Rogue Traders in the Equestrian world - why is there no UK regulation?

[Andiamo]

You know, there should be something like a "rogue traders" list of horse dealers / livery yards, similar to databases of Cowboy Builders.

When a customer trusts a livery yard / trainer / sales yard to do the job of looking after / exercising / selling their horse (at a cost of up to £1,200/month) - it's basically the same as contracting a builder to install a kitchen, and agreeing to pay £1,200 for the service, and he does a bad job, leaves it incomplete, or it turns out he has no qualifications at all (think BHS) and a bad history of repeat offences of ripping people off or poor treatment of the horses (cutting back on hay, bedding to unacceptable levels)... it's really the same. Another similar example is estate agents. There are now estate agency regulatory boards...but prior to that they could rip off whoever they wanted and get away with it, without consequences. Just like livery yards / trainers / sales yards.

I wonder who I would speak to / government department - in order to push this forward, so that equestrian rogue traders can be outed, and so that the safe / recommended ones could appear on a safe list, in order to protect private customers and individuals in the UK? It is sorely lacking, and the number of welfare issues, aggression, cheating, lying, and plainly ripping off honest, trusting customers should really be stopped.

It's appalling that the same people get away with ripping off honest people, and that there is no way to know in advance of their negative history or even if they have the BHS qualifications they say they have. How can one check that the trainer / rider etc has a BHS level 2 or 3 or whatever they tell you? They talk the big talk, and can be very charming and promise you the world, and 5 star service etc, and when it comes down to it, they are crooks / thieves / scammers / rip-off artists.

If a customer requests a reference, the trader will probably provide their mates' phone numbers, (they would provide details for unhappy customers who have left due to neglect of their horse, or failure to provide for the animals basic needs, or have bullied livery customers and so on...if you call their ex-employers, you'll probably not get a good reference, because there is always a level of dissatisfaction between yard owners and their staff, no matter how good / bad a job the employee does, yard owner may not give a good reference.

So, how can we unsuspecting, innocent customers (who are entirely reliant on others to care for our horses) avoid getting ripped off by a repeat offender? How can we find out their reputation? HHO is banning trader enquiries in the HHO Forum, but for now it seems to be the only way to discover any background about these dishonest traders.

Important note to the honest, kind, livery owners / dealers etc -
My intention is not to tar everyone with the same brush. I'm sure you know as well as everyone else, that these types of unscrupulous people exist and continue to run equine businesses. On that note, wouldn't you like to appear on a UK-wide "recommended yard / trader / rider list" , so that potential customers can immediately differentiate you from the baddies out there? so that your goodness, honesty and reliability shines through and you can gain customers from it?

More protection is needed for customers, and transparency is needed into the unscrupulous behavior of equine businesses.

I welcome your comments.

 

[littleme]

Its one thing with blatent lies or clearly not giving the service but firstly we're talking about animals, they aren't machines major problem with dealers is that horses don't always act/react how we think. Perfectly decent dealers can sell decent horses that react badly/differently in a new home and this can cause havoc between seller/buyer and potential ruin seller. Livery/trainers/exercising is of course a different matter as somehting is either done or it isn't, but I would think it would be very difficult to really prove something to make it worthy of putting on a 'rogue traders' list. I think doing this would ruin so many decent yards/dealers/trainers etc.

Also, I disagree with this: ''it's basically the same as contracting a builder to install a kitchen, and agreeing to pay £1,200 for the service, and he does a bad job, leaves it incomplete, or it turns out he has no qualifications at all (think BHS) and a bad history of repeat offences of ripping people off or poor treatment of the horses (cutting back on hay, bedding to unacceptable levels)... it's really the same''. It definately isn't the same! However, I think if a yard really is that bad people will soon leave and give the place a bad reputation. People talk and I don't think bad yards get away with it easily, only takes one person to talk and thats it! I think this tends to be enough?

 

[Andiamo]

Thanks Littleme, we'll have to agree to disagree.

