I have recently written about a scammer called Stuart Paskin, he runs a number of businesses and websites including The White Tent, and has built his entire “empire” up by moving from Digital Agency to Digital Agency scamming them to do work, then announcing the work wasnt up to scratch and moving onto another company.
The White Tent is their current, main website that we worked on in 2016 and the start of 2017 – and from the second we spoke to Stuart at The White Tent we knew he was going to be trouble.
The White Tent had been made in Opencart which is our eCommerce platform of choice – the tasks he asked us to do were all within our capabilities and we were able to complete them as and when we were asked to complete them, apart from on a couple of occasions where things were delayed due to requests from customers who pay us a monthly retainer and get higher priority support. As we started working on things we noticed more and more things that just didnt seem to sit well with us, he had admin accounts set up for 3 or 4 different companies who all seemed to specialise in Opencart development and was always talking crap about the people who had worked on it in the past.
We sent Stuart Paskin our first invoice and heard nothing apart from more demands of work he wanted doing, and we actually got passed over to one of his little henchmen Stewart Stalker – Stewart made excuses for Stuart as to why invoices were not being paid (not in the office, also used a family member’s illness as an excuse) and we were reassured time and time again that they would be sorted.
Halfway through our “Business relationship” Stuart drafted in a lovely lady to do PPC and Social Media marketing, and then started to get her to chase us for updates on tasks he had asked me to do – I later found out she was also not paid a penny for any of the work she did and found it extremely upsetting and demoralising to have to call people like myself and chase us for updates – knowing full well we weren’t being paid on time for our work either.
Anyway – time went on and we did bit and bobs on The White Tent as Stuart and Stewart continued to dangle a carrot, promising we would be paid “if we just…” – but we were growing increasingly frustrated about the whole situation so we started doing some digging.
We found a forum post by someone called Paul over on the Opencart forums, and our bad feeling suddenly turned into a sickening feeling as we realised we were the victim of a serial scammer. I reached out to Paul and his experience was pretty much the same as ours – he also told me of about 9 other people he had spoken to who were in exactly the same boat. Horrifying!
We managed to get 80% of our invoices paid and cut ties with The White Tent, but there are some of the people before and after us that are still struggling to get paid for the brilliant work they did.
A word of warning to anyone doing due diligence on this company or these scammers – STAY AWAY FROM THEM!
If you’ve been screwed over by these conmen then I would love to hear your story. COmment below or fill out my contact form.
Stay Scam Wise, people.
4 replies on “The White Tent – Built On Lies, Paid For in Lawsuits”
Buyer beware – Whitetent is scamming customers too.
I am in the process of claiming money back through the small claims court. I purchased some light fittings (£694.24) from the Whitetent website on the 9th November 2017. The lights arrived on the 28th November 2017. However, by this time, I had managed to get lights from somewhere else and on 30th November 2017 requested to return the lights for a refund.
At this stage I was told by Evelyn-Amanda Batey with Stuart Paskin “cc’d” that it would not be possible to return the lights as they had been custom made. This was not mentioned on the website or any correspondence. In fact their returns policy states “no questions asked”. I contacted citizens advice who confirmed that Whitetent were obliged to refund the lights under The Consumer Contracts (Information, cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 and as I had not provided any specification (i.e. size or specific colour) the lights were not classed as “made to order”.
Over a month later – I have not had my refund. I am now reporting Whitetent to trading standards and pursuing my refund via the small claims court.
You guys built a great, professional looking website for the Whitetent. Unfortunately the Whitetent are using it to break consumer law and rip people off.
Sarah,
Did you pay via paypal? We’ve had a similar experience (lights ordered 21st September) and the refund came through via a paypal dispute this morning. It’s been a bit of an effort, but ultimately worth it!
Good luck.
Dear All
This is news to me I. I run a sourcing business for clients purchasing Italian products. In December of 2016 I had a call from Stuart Paskin regarding using my services to find suppliers in Italy for his online business. So we set up a meeting at my house to discuss things further when he emailed me a comprehensive list of all products I was to source for him. On numerous occasions he would ask me to try and request bulk samples from the suppliers which unfortunately they declined (Thank God). Reading through this article I am truly amazed to learn this about Stuart Paskin. Knowing who he really is and that I had him in my house face to face makes me feel sick. I feel sorry for the people he has scammed and I hope he pays for his dishonesty.
All the best.
Hi All, most of Stuarts business is based on drop shipping. Again I have been taken for a joyride. Worked days and days from him. I received nothing for the work. Like said in the article he uses every excuse under the sun and will happily use his family in his malicious lies. Not worth the time. Don’t get sucked in.