FAO of Accountants, business types or dodgy geezers

What benefit would there be for a business to issue a receipt for more than you paid? Presumably, that receipt will have gone in to their records and filed in their accounts. I can understand why a business would try declare less than they've earned - so they can pay less tax - but would there be any benefit from declaring more?

I'm trying to ascertain if it's a scam or a genuine mistake. We've paid for summat through a 12 month interest free loan, organised by the company who provided the service, but provided by a separate financial company. We could have paid outright, but this allowed us to keep the money in our savings account for a year to continue earning interest. All the paper work on the loan agreement is exactly as we agreed, we don't owe any more than that, but the receipt from the service provider is for significantly more. Is there any reason to do that other than them making an error?

 

Does the receipt include the (hypothetical) interest that you would have been due to pay had you not settled in time ?

 

No. The receipt states that's how much has been paid to them in full. We took out the loan, the service prodier did the job, the loan company paid the service provider, and the service provider issued us a receipt stating they had been paid £1,500 more than the value of the loan.

They told us it was an error and have since issued us with another receipt for the correct amount, but we've had and are continuing to have a million other problems with the whole thing. I was just wondering if this is a genuine error and there's nowt to worry about or there was something a lot more sinister to it.

 

Sounds like an error - as long as you have the correct receipt I wouldn't worry - are you having admin or technical probs ?


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Both. But the technical problems have been sorted out. The admin problems - not even close.

Forged signatures and documents, lies, damn lies and ******* damn lies. Customer service that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. Nowt in writing, all done by phone calls. And the governing bodies that are supposed to regulate them are, if owt, even worse. We submitted a complaint to one certifying body, who passed it on to another, who passed part of it on to another. They won't even begin to start investigating for 10 weeks, while the person supposedly dealing with our complaint in the middle one of those three is now the complaints manager at the company we are complaining against. They got our complaint, and this is at a respected organisation in the industry, told us they would investigate, but buggered off to the company they were supposed to be investigating without telling us or declaring a conflict of interests. The way the complaint has since been handled is to put me back in touch with the company with which I have a complaint, so I can be lied to and shouted at again. I'm going mental.

I've got an official test certificate that had to be done when we first had this thing done. A few days ago a team from the company came to our house to rectify the final technical problems. A lad knocked on the door and introduced himself. Perfectly nice lad. I recognised his name from the signature I've got on this test certificate, but I'd never seen him before despite being present during all their visits. I asked if he'd done the test or worked on our home at all previously. He said he hadn't and he was a bit concerned his name was on this certificate.

Talked to a director from the company, they said he did the test. Emailed the certification body about it. They haven't got back to me.

I've looked at the certificate. There's two pages. First page, all our details, address and that, and some test results. Second page just test results. There's nowt to link the second page with the first. No certificate number, our name isn't on it, nowt. The signature on that second page looks genuine. The one on the first has clearly been traced from the second page!

I don't know at this time if there's a massive scam, or it's just lazy business practices, cutting corners, can't be arse attitude, get things done quick without following procedure.

 

Could be selling the Company and inflating profits or someone's on a bonus based on £ sales

 

If that's the case, it's above and beyond what I'll be able to do anything about.

 

Money Laundering - haven't you watched breaking bad.

The feckers have a crystal meth facility in the basement... defo.

 

When you say service - its not through some form of grant is it? so the company are saying they have carried out 'x' amounts worth of work and then they are claiming that back from the govt?

We have training providers who bill the company and then claim the costs back from a pot provided by the govt.

 

Do you happen to know if there is any link between the company who provided the service and the finance company?

 

I was going to ask if it had owt to do with energy saving work done.

 

It is to do with that side of things yes.

 

It appears the company who provided the service work exclusively with that finance company.

 

Sounds to me then that they will be going back to whoever is ultimately providing the money for the project and claiming more back than they have actually carried out....perhaps.

 

Could be that the the initial assessments were carried out by persons still undergoing training and not yet certificated, with the company then accrediting the work to those that they have recorded as certificated professionals. They may then be trying to defraud the grant organisation by claiming the work to be more costly than it was but within grant guideline limits hoping that most folk wouldn't spot the difference and make an issue of it. My lad was working for company based in in West Yorkshire as a trainee assessor (unqualified) but he left before he finished his training because of the way they dealt with people. Wonder if its them!

 

Cheers mate. I don't know if that's right, but both those explanations are something I've thought about. Nice to read someone else thinking the same, goes to show I haven't gone completely mad.

Not the same firm though. Nice to read that your lad has some integrity.

 

I'm not an expert but it does sound very dodgy, even if they say it was a mistake could they try this all the time happy that most times people will accept it was a mistake and forget it happened - the cases that matter are the ones that don't challenge them. It just looks like a way of moving money that doesn't exist between businesses.