Is this ttempted fraud or a scam? Speedy Hire PLC

[Tintin]

I went online last night to try to find a hydraulic hand crimper as I'm installing a new battery bank this weekend.

Speedy Hire, who have a shop in Penryn near Falmouth, showed one on their website, and you could order it online and pay online.

So I went thru the process of creating an account, choosing the item (for the princely sum of £8.50 per wk + approx £18 deposit) and when I went to check out I realised my cards were in my car, so decided to just phone the local branch today.

Anyhow I phoned them today, to be told they had one that would cost £130 for the week.

When I quoted the part number they found it online but then said the most amazing thing - they didn;t have stock, and there was no stock of the item in the UK at all, in fact they didn't own any of the item.

I was gobsmacked, because their website would have quite happily taken my money for an item they don't even own. And no doubt the fun would then have started trying to get a refund.

So I called their head office and got put thru to customer service, who answerede, said they had to check something, then kept me on hold for 20 mins before I hung up.

And then (it gets better) the local store phoned me to say the item code I had given them was correct and they didn't have any of that item (at £8.50 pw) but had exactly the same item under a different stock code, but the cost was £20(ish) a week.

Aty that stage I told the local branch manager what I thought of his employer and said I'd go elsewhere.

By my reckoning their website is a sham and they can't be trusted to either have what they claim in stock, or that the price they show online is the true price.

Lieing cheating barstewards.

I'd advise you to not use them.

 

[Rigger Mortice]

Ridiculous!

I don't know if you saw it, but somebody posted about buying one of those crimpers for around £40 just a few days ago,

 

[VicS]

I had similar probs trying to hire a lazy tongs rivetter.

Found a local hire shop who listed one on the website but when I phoned they did not have one after all.

I did find another hire company who could get one in from another branch but in the end I bought a cheap one.

 

[Tintin]

Ridiculous!

I don't know if you saw it, but somebody posted about buying one of those crimpers for around £40 just a few days ago,

Yep saw that. As it happens about 15 years ago I used to make up steel rope eyes for work and so I dug around the depths of the shed and found my old crimpers. Some WD40 and wire wool brought them back to life and they have done the job nicely.

So in a way I'm glad they tried to scam me because I have ended up finding a toold I had thought was long gone in house moves.

 

[Tintin]

Attempted

Duh - just noticed typo on title - oops.

 

[ProDave]

Given the difference between the price on the website and the price thwy quoted on the phone, was this a "sorry we are out of stock" moment when they realised they had miss priced it on the website?

I recall a similar thing when a retailer miss priced a television on the website, and trading standards IIRC enforced them to honour orders placed at the "wrong" price.

Go back and check in a day or 2 and I'll bet you find the on line price has gone up.

 

[SolentPhill]

Don't be too quick to condem them.

It maybe that they take the sale and sub it out, we sell many items we don't have but we take orders at a high price, buy them cheaper and sell at profit, it's called business.

 

[SailBobSquarePants]

Agree with SP. Running a rental business is harder than retail, because the stock just sits in a back room without price stickers on it. It's all done by codes off the computer, and most likely that computer database is maintained at the main HQ. So the guys in the store probably have little idea on what the smaller tools even rent out for, and the HQ has little idea what store has what stock, or even what stock numbers equate to identical equipment.

I don't think in any way this is a scam, it's just poor IT practices with little quality control of their databases...

 

[Bosun Higgs]

By my reckoning their website is a sham and they can't be trusted to either have what they claim in stock, or that the price they show online is the true price.

Lieing cheating barstewards.

I'd advise you to not use them.

Calm down. Before you accuse some outfit of being crooks, you first need to eliminate the obvious and much more likely answer that of incompetence / disorganisation / lazy staff.

Working in an outfit like that is a burger flipping sort of job

 

[vyv_cox]

I use Speedy Hire on a regular basis. I have never had any issues with them, they go out of their way to be helpful and the bill is invariably less than I was expecting.

I can't speak for their website as I never use it but, as others say, it must be difficult to keep one for a business such as theirs up to date.

