add the fee to your claim, you have to pay it in the first instance and if you don't recover the money in the end then you're still out an extra 50% than you are now. 

The complications in recovering will come from proving exactly who you bought from, and what assets that company / person has, in order to threaten if she continues to play silly beggars. 

Henrique14

born_again said:

Do you have their address details etc to take them to court.

How you paid makes not difference to taking them to court. But you need to send a letter before action before you start the process. Given them 14 days to resolve to make it fair.

We have her business address, but not sure if it's still open as she recently sold all her stock via Facebook live. I suppose I could drive down there and see if she's still trading from there. But that's the only address we have to go off, that and her name as we have found her via Facebook again.

Henrique14

saajan_12 said:

Unfortunately probably not worth it.. the fee is £35 for claims under £300. While you could add the fee to your claim, you have to pay it in the first instance and if you don't recover the money in the end then you're still out an extra 50% than you are now. 

The complications in recovering will come from proving exactly who you bought from, and what assets that company / person has, in order to threaten if she continues to play silly beggars. 

If happily pay the £35 if it means us getting something back out of principle. 

But that's the actual process, does she have to turn up to court? What if she doesn't? What if she claims she has no money?.despite still actively trading via her business account on Facebook? 

born_again

You have to remember that even if you win in court, you may not get the money back. If it was a business & they shut it down.

Is it actually registered on companies house?

TheSpectator

For £80 chalk it down to experience and move on. Your principles will only cost you more money and frustration.

And never buy anything from FB.

DullGreyGuy

Henrique14 said:

Apologies if in the wrong section (admin please move if in wrong forum) but hoping someone can help. 

My wife (very stupidly) found a Facebook page selling disocunted clothing and footwear items. 

The seller had their own page with over 800 likes, they are also a registered business as they had their own actual independent store not too far from us.

My wife purchased 3 items from this 'business' via Facebook messenger and sent the money via bank transfer for £80. This was on September 27th. We heard nothing for a couple of weeks so messaged the seller again to get an update, ignored. 

We did a bit of research to find out a few other people had also been scammed by this lady via Facebook and not received their goods. 

We finally got a response on October 11th, with the lady claiming she'd check on it for us, she sent us a tracking number from royal mail that said the label had been generated on October 11th. But to me the tracking just shows the label has been created nothing has been received by royal mail. 

Fast forward to today and still no update in tracking and she's still refusing to refund saying it's out of her hands and is still in transit. 

We have already begun the early stages of getting a crime reference number and reported to the police, but my main question is are we able to go down the small claims court route? 

Would we have a leg to stand on if my wife paid by bank transfer? We have all the screenshots of the messages of the lady promising us a refund if no update in tracking, but she's now saying it must have been lost by royal mail and she's not liable. 

It's only £80, we can do without the money, but it's the principle for me of someone scamming my wife and that lady getting away with it. 

My wife already feels terrible and knows she made a mistake sending money via bank transfer. 

What's the process of a small claims court route? Is it not worth it for just £80 and should we accept it and move on? 

When you made the bank transfer it presumably did the normal name matching? Did it match? Or did it not match and you proceeded anyway?

If it did match was it a personal name or a business name? If it was a business name did it have a Ltd or Limited suffix at the end or not?


Ultimately anyone can take anyone to court, it's how our system works. One of the challenges you may have is ensuring you take the right entity to court, was your contract with the woman or a company? Is the person actually who they claimed to be or is the owner of the company a victim of identity theft? 

Surprised you haven't already been to the shop.

It could take many hours to get your £80 back even if it is successful and most cases are not successful (over 95% of cases get a judgement in default because the third party never responds, a very small percentage ever actually get any money). If its unsuccessful you also loose the court fees. Some will do it anyway on principle, or for the experience, others will decide to cut their losses and just leave appropriate feedback (without using inflammatory words like "fraud")

soolin

I’m sure it is not the same, but last year something similar happened on a local Fb group to me [Greater London) . Someone posted up details of remaining stock, saying rent had forced her out of her premises and she needed to clear her stock quickly. Showed decent photos of remaining stock, sizes colours etc and took orders. When people asked about paying or collecting she initially asked people to DM her but then when warnings started appearing explained she wasn’t scamming but couldn’t do collections as she was moving the items around between storage units and bank transfer only as she had no way of taking card payments nor did she have a business PayPal account. 

I did warn people but as usual was shouted down and I have no idea how many orders she took before the complaints about not receiving anything started being posted. A little later it transpired that allegedly the original poster was not the owner of the shop and had no right to sell anything , it was unclear how she had access to photograph stock, or whether the scam did involve the shop owner at all. Some people went to the police who just took details but couldn’t do anything, some tried the shop but got nowhere as the owner was not the person who made the post and eventually the whole thread was taken down and I have no idea what happened. It was pointed out that with the shop owner claiming it wasn’t her, and the money going to someone she claimed to know nothing about , small claims was not going to be easy. 

eskbanker

Henrique14 said:

Would we have a leg to stand on if my wife paid by bank transfer? We have all the screenshots of the messages of the lady promising us a refund if no update in tracking, but she's now saying it must have been lost by royal mail and she's not liable. 

It's only £80, we can do without the money, but it's the principle for me of someone scamming my wife and that lady getting away with it. 

My wife already feels terrible and knows she made a mistake sending money via bank transfer. 

It may be possible to make the case that this qualifies as Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, which banks are now obliged to reimburse under certain circumstances - one of the examples given is "Purchase scams – where you're tricked into paying for goods that don't exist", but that doesn't necessarily apply to every case of goods not being received and presumably requires a reasonable level of evidence to support an allegation of fraud.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2024/10/bank-transfer-scam-refund-rules/

If going down this route, one other aspect to consider is whether her bank chooses to impose the excess, which could render a sub-£100 claim futile....

Henrique14

williscreg said:

I would take it to court. How many more people are victims of this "business"?

A fair few. You only have to search the business name on FB to see others have the same issue.