During our initial enquiries we failed to spot a website; however a site has now been bought to our attention. From a legal standpoint there are a number of issues. Firstly, there is no reference to the registration details of the company, a legal requirement. The lack of a corporate address is also very worrying. Looking at the contact number, +44 (0) 208 089 7839, according to Ofcom records this number is not from an allocated number range. If you have received a call from this number, it is likely that the caller is spoofing their identity. According to our enquirers, we find it strange that cold calls don’t emanate from the number above but from the numbers below:
- 01252 954163
- 01256 594063
- 02070 971445
- 07480 721769
- 07727 738137
- 07727 739781
- 07840 723721
The website
Separately to the comments above, you may think you are seeing double when looking at the corporate logos’, look again. Apart from the similarity of corporate identity, much of the scammers website is a clone of the original company based in Australia, below is just one example:
EDRS
DRA
A domain search reveals that the Australian company not only show their registrar whose name is mentioned many times on their site, but also the domain is over 8 years old. As far as EDRS are concerned, the domain registrar is hidden behind a privacy shield and the domain was only registered on 16th November 2022.
TCA comment
Adding this latest information together with our past publications, if you are not convinced now that this is a fraudulent organisation there is no hope for you. We have already speculated that EDRS have already changed their name to Contract Debt Relief Centre, our investigation team are hunting down a possible new site, if found we will report further.
Debt Recoveries Australia is undoubtedly a bona fide company whose head office is in Melbourne with a number of branch offices in Australia in the major cities. In no way do TCA believe there is any connection between this genuine company and the scammers outlined in this, and previous articles.
In the meantime please remember if you are cold called saying a European Court order has been issued for the non payment of maintenance fees for a timeshare you exited many years ago, it’s all false. Our best advice would be to tell the caller to “go play on the bypass”
For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk