Highland Hampers

[Renovirgin2018]

Thought I'd start a thread over here as to not overrun the bargain thread.

I have ordered two. One being diabetic, I will admit I did think it a bit strange that there were no individual diabetic items on the site. Saying that, I am crossing my fingers hoping it will arrive.

If anyone has any updates, refund actually back in back/orders received 🤞 please post here.

@HamWater Very good point!!! Can anyone remember who the poster was? We need to be careful next year if it’s a new poster who just suddenly appears to inform us of a bargain!

I saw the post and loaded up my basket, got distracted and didn't complete the order as there was a post doubting it then - so i googled and saw what they said was true.. So i avoided the scam.
Wish i could recall who posted the bargain and no way am I searching through the threads!

I posted this before so I remember looking it up and it was thread 11 page 13/14 but I can’t be recall who the poster was. I thought it was a regular contributor and I remember he/she being very apologetic and saying When someone pointed out who ran the firm Etc

To be fair, I name change a lot so I will be “someone new” by next year if you only go by the name

I've not had a refund yet

Did they really say they had received something and then got the discount voucher though, I got vouchers sent to me when I ordered mine but I hadn't received anything.

I got a refund from a debit card payment. Apparently banks this year have a new law called the contingent reimbursement model. Customers have to his certain criteria to be eligible for a refund. If you tell them it has gone past their delivery date this makes you eligible. So hopefully that may help anyone who hasn’t been refunded.

The worst thing about all of it is there is nothing to stop him doing this all over again. Hope the police have enough evidence or manage to charge him and put a stop to him.

Dancemom did you contact Santander?

We supplied Highland Gift Company (Nate S and Ryan N for their hampers mid September and started sending them reminders for payment after 6 weeks had passed. We threatened them with legal action then Nate emailed to apologise and said we’d be paid by 2nd December at the latest as they’d had issues with funds being released by credit card company. When this date passed, we realised we weren’t going to get paid, we started digging. Spoke to their landlord and another supplier who hadn’t been paid and the penny dropped that their director was the drug dealer given a 8 month sentence in January 19, suspended for 12 months. So he has to keep out of trouble for another 4 weeks.... We decided to post a negative review on Facebook advising customers not to expect their hampers and separately that we (a genuine small family business) had not been paid for our product. We were blocked straight away but at least a seed of doubt had been put in a few customers heads. We contacted Highland Council Trading Standards last Thursday and Fort William police a few nights ago. The police can only investigate when a customer has been defrauded and we as a supplier do not fall into that category. So it is up to others to report this deception to their local police station.We could not figure out why they kept up with their charade but a local lady who had met them contacted us and said that Nate seemed to enjoy playing games with people and their emotions. She also alerted me to their aborted purchase of two hotels in late October in Lochaber which left two sellers high and dry. Their own solicitor withdrew from acting as he couldn’t find them. Lochside Accommodation Ltd was the Company name they used for that. Again, puzzled as to what their motivation was for their actions. Our theory for the Hampers scam is that they got stock in from the summer, sent a few out, gave a lot away in competitions and received great feedback in advance of the bigger scam planned - Xmas hampers. We now know that 95% of the suppliers on the website are owed money for their products. Probably close to £10k in total. We believe as has been suggested elsewhere in this thread that the money they received from customers orders was used to fund other criminal activities. We also believe that they think if they refund everyone now they’ve made enough from these other activities then they’ll get away with this as a bad luck story as no-one has suffered actual loss. But they were never going to deliver any Xmas hampers and so the intention to defraud and deceive was there. It just needs customers to say that a refund is not enough and to report this scam to the police. They have asked all suppliers to email them their invoices and they’ll pay as soon as they can. We’re not holding our collective breaths. As a registered Company, they should have appointed an administrator or receiver to act on behalf of creditors if they were ceasing trading but they are still an active Company on Companies House and so are still legally trading. So customers should be entitled to refunds until they do legally wind their operation up and we as suppliers still need to pursue them for the outstanding monies and not be distracted by this further smokescreen.

Yes, I've found the original post and the poster just says she's ordered a hamper, not received one. I wonder if Action Fraud or the police will actually be able to find out what really happened (or if they even care).

wonka77 I’m so glad you have found this thread and been able to post your side of the story.
Were you the lady who posted about the chocolate company on a review ?
It’s disgraceful what this man has done. I for one am happy to make a complaint if it stops him doing it again.

