The dealer that cannot be named

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I'm not on Facebook so only limited to what I can see but I have also noticed as of last week they have stopped sending horses on trial which is a good thing for the horses at least. She is more of a local dealer to me but I've always scrolled past her adverts,.even though some of the horses she has in are gorgeous. Any dealer who claims to have lots of horses the same (always safe sensible good to handle etc) never sits right with me. The amount of horses dealers get in very few are actually the safe and sensible ones. I feel so sorry for the horses being passed around when they done the trials.

A friend of a friend recently had a palomino gelding off her, advertised as safe happy hacker ideal for a novice rider. He wasn't, he was terrified of everything,.even the saddle being put on panicked him. He was very spooky being ridden. She took him back after the trial not an issue but again was paid back bit by bit. Unfortunately I have a feeling she will just try and rebrand as a different name and carry on
 
Parksmum3 said:
I'm not on Facebook so only limited to what I can see but I have also noticed as of last week they have stopped sending horses on trial which is a good thing for the horses at least. She is more of a local dealer to me but I've always scrolled past her adverts,.even though some of the horses she has in are gorgeous. Any dealer who claims to have lots of horses the same (always safe sensible good to handle etc) never sits right with me. The amount of horses dealers get in very few are actually the safe and sensible ones. I feel so sorry for the horses being passed around when they done the trials.

A friend of a friend recently had a palomino gelding off her, advertised as safe happy hacker ideal for a novice rider. He wasn't, he was terrified of everything,.even the saddle being put on panicked him. He was very spooky being ridden. She took him back after the trial not an issue but again was paid back bit by bit. Unfortunately I have a feeling she will just try and rebrand as a different name and carry on
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I wonder if your friend of a friend and my friend are one and the same. My friend had a palomino off said dealer, advertised as calm and safe. Very much wasn’t. She returned horse no problem but had a fight to get the money back.
 
Caol Ila said:
I wonder if your friend of a friend and my friend are one and the same. My friend had a palomino off said dealer, advertised as calm and safe. Very much wasn’t. She returned horse no problem but had a fight to get the money back.
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Quite possibly. The horse was called teddy and it was around November time
 
Parksmum3 said:
Quite possibly. The horse was called teddy and it was around November time
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Nah, different person. Horse was called something else. But it was around that time (I think). There have been so many….

My pal showed me the sales video they made of the horse. He looked steady and sensible in the video. God knows how they pulled that off. Drugs? Very ballsy riders who can make a horse look alright?
 
That FB page is wild. This is WAY beyond your average doodgy dealing but a deliberately fraudulent business model. And she appears to be unable to do anything about getting it removed. I'd love to know how she was so influentia before in getting stuff taken down. But now that people can connect and compare dates of when they had the horses, the pattern is so clear. The same horses round and round, with messages, photos, video, sales descriptions. Most DDs get away with 'horses are unpredictable in new homes' - which is hard to argue with. But this feels unsurvivable for She Who Must Not Be Named. And thank goodness for that.
 
I nearly enquired about one when i was looking sounded perfect can't remember why, but I clearly didn't investigate hard at the time. I had no idea until this that the horse was at a dealer let alone this one the ad sounded like a private home. From the FB the pony I liked was apparently covered in sarcoids!
 
New Forests Rock said:
Tonight's update - 1,754 members, huge number of horror stories of both dangerous and poor broken horses 😭 and you can now leave a bad review on Trustpilot which cannot be removed. And I spent most of this afternoon completing an official online fraud report.
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Well done you for filling the fraud report. It needs more people to do this.
 
splashgirl45 said:
Out of curiosity I just looked on horsemart , she can write really good advert that makes the horses sound great .. I bet she is still getting lots of enquiries
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I looked at her website, It looks pretty good. I can see why people get drawn in, at least in the first instance. No way would I pay £££ to trail a horse I'd not seen first though.
Shocking she has been getting away with all this.
 
