A bit of a strange one and not necessarily something I expect anyone to have a definitive answer on. But here goes.
I’m an estate agent and part of our business is property letting and management.
My MD recently received an email from an electrician (not known to us) claiming that I had sent him text messages on 29th December asking for his help with an emergency in one of our properties.
When he replied saying he was away and couldn’t help he then received further messages being abusive and threatening to spread the word around the area about what terrible customer service he has, etc. I also apparently threatened to post on social media about what a crap tradesman he is.
He’s since discovered that three other businesses he knows received similar calls/messages, but not necessarily claiming to be me.
Together, they’ve managed to determine that the messages all originate from another local tradesmen – a gas engineer who we are familiar with and who has worked for us in the past.
Apparently he has admitted it to the electrician and apologised stating that he was drunk and thought it would be funny. They know each other insofar as they went to school together decades ago, but they aren’t friends and the electrician doesn’t consider this an acceptable or funny “prank”.
I plan to call him and confront him about it. If he apologises then I’ll accept and we just won’t ever use him again (we don’t anyway because he has proved unreliable in the past).
If he doesn’t apologise then I expect there’s very little I can do. I doubt very much it’s considered fraud to impersonate an estate agent and I’m not exactly going to pursue a defamation case.
I just wondered how others would treat this and what action you might consider taking?
