Michelle from ‘t Gooi knows better than anyone how tricky handymen can be when they scam people in need. She fell for it twice. “What’s worst: I’m a police officer’s daughter. He’s warned me about this kind of thing all my life.”
Ten years ago, Michelle (not her real name) found a 24-hour service that could fix her clogged toilet via a fake website. The man came, did his job – although he also damaged the toilet – and Michelle was immediately able to pay 500 euros.
At the time, such a job actually cost less than a hundred euros. “You are stressed, things are overflowing and there is panic. Something has to be done quickly. Then you react too quickly and you don’t look at who you are calling in.”
Someone has to come now
A few years later Michelle moved to a house in ‘t Gooi. After the first night of sleeping at the new address, she was unable to open the front door. “A delivery man from Ikea was coming that day and I thought: someone has to come now to fix it. That sewer case from years before did not cross my mind. I saw a site with excellent reviews and considering the speed, I thought it was good.”
The locksmith came and it was fixed within a minute. The damage was not too bad: 150 euros. “But he also immediately came with a quote to replace all the locks. I asked if I wanted to sign it immediately. Fortunately, I didn’t do that. It didn’t feel right.”
When peace returned, Michelle looked on Trustpilot and it said he was charging insane prices. “They take advantage of the situation. You’re stressed and you don’t think everything through, even though my father always warned me about this. You feel screwed. When later my dishwasher overflowed, I thought: now I really have to stay calm. I better count to ten, otherwise it will happen again.”
NH delves into the world of rogue handymen and the editors regularly receive emails from North Hollanders who have been victims. The reason was Jimmy’s suffering who said that he had been defrauded of 5,100 euros by fake handymen. The rip-offs always take advantage of stressful situations that require a quick solution, such as clogged toilets or locks that cannot be opened.
The trouble usually starts with looking for a professional who can quickly repair in an emergency. And then Google seems to be your best friend. These appearances are deceiving, because scammers who want to deceive desperate customers are waiting online.
“We had a clogged toilet and we searched Google for ‘sewer unblocker.’ The first site had good reviews. But that was fake, as it turned out. In your haste you don’t pay attention to that,” responds victim Til Gruijs-Den Boer from Zaandijk.
Scammers often do not want to provide a concrete estimate of the costs in advance. Til: “Labor costs and 89 euros per meter, he said. He could not say in advance how many meters he had to unclog.”
Menacing
The plunger came to Til in the afternoon, removed the toilet bowl and then said he would return in the evening with the right tools. Til’s husband was also home when the black van without company name drove up again.
“They were busy for half an hour, asking if we wanted to pay 1,700 euros. The second person said hey, you forgot the VAT. Then it became 2,100 euros. We had to transfer it immediately. They had a PIN machine with them. Only when paying did I realize that we had been scammed and I shielded my PIN code as best I could. Really terrible. Payment had to be made. They were not aggressive or anything, but they were threatening.”
Scammers
Many victims report to NH that the scammers often say that you can simply submit your invoice to an Owners’ Association or the insurance company. They then send that invoice, they say. But they don’t. “A week later, the sewer was full again. Then we called a real sewer cleaner. We had to pay 139 euros for the entire job. That’s a different story, isn’t it?”, says Til.