European City Guide scam threatens barber: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2005/01/30 > European City Guide scam threatens barber

European City Guide scam threatens barber
Sunday, January 30, 2005 -
An elderly barber in Naas, Co Kildare, who allegedly received a death threat from a debt collection agency acting for the European City Guide (ECG) has made a complaint to gardai, writes Neil Callanan.

The scam involves a Spanish-based company sending letters to businesses about an update to its free listing CD Rom directory. Often it includes a request to confirm the company's address and website. Small print at the bottom states that, if the business does this, it will be billed for between €800 and €900.

The company then receives a note saying it is legally bound by this contract. If payment is not received, legal action is threatened. Some businesses have paid the bill, even though the ECG is not legally entitled to charge for the adverts. Irish law obliges the publishers of directories to print the date of publication of the directory and the price of the directory on al l order forms. ECG's forms do not include this information.

“We have tried to forward a case to the European Commission about ECG,” said Ann Neville of the European Information Centre in Dublin.

“We've had a string of cases involving them.” She said the barber was told that “if you do not pay, you are f**king dead. We know where you live and we're going to get you.”

Calls to the garda fraud squad were referred to the garda press office, which did not return a call querying the incident. Charities, professionals, galleries, doctors and small businesses are among those who have been conned.

Dr Ronan Kavanagh, a consultant rheumatologist at the Bon Secours Hospital in Galway, said: “I was duped by the European City Guide into parting with some money. I suspect that hundreds of other Irish businesses have too. I don't want anyone else to be caught unawares.”

Hotelier Sammy Leslie of Castle Leslie in Glaslough, Co Monaghan, said she had received bills from a number of organisations which were running similar scams to ECG.

“These people seem to work on the principle that it costs more to fight their claim than to pay it,” she said.

“When I mentioned the European City Guide to one lot, they dropped their claim straight away.”

Businesses have now set up a website at www.stopecg.org to highlight the methods of the European City Guide.

The company, which used to operate from Barcelona, was fined €300,000 in 2002 for misleading advertising and banned from operating for a year. The Catalan authorities received more than 3,500 complaints from all over Europe between 1999 and 2003. The guide then moved to Valencia, which is in a different province, and started business again.

The Office of Fair Trade (OFT) in Britain recently won the first-ever cross-border court action in Europe to stop a trader in one country deceiving consumers in another. The commercial court in Brussels ruled in favour of the OFT, preventing Belgian company D Duchesne SA sending misleading mailings to consumers in Britain and the North.