If five unhappy customers leave a livery yard due to all sorts of unacceptable practices at the yard - the yard owner / manager immediately places an ad in a local paper or online, or in Horsedeals etc, and they get a completely new set of unrelated / unconnected people turning up to view the yard and listen to their wonderfully charming Spiel, and they then dupe these new potential customers into believing that all will be well ...I've seen it happen over and over, and people get away with it. It is shocking. They then go on to shaft the new customers.

 

[littleme]

To be fair, I've never seen that happen although I believe you that it does! Usually if a yard is that bad word gets out and people avoid it, i've definately seen that happen! Sometimes though I think a load of liveries leaving at once usually would give YO a kick up the arse to realise things need to change? It's sad that people can get away with it, but I do see H&Hs point of not allowing it as i'm sure in a lot of cases its just gossip or unfortunate. Again, often I'm sure its a very true and others have the right to know but it'd be on H&Hs head!

 

[iconique]

I think that the answer is regulation costs money.

There is an approval system with the BHS for livery yards and riding schools and there is a registered instructors list, however it costs money and IMO these systems aren't flawless. Any inspections are always based on the performance on the day and we all know that things are specially arranged or cleaned in preparation!

In your example of a livery yard having vacancies and then having new customers on a yard who don't know, having read many a post on here about the complaints about other liveries, I'm very sure that people do vote with their feet and often ask the question of why is there a vacancy or how long have people been there?? In some cases what makes a livery yard bad isn't just a weak yard owner but some very strong personality liveries!!

Horses can be upredictable, they are living creatures, but then there are some honest people out there and yes if paying for a service I would expect to get it, but I also would never dump my horse on someone and just leave them to it, particulary if spending a lot to have a horse produced/sold. But I do agree a contract is a contract and if I agree something I expect it to be done or a very good explanation!

The horse world is a very small industry and much as posting about dodgy dealers has now been prohibited on here, I'm sure that by asking questions in the right places that people will still be able to find out by using some of the other resources available to them including their registered qualified instructor or even local tack shop??

If anything I think particulary to protect the good dealers or yards then a scheme of approval would be good - but Trading Standards do a Buy with Confidence approval scheme, so why not start here??

 

[Andiamo]

Unfortunately Littleme, there are some control-freak, power hungry people running yards, and they think they are always in the right. If customers leave, the yard manager tells others on the yard that the people were thrown out, or asked to leave for "x,y,z" behaviors. The yard manager / owner learns very little from experience, because they think they were in the right.

Here are some real-life examples:
1) Yard / trainer not exercising a horse that is on full schooling livery at £900 - £1,200/month, contracted to be ridden 6x/week
2) Reducing hay / haylage to such a small amount that the horses are starving and ribs start to show / obvious weight loss occurs - just so the YO can make a bit of extra profit at the horses' and owners' expense
3) horses left with very little bedding. I was at one yard, where for my £200/week livery my horse got a full thick bed of shavings. After one month, it went down to half a bag of shavings per week, leaving the horse standing in his own poo and wee. It was then decided by yard that without a reduction in livery price, that shavings would no longer be offered, and that now everyone gets straw. The yard manager / staff were equally as cheap with the straw, and horses were still left standing in their own waste, and having to sleep in it (thereby ruining expensive rugs etc). Mucking out was also not done, staff sitting around drinking tea the whole day...I would arrive and spend an hour cleaning my horse's stable before I could even tack him up
4) Forcing customers to use the yard manager's /trainers vet/farrier/saddler - because they get a commission or free services for their own horses for the referrals...and getting extremely aggressive if someone should even suggest to use their own.
5) Aggressively bullying customers or becoming violent. It DOES happen.

These things should be reportable, so that other honest and unsuspecting customers do not fall victim to the same dishonest & aggressive people.

 

[littleme]

I don't think it happens often, surely you can't run a business lke that purely because you woul;dn't be able to keep the liveries, and you soon run out of people in the area (and people gossip) to gain new clients!

I'd have thought if they are really that bad you could target them directly legally somehow rather than just blacklisting them so to speak

 

[The Fuzzy Furry]

Its a HUGE shame that horses/ponies when kept at livery do not come under the 'boarding of animals' act.
The current version is the 1963 act if I recall correctly but there were consultations done about 2 yrs ago which had horses included, but they have not yet been added.