 

[Rigger Mortice]

Don't be too quick to condem them.

It maybe that they take the sale and sub it out, we sell many items we don't have but we take orders at a high price, buy them cheaper and sell at profit, it's called business.

It may be business but it's not very good business.

OP asks for something, gets messed about, gives up, remembers he has a tool in his shed. They get no business from him. He posts about his experience on the net.

Better business
Vyv-Cox asks for something. Gets good service. Posts about his positive experience on the net.

 

[sailor211]

Calm down. Before you accuse some outfit of being crooks, you first need to eliminate the obvious and much more likely answer that of incompetence / disorganisation / lazy staff.

Working in an outfit like that is a burger flipping sort of job

I agree,
I use speedy hire a lot and have no problems. Occasionally when there is a choice of items it is necessary to ensure that the one on offer is at the level that is required.

As an organisation, they will buy kit that is required by customers, when there is a need, rather than having every item in stock at every branch. They have done this for me, with expensive kit, when we have a particular problem and they do not have what we need.
So none in stock, did not mean it would not be available the next day from a main suppler. Certainly a crimper will be available from a stockist next day.


The staff are low paid and do not know every item in detail so can get confused. It is also a franchasise operation, and as such may have fewer staff at lower pay (my view) than is optimal. Some just do not understand the system and potential.

 

[pappaecho]

Try your local friendly chandler. In Gosport they seem to hire out things like riveters and crimpers for a couple of quid a day, and sell you the supplies to get with them.

 

[PaulJS]

I recently hired a cultivator from a well known hire company whose name escapes me. The web price was reasonable, but the local shop only charged me about 1/3 of this due to the fact that they weren't getting much business on cultivators due to the high delivery costs in their geographically large area of business!

Needless to say, I'll be happy to recommend or use them again. That's good business...

 

[sighmoon]

If you ordered through the website, they'd have given you what you asked for, or at least something similar
.
Car rental works similarly - you get much better prices phoning or online than when you just turn up, because phone or internet customers are generally checking out prices first and will go with the cheapest. If you turn up, they know you want it and charge you a tiny bit less than the price they think will make you walk out the door empty handed.

 

[jonic]

It may be business but it's not very good business.

OP asks for something, gets messed about, gives up, remembers he has a tool in his shed. They get no business from him. He posts about his experience on the net.

Better business
Vyv-Cox asks for something. Gets good service. Posts about his positive experience on the net.

That's fine but prefacing it with attempted fraud and scam is not on .

 

[Tintin]

That's fine but prefacing it with attempted fraud and scam is not on .

Why not? That is how I felt, the evidence supports it.

They would have gladly taken my money for an item they not only did not have locally, but anywhere in the UK, then having taken my money and had I turned up to collect, I would have been offerred a similar item at 3x the price. Having travelled an hour to get there I would have been left with a difficult situation.

Re-read my original post - I was suprised at what happened and I tried to phone their head office to get it sorted out, but they weren't interested and did the "long wait" call centre trick.

That's a scam my friend, plain and simple. It is also fraudulent. Hence the title to my post.

Call a spade a spade I say.

 

[jonic]

Why not? That is how I felt, the evidence supports it.

They would have gladly taken my money for an item they not only did not have locally, but anywhere in the UK, then having taken my money and had I turned up to collect, I would have been offerred a similar item at 3x the price. Having travelled an hour to get there I would have been left with a difficult situation.

Re-read my original post - I was suprised at what happened and I tried to phone their head office to get it sorted out, but they weren't interested and did the "long wait" call centre trick.

That's a scam my friend, plain and simple. It is also fraudulent. Hence the title to my post.

Call a spade a spade I say.

I did re-read your post and at the end you say it was a mistake with the stock code and instead of £8.50 a week it was £20ish quid.

Sounds like a mistake not an attempt at a criminal act. I don't disagree that you should be fed up about it. I would be, but accusations on public forums of fraud and scamming need to be carefully considered. It's a serious charge.