A guy called Jacob called at my house today. He said he’d been staying with my neighbour Roger and was on his way back to Holland after a catering trade show at RAF Benson, nearby. He didn’t want to take all his stock back on the ferry with him: were we interested in taking any of it off his hands? If we could cover his costs he’d let us have an entire case of knives and a 12-piece cookware set for roughly 10% of the retail price (1425 EURO for the pans, 795 for the knives). Apparently Roger had already bought three sets! He produced lots of fancy documentation, guaranties and certificates when we agreed to purchase one of each.
It didn’t occur to me to google the Berghaus brand, or Polstar Trading, his company’s UK partner, until *after* Jacob left, even though I was sat next to a laptop in the kitchen throughout. When I did, soon afterwards, I found this entire forum and a few other links devoted to stories of the tactics used by the salespeople selling these ‘non-existant’ brands. Obviously we stopped the cheque immediately.