LOMUK – HEAD OFFICE – 293 EASTWOOD ROAD NORTH, SS9 4LT
Is a company that advertises on Google Adwords under various keyword phrases like electricians luton, plumbers bedford, locksmith St albans, pest control dunstable, glazing bedfordshire. In fact they seem to cover the whole country.
When you call they tell you the call out fee is £95 + vat per hour – This seems to have been changed recently to £150 !
and then they ask for your credit card details before they send out an engineer.
So they can turn up and drag out a small job to a few hours and charge you whatever they like.
They told me it would be about 2 hours for someone to come and the hourly rate was £95 + vat and then asked for my card details… hesitantly, I gave them as I was in dire need of an electrician being without power all night and needing something done quick.
I then called another electrician and was told the call out fee was only £60 for the 1st hr and 30 per hour thereafter. I immediately called LOMUK back to cancel the appointment. Then the nightmare began. The girl on the phone said… if you cancel there will be a Cancellation fee. I said but I only called you 10 minutes ago how can you charge me a cancellation fee. I argued this for another 5 mins and then told her directly to not charge my card as it would be fraud.
As soon as I got off the phone I called my bank… Only to be told they had just taken £54 off my card ! So then I had to speak to the Bank Fraud dept and then make a police report…
So the bank was totally useless in helping me and said only the fraud dept can instigate a claim.
So after the electrical job was sorted out (£60 all in) I jumped in my car to go and have a face to face word with the company….
This is where you have to small a rat cos the company address of LOMUK Latimer road, Luton, LU1 3XD is an industrial estate just a few streets away from where I live! On arriving there and looking at all the units in the estate I found that LOMUK were nowhere to be found.
True review of what happened when I called them for an emergency call out
They told me it would be about 2 hours for someone to come and the hourly rate was £95 + vat and then asked for my card details… hesitantly, I gave them as I was in dire need of an electrician being without power all night and needing something done quick.
I then called another electrician and was told the call out fee was only £60 for the 1st hr and 30 per hour thereafter. I immediately called LOMUK back to cancel the appointment. Then the nightmare began. The girl on the phone said… if you cancel there will be a Cancellation fee. I said but I only called you 10 minutes ago how can you charge me a cancellation fee. I argued this for another 5 mins and then told her directly to not charge my card as it would be fraud.
As soon as I got off the phone I called my bank… Only to be told they had just taken £54 off my card ! So then I had to speak to the Bank Fraud dept and then make a police report…
So the bank was totally useless in helping me and said only the fraud dept can instigate a claim.
So after the electrical job was sorted out (£60 all in) I jumped in my car to go and have a face to face word with the company….
This is where you have to small a rat cos the company address of
LOMUK, Latimer road, Luton, LU1 3XD is an industrial estate just a few streets away from where I live, I could not believe it!
On arriving there and looking at all the units in the estate I found that LOMUK were nowhere to be found.
But a search on the internet brings up their head office here.
This is the address below … a vacant shop with flat above that is up for sale..
LOMUK – HEAD OFFICE – 293 EASTWOOD ROAD NORTH, SS9 4LT
I then went home and exchanged several emails to the company all to no avail.
They claimed the engineer was rushing out to see me and was only 10 mins away when I called to cancel….. This is the part that makes me really angry as £54 is not a lot of money but to many people it is a huge amount of money to lose just because of a “10 min” time between my initial call and the cancellation call.
More updates on this company will be forthcoming
The head office address is
LOM Facilities, 293 EASTWOOD ROAD NORTH, LEIGH ON SEA. SS9 4LT
How the scam works:
They advertise under Google adwords so as to get a top position on the Google search page.
They then use various phone numbers to confuse the customers..
0800 numbers that redirect to somewhere else
other landline numbers that when answered claim to be nothing to do with the company.
They target people looking for electricians and plumbers, locksmiths, glaziers and pest control. All the services where they can charge an extortionate call out fee and hourly rate..
What they don’t tell you on the phone is
The terms and conditions… Click here to view
If you have any review of the above company… please post in the comments section
If this website helps just one more person not get ripped off by this company it will have done it’s job… People in need of emergency services should not be taken advantage of by LOMUK.
