I had my gutters cleared for £20 and ended up being conned out of £20,000

QIn July this year my partner and I were victims of a doorstep crime. Builders appeared offering to clean our gutters for £20, which we agreed to. While they were up there they spotted “problems” which they offered to fix.

They took a “matryoshka” approach to the work: after each bout of dismantling, they appeared to spot further problems and demanded further payment upfront. The situation quickly escalated and within a few days they had taken almost £20,000 from us on the pretext of preventing our roof and walls from collapsing.

It is difficult to describe the intensity of the stress and fear that we felt as they made their demands. Their hammer and drill stayed pointed at our property, with large bits of debris flying everywhere, as they hacked our roof apart.

The more desperately we wanted them to leave, the more we found ourselves giving in to their demands, for fear that they would vanish without completing their work, which unfortunately is precisely what they did. After the last payment was made to them via bank transfer, they scarpered.

In total we made two major bank transfers worth £9,700 and £6,800. Our bank, Santander, allowed these transfers to go through with no meaningful intervention. Despite Santander having been alerted to the fraud the day after it happened, the bank’s investigators took more than four weeks to conclude, inexplicably, that this was a civil matter. As such, it has refused to compensate us at all.

I would be most grateful if you could investigate why Santander has demonstrated such a negligent disregard of irrefutable evidence and a failure to liaise with relevant organisations such as Trading Standards, which we have involved. – Anon

AUnfortunately this fraud involving fictitious gutter cleaning is all too common.

In fact, a few days after your letter came in, a lady on my neighbourhood WhatsApp group asked whether anyone had said yes to the men knocking on doors offering to clean gutters. I urged her to exercise extreme caution.

I asked you whether you’d done any due diligence on this firm before letting them start work and you said you’d visited their company website, which looked legitimate, and found it on Companies House. The van parked outside your house was also emblazoned with a large Checkatrade logo, giving an extra air of credibility. You were satisfied with what you saw and allowed work to begin, a decision that you have now come to regret bitterly. These unscrupulous workmen managed to manipulate you, a thirtysomething man with no apparent vulnerabilities, into handing over £20,000 for essentially destroying the exterior of your home. Clearly well rehearsed in this aggressive routine, once they had started it felt like there was no way out other than to bow to their demands.

In the aftermath of the fraud you quite rightly contacted Trading Standards, which discovered that the firm was using a fake PO box address on Companies House, meaning the scammers were going to be extremely difficult to trace. The Checkatrade logo on the van was also a fake. Presumably they had also used false details to set up the bank account to which you paid the money.

You also contacted your bank, Santander, to ask it to refund the money. It refused on the grounds that the dispute was a “civil matter” between a business and client. But, of course, without a valid address there is sadly no way you can pursue these fraudsters under a civil action.

I asked Santander what it had done to question the payments and it said that when you tried to make the initial large payment of £9,700 it had blocked it and phoned you to ask about its nature. You told it the money was for building work, for which you did not feel pressured into paying. Santander allowed this payment, as well as a second for £6,800, to go through. Because of this, Santander is not prepared to change its stance.

A spokesman said: “This matter is a civil dispute between the customer and his builder regarding the quality of the work carried out. The customer made payments to a business bank account for the builder to pay for roofing work on his property. Within an hour of the first large payment, we called the customer to validate the payments and during this call he confirmed that he was comfortable that the money was to pay for work that had already started and that he was not under any pressure.”

I know this will come as a disappointment, as you strongly feel Santander should have carried out more checks to establish that this firm was legitimate. But I’m afraid doing due diligence on a builder on your behalf is beyond the scope of what customers can reasonably expect from their bank. The responsibility lies with you, the consumer.

The lesson you have learned the hard way from all this is that tradesmen who door-knock for business should be treated with extreme caution. It is unfortunate that your efforts to check this one were not enough. Next time, look for recommendations from previous customers, independently verify membership of trade bodies and seek multiple quotes for a job you’re not sure about. You have now taken your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service and I wish you the best of luck.