Wow - I’ve just helped family friends buy a pony for their daughter and one of the adverts they sent me was for a pony with this dealer. Thankfully something felt off, though most reviews online were positive, and it transpired the pony was on trial with someone else, so they didn’t go up and try. Bullet well and truly dodged!
 
Cloball said:
I nearly enquired about one when i was looking sounded perfect can't remember why, but I clearly didn't investigate hard at the time. I had no idea until this that the horse was at a dealer let alone this one the ad sounded like a private home. From the FB the pony I liked was apparently covered in sarcoids!
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There’s been a few pop up that I’ve liked the look/sound of - but I’m not remotely local and would rather view than ship a horse the length of the country on the off chance that we got on. Also despite all the glowing reviews everywhere, I just couldn’t get my head around all the adverts sounding so similar and not a quirk among them, alongside pics of horses that didn’t exactly look the chilled, novice type…

Based on posts this morning - one of the ponies I liked the look of was sold 5 times in a 6 week period. Relieved that it wasn’t 6 in 6, and that the wee guy has found a home who are prepared to work through his issues.
 
Cloball said:
I nearly enquired about one when i was looking sounded perfect can't remember why, but I clearly didn't investigate hard at the time. I had no idea until this that the horse was at a dealer let alone this one the ad sounded like a private home. From the FB the pony I liked was apparently covered in sarcoids!
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I also really liked the look of a horse - but I posted an innocent thread on here asking if anyone knew her. The response was bonkers …. so I gave it a miss (thank you everyone) and then started to get the psycho messages from her and the thread got taken down.
Honestly, if she put half the effort into selling decent horses as she does to managing her reputation and business through threats and devious dealing, you have to think she would be successful 🤷🏼‍♀️
 
Something I have wondered is what she actually gets out of it? It seems that she mostly returns the money, albeit slowly, although there is a lot outstanding. Does she actually sell enough to be worth it, given that so many aren’t accurately described (and some are downright dangerous). From the FB page it appears she has large numbers of CCJs against her. Perhaps it has just got out of control and at some stage she resorted to taking multiple payments in order to keep ‘afloat’. I’m not sympathising, just a bit baffled.
 
Various ways to make money:

Taking lots of payments for the same horse. Say 3 for a £10,000 horse = £30,000
Repeat for say 5 horses a week = £150,000 a week. Not being held in escrow but in her own accounts earning interest.

Then there is the delaying phase - needs shoes, suddenly being funny about X,Y,Z, vet coming for a cut, actually not sure he'll suit after all etc etc

Wastes a few weeks that way. Eventually horse arrives with new owner.

Then moves on to the trying to return phase. Some people are told they are outide the 7 days so tough. (Even though dealers have to offer 30 and also on one post a person said the trial ended the day after the horse arrived! So no option to return though she will 'sell for you' and no doubt makes a chunk on top.) Plus more delaying tactics with lots of alternative horses suggested - dragging out the whole process yet further. Others will keep the horses because they feel sorry for them and can't bring themselves to send back.

For the rest she takes months to pay back. Some will just give up. The FB page suggets she owes over £300,000!

So a combination of selling, refusing refunds, re-selling and interest seems to keep her going.
 
Abacus said:
Something I have wondered is what she actually gets out of it? It seems that she mostly returns the money, albeit slowly, although there is a lot outstanding. Does she actually sell enough to be worth it, given that so many aren’t accurately described (and some are downright dangerous). From the FB page it appears she has large numbers of CCJs against her. Perhaps it has just got out of control and at some stage she resorted to taking multiple payments in order to keep ‘afloat’. I’m not sympathising, just a bit baffled.
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Literally the term “passing the buck” has never been more fitting! It sounds like she’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, but it’s all going to come crashing down if people can be warned.

We circled around a few adverts 18 months ago but a friend then had an awful experience and I’m glad I didn’t go any further. Due to all the positive reviews, I thought their situation was a one off until she tried to match a 15.2hh ex eventer (with a history of rodeoing) to a child. I now suspect the horse would never have arrived that their yard and it was simply a method of keeping the books afloat again.
 
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