Hi Franci. It’s definitely a fake – thank you for bringing it to our attention and we are currently trying to have it taken down.
This is the third or fourth attempt by what appears to be the same crowd trying to impersonate our site in the last year, and the same scammers are also trying to impersonate the Honest John site in the same way. They use web addresses that look almost exactly the same as ours, and a site design that they have stolen from us, so it can easily catch people out.
We try to shut these guys down as soon as they pop up, but it is rather difficult. In this case, it’s impersonating our site as well as me personally to try and generate authentic-sounding endorsement for the business – in this case, a company called HPS Enterprises. They have copied the code for our (now outdated) site design, so many of the links on the page do point to other pages on our site, which helps it seem legitimate.
This has happened a few times lately and is always linked to similar companies importing repossessed cars to the UK from Europe so I assume there’s a connected network at play.
We have sent cease-and-desist letters to HPS Enterprises and to the site hosts – I don’t expect to hear back from HPS but hopefully the web hosts (eUKhost) will take action and remove the site fairly quickly. Unfortunately it will probably pop up again somewhere else in a while.
If you see anything like this where a site is being impersonated, please contact the legitimate site owner so we/they are made aware of the fake site and can try to get it shut down.
Thanks,
stuart
.
