Do not pay a penny for trade ‘directory’ ...it is useless AND run by tricksters
J.S. writes: I received an email from UK Corporate Portal requesting details to register our business. I thought the email was connected to Companies House. However, after I supplied the details, I received an invoice demanding £797 for the first year of a three-year contract. It said I could not cancel, and now its legal counsel is threatening me with court action, apparently in Germany.
UK Corporate Portal sounds official. In fact, it is a scam. It is not even based in the UK, despite its name. You would stand a better chance of finding it in Hamburg or Prague.
Its authentic-looking paperwork tricks firms into signing up to what looks like a free entry in a trade directory. In fact, all customers get is a hugely expensive mention on a website that nobody is ever likely to see. And even this is useless. Your own small business is in the motor trade in North Wales, so I used the UK Corporate Portal website to search for your exact services. It offered no answers.
It was only when I entered your postcode that your firm’s name appeared. In other words, I had to know you were there before this expensive website would tell me you were there.
I even tried the website to search for plumbers in London, Birmingham and Liverpool. You would think that any genuine trade directory would be overflowing with plumbers – but it had none in any of these big cities. I have warned readers about UK Corporate Portal before.
In 2013, it was telling businesses that EU rules meant they had to provide their VAT number so it could update its directory.
Lots of companies returned a signed form with their VAT details, without noticing the small print in the terms and conditions promising to pay for three years of costly advertising on a Hamburg website.
This scam relies on bullying and empty threats of legal action to force victims to pay up. But legally its case is riddled with holes.
The form you originally returned says that only German law applies, yet you are being threatened with court action in the Czech Republic.
The latest demand you received says the German company Tele Verzeichnis Verlag (TVV) was behind the website, but that it fell into insolvency last year, with a debt collector called CC-Factoring inheriting the right to claim any money it was owed. Yet UK Corporate Portal website’s 2020 updates still show TVV as the owner.
The demands and threats you received came from ‘Colin Smith’, described as ‘senior legal counsel’, and ‘Michael Richardson’, who is said to be a ‘litigation executive’.
I asked CC-Factoring to say what legal qualifications the pair hold – assuming they exist in the first place – but it offered no answers.
Authorities in Prague say the debt collection firm is registered to Adrian Wittmer. He is known to me for similar scams, and he issues the debt collection claims from Prague because the Czech Republic has more relaxed rules than Germany and Switzerland, where he has been in trouble before.
Wittmer also failed to reply to repeated invitations to comment.
Do not give Wittmer or his companies a penny. They will not take any action against you in this country. The last thing they want is a court case that would expose them as the tricksters they are. If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB or email tony.hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.