Transfer scam alert
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• Owner-operators who cannot meet their hire purchase or lease repayments may be falling prey to illegal vehicle transfer agencies.
Registered transfer agencies are perfectly legal. But unregistered, crooked agencies have sprung up during the recession, offering to solve debt problems by taking on the vehicles and repayments.
Nightmare stories of their activities have prompted both the Office of Fair Trading and the Finance Houses Association to warn hauliers to avoid such agencies.
The FHA says it has heard stories of commercial vehicles being passed on to vehicle transfer agencies which promise to keep up the repayments but fail to do so. And when the operator returns to the agency he finds it has disappeared—along with his vehicle. Many transport operators taking up agency deals fail to realise that they are still liable for the debt with the finance company which originally signed the loan agreement, Rob McHugh, head of Owner Operators UK, says several of his members have had prob lems with vehicle transfer agencies. He urges operators with financial problems to approach the original loan company.