@Wonka77 I'm so sorry to hear your story. Lots of us are baffled by it all, but have been fortunate enough to get our money refunded. It doesn't look like you'll get very far with them, and have been genuinely scammed. I'm sorry you're not offered more protection as a business. As previously mentioned, I've reported them through Action Fraud, as recommended by a police officer friend, and having read your message, would encourage others to do the same. If all is innocent I'm sure Action Fraud will quickly figure that out.

Yes. That was us. It’s good to find a forum which won’t censor us for telling the truth. My local police station said it was a Trading Standards matter until a customer complained to the police. Trading Standards told me they don’t have the resources available to the police to track down individuals who have gone to ground.

How do we report to action fraud newbabyjoy ? Thanks

@Wonka77 thanks for the info. I was the first poster to caution against these 'bargains' and got precious little thanks for it. In fact, I felt mortified by the amount of posters saying it changed nothing and they were still positive they'd receive knock down hampers. Plenty comments to the poster who shared the link telling her not to worry about sharing it (and rightly so, it's not her fault or her that's scamming) but for sticking my neck out, I wasn't thanked in the main for pointing out the potential hazard ahead. My gut strongly said this was too good to be true and so didn't order otherwise I would contact the police. I hope you do get your invoice paid. Small businesses can't afford these levels of theft.

To my eternal shame, I was the poster who shared the code for the hampers at £12. I had previously ordered the mystery hamper at £19.99 on the recommendation of another poster on these threads. And the HGC sent me the code for them with 40% off and so I shared that. I did wonder at the time if people who had not made an initial purchase would be able to use the code, but it turned out that everyone could and the HGC also shared that code on their FB. I am not a plant from them, I assure you. I am a long term MN member and do post occasionally. I am also still waiting for my refund of the original £19.99 and the £12. I did not request the refund as I thought I would wait it out, but now I'm waiting to see if I get it. I am so sorry that my posting has caused so many of you inconvenience and possibly financial losses. I did share in good faith.

Oh @Wonka77 that’s so rubbish.

Do you have a retail site that we could look at? A lot of us are looking for Hamper fillers

@Wonka77 I’m so sorry you have been defrauded by these chancers. Disgusting.

@stormsurfer It’s not your fault! I only posted the above because I couldn’t remember if it was a regular poster like yourself or if it was someone who had joined solely to promote the “hampers” as someone else suggested. Please don’t feel bad. And at least we now know that it wasn’t one of the con men themselves on here duping us.

I never said I had received the first one at the time of posting the discount here, because I had not and still have not, but at the time I was not concerned as they had said dispatch would begin in December. I don't recall who it was first posted about the mystery hampers, but it was certainly described as an early order deal. I think they were to be ordered before the end of October?

You can put "Action Fraud" into a search engine. It's pretty simple to file a report as a "victim", and all information is available from the companies house page or their website. Takes about 10/15minutes. I'm reliably told the action fraud system is computerised, and if lots of people report the same company, it will flag up on the system for investigation.

I feel I have learnt so much from this whole thread and experience. I am going to be so careful with online purchases in future - I never checked to see if secure payment. I read other info on action fraud about Black Friday very eye opening. My Christmas shopping is now officially finished. Hope everyone gets what they are owed and has a lovely Christmas x

Unfortunately you can't use the action fraud website from Scotland, there's a note comes up to say have to report via 101 if you live there.

Shocking scam! They will probably get away with it though I’m afraid.

I tried to stop a huge-scale postal identity theft scam in my city (won’t say where). Someone was travelling across county lines on the train to steal post from postal boxes in many blocks of new flat’s . Apparently this crime is prolific now because postmen need access at certain times and the criminals know when to steal post.

The fraudsters were opening up bank accounts and intercepting new cards from our post boxes. They were doing it on an industrial scale. There was no way to track them as the local police refused to get involved. This crime by its nature was deemed a national fraud crime - and the victims were the banks because we did not lose any money (the banks refunded all the money they stole). We were not able to report it as a crime- even though my post had been stolen over a whole month!

The local police wouldn’t touch it. These crims continue to dodge conviction because our criminal justice system is not joined up when it comes to e-fraud.

I bet this hamper scam will not be deemed as fraud because people got their money back. It’s only the banks who can be the victim in this sort of crime because customers are not out of pocket if they issue refunds to everyone. The only way anyone will look into it is if there is evidence of money laundering linked to other criminal activities. I think the fraudsters know this and is why they’ve set it up this way, issuing refunds and paying suppliers.

I’ll be watching with interest and hope I’m proven wrong.

@wonka I would love to order some products from you!