My answer to this would be an emphatic NO, these review sites are all there to make money and simply give the highest rating to the hosts who pay the most. And as far as any reviews go, these can just as easily be made up by either the review site or the host as no real validation  takes place on most of these sites other than to maybe send out a verification email to the specified email address, which only goes to prove that the poster did not use a fake address.  Many of these sites will also doctor the reviews to favour the paying advertisers, notice that almost all host review sites have the same companies in their top 10. Just take a look at http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/ for some real dirt.

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Like many, I have contacted Trading Standards on several occasions, some of which are mentioned on this very site in my "Rogue Traders" section, but sadly their responses have generally been just to provide information on how to take action yourself.

The usual response you get from them is "we cannot help with civil matters", so I decided to ask them straight out what they consider to be a civil matter as it seemed to be just about everything I ever contacted them about. I have pasted their response below, as you can see  they are saying that any matter resulting from the purchase of good or services falls under "civil law".

Now what situation are you likely to contact them about that doesn't involve the purchase of goods or services? there certainly are not many I can think of, therefore anything you contact them about will automatically fall under "civil law" and thus they are effectively saying that they will not be able to help you or take any action.

Things that fall outside civil law would be cases where a trader is acting illegally or committing a criminal offence, or a health and safety issue in which case Trading Standards say they may be able to investigate or take some action, but these things do invariably take a very long time.

Like most I always thought that Trading Standards were there to protect the public from the rogue traders and rip-off merchants and that some good would come out of reporting such people to them and that they would eventually be stopped, but this doesn't appear to be the case at all as the law seems to stop them doing anything and is on the side of the criminals. Just have a look at my Sky Scammers post and see how many comments there are from people who have been duped, and in fact one of the companies mentioned have been on BBC Watchdog so they are scamming thousands of people all over the country every day. Most of the people who commented have contacted Trading Standards, and clearly fraudulently charging peoples credit cards and scaming them into signing up their services by pretending to be SKY canot be a civil matter as they are breaking the law, so one has to wonder how they been able to get away with it for so long.

To be honest I am not sure whether the fault lay with the law or with Trading standards, but either way something clealry needs to change to put a stop to these rogue traders who seem to have a "license to con" without any reprise and the public seem to have no rights when this happens other than to try and take legal action.

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The original article has been  removed due to legal action against Arif Choudry trading as Mansion Driveways for the shoddy driveway which needs replacing. This has been dragging on since 2007, during this time I have suffered the following from MR Choudry. Threats of violence against myself and family, numerous threats of legal action (for asking him to fix my drive which he classed as harassment, for writing the truth on my blog, among other ridiculous reasons) verbal abuse by phone and email, been falsely accused of a being racist, homophobic hells angel (yes really) and even assaulted with a hammer. 

If you are unlucky enough to find yourself on the receiving end of one of MR Choudry's bodge jobs, I suggest you record all phone calls, video any meetings, and do not hand over any money until the job is done properly to your full satisfaction as your chances of getting any money back from him afterwards are ZERO.

In this revision of my article I am sticking to facts which are easily checkable and provable by any member of the public, so here are a few links to some other information that may helm you determine whether or not you wish to employ the services of this man.

• Clive and Suz Story - another Mansion Driveways customer (you will need to register to view this)
• Brownbook.net - reviews and comments from other unhappy customers
• Blagger.com - Another review site for rogue traders, as you can see Choudry has given me quite a lot of abuse and make some outrageous accusations on here in his attempts to shroud the truth from people.
• Financial report on Mansion Driveways Limited . Notice he was struck off the register of companies back in 2000 is no longer a ltd company.  Now if you do a google seaarch you will find the company still being advertised as Mansion Driveways Ltd, 161 High Street, Tonbridge, Kent. A quick check on companies house will show you whether it is the same company or if there have ever been any other companies with this name. You may also want to research all those other previous driveway related company names shown on the report.
  
• Concrete Society - On the Mansion Driveways website it states "Proud to be MICGN compliant,
  as issued by the Concrete Society". If you contact the Concrete Society you will discover that Mansion Driveways are not endorsed or approved by the Concrete society in any way and are not compliant. Mr Choudry has in fact been asked to remove this reference from his website by the Concrete Society and Trading Standards.
  
• Chessington World of Adventures , On the mansion driveways site they claim to have done the impressed concrete for Chessington world of adventures. Give Chessington a call and ask them if they have ever heard of mansion driveways and if they did their impressed concrete. I tried and they had never heard of Mansion Driveways.
• Trading Standards - Sadly they don't seem to do a lot about rouge traders like this as it is classed as a civil matter, but Mr Choudry is very well known to Trading Standards, Kent police and many of the county courts in Kent it seems. Trading Standards or the police will not become involved unless a crime has been committed, and unbelievably being conned or ripped off is not a crime. Thus my suggestion to record all phone calls and have video tape any meetings as MR Choudry does have a habit of physically threatening people, which is a crime. 

Some useful facts you may not know

• The Mansion Driveways address is a PO box in a stationary shop. Mr Choudry works from home and has no physical office where you can contact or meet with him. He also has a number if displays at garden centres in Kent which appear to be manned by members of his family.
• Calls to 0800 numbers do not appear on your phone bill. If Mr Choudry challenges you to prove that you called him to complain about problems with your drive, you will not be able to do so if you called from your mobile or BT line. However some VOIP services do show calls to 0800 numbers and also allow you to automatically record your calls.
• You may receive threatening letters from Mansion Driveways anonymously signed by "The Legal Dept". There is no legal dept, these letters are written by Mr Choudry, although he often uses various other pseudo names such as Mr John Hurst.
• Mr Choudry claimed to me that VAT was included in all his quotes and in our court cases also stated he would be charging VAT on his claim. However after contacting the inland revenue they could find no record of him being VAT registered. Obviously this is no proof that Mr Choudry IS NOT VAT registered, simply that Inland Revenue couldn't find any record of it.
• You will no doubt be calling around a few other kent based impressed concrete companies for a quote, Try asking them if they know Mansion Drivreways and see what response you get, Mr Choudry is very well known to just about every other driveway company. Other companies I have contacted for a quote to replace my Mansion Driveways bodge job include Bomanite and imperial driveways, both of whom seem to have very good reputations, although I cannot yet comment on the quality of their work.

And finally, if you would like to see the quality of Mansion Driveways work first hand, feel free to contact me and I will be more than happy to send you some photos and a surveyors report or I will even show you my driveway personally if you live near Margate.

GREAT NEWS!!!! I won the court case, +1 for the good guy. More details coming soon. I am keeping the comments disabled for now to avoid any further bogus or abusive posts.