Hello all

Please take heed of cmtml's advice.

Recently, I was contacted, via an unsolicited telephone call, by Express Match (remember the name, but more importantly remember the approach used,), assuring me that, if I was willing to pay £79.95 via debit card to them in order to administer the sale of a motorised wheelchair which I had posted on a bona fide website for assisting in such matters (www.themobilitymarket.co.uk), they would sell the item for me, and that they had five prospective buyers waiting at the time of the call.

Express Match deals mainly with the intermediation of car sales (i.e. acts as a go-between for buyers and sellers of vehicles) and not just disabled persons' equipment. So motor vehicle sellers beware!!!! Their website is expressmatch.co.uk/index.html.

Express Match operative, Lucy, also told me that, if the item was not sold within 28 days of them contacting me, I would receive a £70 refund. After repeated attempts via email messages to their customer services department I have not received one response, and while numerous attempts by telephone to try to redeem this money has only been answered three times, each occasion was met with several conflicting excuses as to why the money has not been paid back into the account from which this money was drawn. Latter attempts to contact them have only resulted in being presented with a recorded message telling me to send an email - a futile exercise given previous experiences.

The point here is DO NOT DEAL WITH ANY COMPANY USING UNSOLICITED TELEPHONE CALLS AS A MEANS TO GENERATE BUSINESS.

Please ensure that all terms and conditions are provided in writing and carefully studied before committing to any such transactions, and don't be badgered into agreeing to pass on any debit card details under assurances that the company contacting you would "lose its license if the transaction was unsafe". I just hope that my experiences and labelling as a 'Sucker' will be of some help to other consumers before they too are taken in.

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Hi, I was contacted today about a car i had up for sale on the net. I am waiting for to call back now and ill tell her thanks but no thanks!! Thanks for the thread i think it saved me 120euro! i just signed up to this site to leave this feedback and will keep track to see if anyone else has any stories. Thanks!

HI, Im in Ireland and today i got a call from a company called expressmatch.I was an English number but an irish girl called Michelle was on the other end. I think all these companys are one and the same. After reading these treads i told her where to go. Initally i had told her to ring back in an hour. Thanks guys for saving me 120euro! I told her i wasnt interested as i heard alot of bad reviews about the company online. Her reply was that their competitors had done this to them to make them look bad!!! Somehow i didnt quiet believe her :)

Hi she just called back.I told her i wasnt interested as i heard alot of bad reviews about the company online. Her reply was that their competitors had done this to them to make them look bad!!! lol

Hi Bedrock555

I'm so glad to hear that you denied Express Match another victim. These people need to be stopped, and, apparently, if it wasn't for mechanisms such as moneysupermarket.com, we would be none the wiser and they would have free reign over unsuspecting targets such as you and I.

By the way, I'm not a competitor to this "company". There's an old saying that a dog knows its own tricks best, and I suspect that Express Match could be comfortably considered the 'dog' in this case.

Regards

Yes well done to moneysupermarket.com and the honest people who write here. I wonder how these people can live with themselves. I believe these are a small number of people but god do they make a nuisance of themselves. Im just annoyed i didnt quiz her more about their dealings but that might just make me mad!!

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Hi bedrock555, it sounds like a company who me out of £150 6 weeks ago to sell a stairlift. I think the so called company was called "Vehicle Wise". All seemed legit until I tried to contact them to claim a refund. They charged me £49.99 for the initial advert which would be refunded if the buyer took their finance on the sale. I gave up trying to contact them and thought of this experience as a learning curve, but a month later they tok another £99 out of my bank account. I had to cancel my debit card to stop any more payments . Trading standards were'nt interested so hw are we supposed to trust any phone payments to anybody. In a way i'm glad it happened to highlight [them]. I hope more people use this site as I should have

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Hi Lectriclegs

I was contacted only this morning (18th April 2008) by another [company] trying to get £99:49 from me in order to match my item to a "guaranteed buyer" who was interested in purchasing the item.. One of their "operatives", Laura, explained that she was from a company called Vehicle Search and that I would receive £90 back as soon as the item was sold.

I then challenged her explaining that I had recently been [contacted] by Express Match in the same way, that I knew she didn't have anyone lined up for the sale, that I was appalled [people] like her were taking advantage of unsuspecting people, and that I intended to inform the police. Her reply, after a period of silence, was "D'ya know what? I couldn't give a s**t."

