Nasty, defrauding European City Guide sucks

Arrgh!  The filthy ‘European City Guide’ is back!  We’ve received more of their nasty forms.  

Front page of form. There

There’s a cesspit in continental Europe which sends out these forms asking you to check your company details for an ‘inter-professional guide on CD-Rom and Internet’.

Don’t complete them!  Don’t sign them!  Don’t return them!

If you do so, you will find yourself landed yourself with a €997 bill for a tiny ‘advertisement’ for 12 months.  What’s more, the small print says that unless you send a registered letter within 3 months of the end of the 12 months, you are liable to pay for the next year’s advertisement.

The form is very scrupulous about detailing all the traps, in near-unreadable text, particularly on the back. Much of this sharp practice is unenforceable in law, and most of it is probably untested in law as well.  But it’s enough to give you sleepless nights.  We were stung by it ten years ago, and the problem straggled on for months.

The address on the forms is in Valencia, Spain, but there’s a complex web of people, companies and addresses all across Europe carrying out these scams.

See Stop The European City Guide! website for more information, and subscribe to the Stop ECG blog for the fascinating (if exasperating) story of this fraud.