Reading this thread ran a chill down my spine. same thing happened to me and others by a recruitment firm in bradford a few years ago. the 2 women directors of ltd company, came over as really trusted worthy their father was a priest. you couldnt have asked for a better reference.
my first mistake being naive first 6 months in business took no money up front and is was a big job 2 washrooms and re skimming the walls of the whole place.
took me over 4/5 weeks to do the job. kept asking for some money as we were going along and always got an excuse but she was really nice and polite so thought she was good for the money.
finished job gave invoice then nothing went round asking and was threatened by her very very big husband not too come round again. now i consider myself to be a handy fella but i'm not stupid i know my limitations and this guy had connections to the bad guys (you just knew by looking at him) this totally shook me. so i went to speak to her priest father problem was he lives florida and never returned my calls. could it get any worse.
i was done for £5000.00 and because of it i ran up further debts upto £22000.00 on credit cards trying to keep going i couldnt keep going as they were ramping up the interest rates. then i broke down in front of my missus and told her everything a year later.
went to court but before i could my day the company was liquidated. i wasnt the only one she scammed a training company out of £10500 and the receptionist out of £4000.00 by convincing her to get a loan to keep them going i really felt for her.
i consider myself lucky because as my missus forgave me other would quite rightly not i should have told her straight but i felt ashamed i had done over so easily. i also consider myself lucky because i never paid a penny back to the credit card companies blaiming them for my predicament just as much by charging over 35% when the bank of england rate was 0.5%, but thats another story.
Anyway the training company had their day in court because as soon they liquidated one company they set up another.
the judge proper went to town on them in manchester county court and were banned from being directors for 5 years but they had no assets no money was ever recovered.
now i'm back on feet after 5 years and now starting to get somewhere business wise. Even now when i think back to that sometimes i shake with anger. I honestly think if i saw her walk past me in an alley she wouldn't make it out to the other side.
danny your not alone in experiencing this form of legalised robbery so my thoughts are totally with you
been there even now as i write my fists are clenching cos i wanna hurt them like they they hurt me.