Her response maybe indicative of her awareness of the impotence potential victims suffer when relying on organizations charged with protecting consumers from such practices. This "company", along with countless others who undertake [things] of this type, must feel extremely reassured that their actions will go unpunished. As you rightly pointed out, Trading Standards (and similar organizations) appear to be disinterested with concerns raised by consumers, and the only available means to try to stop this is through forums such as this.

I was also intrigued to discover that all of the similar cases reported via articles on the Internet (e.g. http://www.whatcar.co.uk/news-article.aspx?NA=231909), emanated from companies based in Hertfordshire. Surely, it is the responsibility of the police in Hertfordshire to undertake some sort of preventative measures to ensure that ]they] cannot operate any more.

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Hi JeffEllis, the only consolation I have is the fact that I am not the only one to be suckered. Lets hope "all" of these depraved people get their just rewards. Who knows, they may need these these disability aids themselves one day.

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Well done JeffEllis for posting this - it's certainly opened up my eyes and judging by the replies some others as well.

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unfortunatly we did not read this before with EXPRESS MATCH!!!

we were called by them a couple of weeks ago and we need a quick sale for our car as we have a new addition to the family coming and our exsiting car is definatly not big enough. we have our new car but need a quick sale on the old one so my husband thought that going with express match would be a good way as they promised us there were people waiting to see our car and that they would gaurantee full asking price for our car!

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE - DONT GIVE THEM A PENNY!! WE HAVE LOST £129.99

after many phone calls and stupid excuses and getting no where we have had no-one contact us no viewings and this has now been two weeks ago! we then put another advert in a local newspaper and were contacted again by them selling us the same pitch as the first time and we are already registered with them!

we will be contacting local papers and as many places as we can to try and warn people about this!!!

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Thank you very much for your timely warning. I was contacted today by the same Lucy from Express Match regarding a friend's mobility scooter which was advertised in our local newspaper. I said I would have to discuss the offer with my friend and Lucy agreed to call me back about an hour later. My friend was tempted to go with this option as she can no longer see well enough to use the scooter and it is taking up a lot of space. I decided to look Express Match on the internet and saw your missive. Needless to say we declined Lucy's offer.

Thanks again

That's great news YorkyPud. It's so satisfying to learn that, by spending a couple of minutes to let others know of these scams, it is possible to thwart the efforts of unscrupulous "businessmen", while also saving potential victims some hard-earned money.

I really hope that for every response made to this thread, there are countless others that have rejected the offer to be sucked in, as you have.

Power to the people, and to moneysupermarket.

Hi all

I wish i had seen this before i made the decision.I got a call from Express Match a few hours ago and was told that there were 5 people who wanted exactly what i had on offer, my car.Said they got the information from a magazine here in Ireland.I was told i would get a call within an hour in relation to my car and that the buyer would turn up with cash to buy it.No word from anyone yet.

I cant believe i was so naive,should have looked into this first.They told me that it would cost me £120 or €200 to do this.DOH.

I'll live in hope that i'll get a call about the car but after reading these feedback comments, i do not believe i will

Hi Dublin

I wish there was some way that everybody could be made aware of these scams. It's so frustrating to hear that these people are still making money from innocent, hard-working people.

One word of warning.

I was recently contacted by Express Match (a long time after the initial event) with a further assurance that a buyer was interested. The 'operative' told me that Express Match had DEFINITELY secured a purchase. I remonstrated that I was appalled with their service, and that I was still awaiting the repayment of my 'deposit' of £70. The guy told me, in a patronising manner, that 'Rome wasn't built in a day' and that he would get back to me to arrange the pick up. Naively, I saw this as an opportunity to collect the money I thought that I had lost, and NEARLY fell for an extension on the initial ruse.

However, as soon as I put the phone down, I felt a sense of foreboding, and immediately blocked the debit card used in the first transaction in order to avoid any further withdrawals, just in case this outfit were to argue that I had granted permission to act on my behalf. Needless to say that I have not heard from this 'organization' since then, as hey have probably tried to acquire their ill-gotten gains and came up against this block.

I would strongly advise you to do the same, as I believe these people will stop at nothing to make a quick and easy Euro.

Hope this helps.