A firm of agents has been ordered to pay over £12,500 after wrongly claiming to belong to two trade bodies.
Matthew Estates, in Haringey, north London, was hit with a bill of £12,630 after claiming membership of both ARLA and NALS – now known as safeagent.
The firm was fined a total of £10,000 under the Consumer Protection From Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and ordered to pay £2,460 costs and a £170 victim surcharge after being found guilty of five offences relating to false claims in respect of membership of professional trade associations.
The penalties were imposed after a trial at Highbury Corner magistrates court.
The prosecution was brought by Haringey Trading Standards.
Following a visit, an email sent to the investigating officer by the business contained the claims of membership.
Further checks of the business’s website by Trading Standards revealed more breaches.
Officers returned to the business as part of the investigation and seized physical signage from the premises which falsely claimed NALS membership.
According to Haringey Council, Matthew Estates pleaded not guilty to all the charges and argued that the shop sign belonged to a different business and that the issues on the website and email were the fault of the web development company.
The firm also stated that it did not really use email or its website at the time of the offences so no one would have been misled.
In sentencing, the magistrates said that the firm had gained considerable commercial advantage in claiming the memberships.
In mitigation, the defendant’s Counsel stated that the offence had been committed through naivety rather than dishonesty and that the business still hoped to be able to join both organisations.
‘the defendant’s Counsel stated that the offence had been committed through naivety rather than dishonesty’
Yeah. right. Of course.
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aka The Harvey Weinstein defence.
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“…the issues on the website and email were the fault of the web development company.”
Have you seen the chuffin’ website?
If you ask me, “the fault” is with the eejit that agreed to having that abomination made live!
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Nice to see their website advertising “DSS welcome”, the folk at shelter will like that!
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Anyone under the impression that Get-a-Gent is worth its’ salt needs to look at its’ page for this (equally) shambolic “Agent”.
Three UNverified five-star reviews… all of which appear to be for some photographer guy by the name of Matt!
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