Flipping cars- A sad story of people being ripped off by a once legitimate business
I dealt with Chris Laing of Flipping cars on a couple of occasions, and found him to be a really charming, affable guy who was also a compulsive liar. The first car I bought from auction through him turned out to have transmission failure, so it was rejected as it was a BCA assured car. He wouldn't give me my money back, making up one excuse after another but I found another car through him, and all went well. He even went as far as getting new front discs and pads put on the front as there was a vibration under braking, which wasn't picked up on the condition report. However, there were numerous delays in getting the car delivered to me, to the point my wife thought I had been conned. I put the delays down to him being unrealistic, and choosing to lie rather than being upfront about when he could deliver, and then making up excuses.
The 2nd car I bought was a nightmare in terms of getting it delivered, I was told many times that my car would definitely be arriving that day, only for it not to turn up and Chris wouldn't answer his phone. It eventually got delivered, weeks after being promised it got delivered to my old address despite me giving him clear instructions. Regardless, It was a nice car and I got it for a good price, and Chris offered to pay for the cost of me having to hire a car for a week when he missed the last 100% definite delivery date. He never paid me the money for the hire car, but all things considered it turns out I had a lucky escape. If you read the recent reviews on Trustpilot and the like, Chris has been taking money from people, telling them he had won the auction on cars that he wasn't even bidding on. Also, he introduced a new service, where people would pay him the money upfront for him to source them a car at trade price. Many people are out of pocket, the FCA got involved and Flipping cars were banned from buying from BCA and Manheim. Now the website has gone down and he opened a new company, my car broker LTD which was doing the same thing. There's now a facebook group where people who are victims are clubbing together, and from what I've read he seems to owe more than 3/4 of a million pounds. That's a lot of people who paid good, hard earned money for cars that were ripped off, I really feel for them.
https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-sto...car-broker-ltd
Chris had loads of videos on youtube, was featured on TV programs and online articles, and ran the largest independent car sourcing service in the UK. He was FCA registered, and claimed the money sent to him for cars was ring fenced and protected, so essentially there was no way he would or could defraud you. The trustpilot reviews were glowing, and a lot of people saved a lot of money by buying through him, until it all went wrong. The business model was great at first, they had a website showing all cars that were coming up for auction at all of the big auction houses, and you could search for cars that met your specification. I paid a fee for them to bid on car on your behalf, and once they had successfully won the car at auction they sent me an invoice from the auction house, showing how much the car had cost including fees. I then transferred the money to them and they went ahead and paid the auction house, what could possibly go wrong?
It seems that it essentially turned into one big pyramid type scheme, where he was taking money of the newest people to sign up to settle debts with the business eventually imploding with disastrous consequences. Not long back he bought himself a big house by the coast and a custom SUV and was flaunting his wealth. I really wonder how he can sleep at night. I bought 2 expensive cars through him, and shudder to think what would have happened if I would have been ripped off, like many others have been.
