Urgent, Gas inspection scam - Update

by Gobiker56 Thu Jul 29, 2010 3:46 pm

I have just had a man come to the house to "inspect" my Butane insatallations in my cooker and gas heaters. He said he was from the Junta de Andalucia and was dressed in Repsol colours. He had impressive documentation, he inspected my stuff and said my tubes and regulators were out of date, true they were, but wanted to charge me a fortune to change them. Plus he wanted 48.00 Euros for an Inspection Certificate. All seemed above board to that point when I said I had no money. He then proceeded to haggle, Have you got 30.00, no, 20.00 no, finally he asked for 10.00 at which point I knew something was amiss and called a translator who came straight round. He left after a long discussion, leaving his card. He is very plausible and nearly fooled the translator only failing when we called the contact number and got an answerphone with a call back facility. Please be on your guard. My friend has taken all the companies details and is looking into this further with a solicitor friend as there are many scams of this nature at the moment. Mostly involving Gas and Electric. I strongly doubt the Junta collect money door to door for inspection certificates and haggle over the cost.

Please note he was VERY plausible indeed. especially with a whole load of ID. It may well be a legitimate company using dubious tactics.

UPDATE
After checking with the Guardia Civil who picked one of these people up. The situation is that what they are doing is not strictly illegal. What they are doing is selling you things that you can get much cheaper elswhere and "frightening" English (they are only targetting the English/extrajaneros) into paying exorbitant money for cheap items. Also, as in my case, trying to change items that were dated 2010 when they did not need to be changed yet. We are looking into how much it is to have REPSOL themselves issue you with an inspection certificate. As for the Tubing and Regulators they are very cheap in any ferreteria, a fraction of the cost these people are charging. I will keep this updated.