Worldwide Scams 
Lomuk STOLE £459.60 FROM MY ACCOUNT. i DID NOT GIVE THEM THE GO-AHEAD TO CARRY OUT SOME GLAZING WORK AND AFTER ABOUT 7 PHONE CALLS THEY STILL HAVE NOT REFUNDED MY MONEY. THEY ARE THIEVES. AM SEEING MY SOLICITOR TO ASSIST IN GETTING MY MONEY BACK.
According to the terms and conditions they state ‘Although we use our own engineers in the majority of work throughout the UK, there are occasions where our work is sub-contracted to other engineers working for and on behalf of LOM UK.’
Well er no! They ONLY use subcontractors, and if these guys actually get paid that would be great but they don’t. Their last operation (Easy Services) went down to the tune of £400k. Amazing really when you think that they take the money up front from the public before they even ring the subby!! Also, they are saying on their current website that they are Safecontractor approved. Oh no they aren’t and I have emails from Safecontractor telling me so.
And finally. I learned today (9/4/14) of a new name for them, so it might be that LOM is going and yet another is rising from the ashes to take its place.
Whach this space
Any idea what their new name or address is, I sorted a very difficult electrical fault on their behalf and was shafted on the cost and then didn’t receive payment, I did receive a cheque months later after I took a small claim out against them but that bounced. I’ve instructed the bailiffs to call with a warrant but they are not operating from the address I have, 293 Eastwood road.
Any help would be appreciated.
Egr facilities
It’s all true . They keep doing the Phoenix act time after time. They stopped using LOM for a while but are using it again. They also are known as ERG these days. (emergency response group)
Now this is interesting, as I had the misfortune to contact a company called Emergency Response Group for some work. They took my card details beforehand and never sent a receipt for work that turned out to be substandard. They also helped themselves to an outrageous amount of money from my a/c.
I had to contact the card issuer to get the money back and they still haven’t arranged to correct the faults.
ERG are operating from a back office behind an estate agents at 516 London Road, Westcliffe on Sea, SS0 9LD and their Director is Tara Sexton. 0800 211 8597
Well, my last comment was removed (which surprised me, as all the info I posted was true and can be found in the Public Domain) so here we go again…
I had a similar experience with a company called “ERG” or “Emergency Response Group” They advertised in Yell.com as “(Name of local Town) Emergency Response Group” so it was reasonable to assume they were a local company.
After having problems with the standard of work they did, being grossly overcharged (they raided my bank account good and proper) and being fobbed off by the office staff I decided to go down to their listed office and sort it out in person.
Well, what a surprise – not ! The office didn’t exist and was in fact a tyre dealers showrooms and no-one had ever heard of them !!
So I lodged a fraud claim with the bank and reported them to Trading Standards and Action Fraud.
At the moment I am awaiting developments …
Their head office is in Westcliffe on Sea.
Hi Jane did you get anywhere with trading standards and action fraud as I am going down that route too .
As an update to the above, I’ve done some digging.
If you have a look on Company Check and put the name Tara Sexton into the box, it reveals some interesting information. (All this info is in the public domain BTW)
Tara is listed as a director of ERG maintenance and the company is worth – £26.4k , yes you got that right MINUS £26,400.!! (Info correct as of todays date)
So I wonder if ERG will be following LON into obscurity ?
Watch this space !
They are scammers, I tried to cancel and was told that would cost £54 so i let them come. They wre unable to fix, but charged £210 for the callout. No recourse as they just take it from credit card then refer you to their tems and conditions.
Joe, You could try contacting your bank and asking them to action a “chargeback”. Tell your bank that you were charged £210 for basically nothing and that this is a breach of the Sale of Goods and Services Act. Good Luck.
Thanks for the article, stopped me using ERG as my instincts kicked in when they wanted my sec code before the job was done.
I can’t stand low life thieves and scammers so I googled them. Strange to discover that Tara Sexton has recently been appointed director of ERG facilities Ltd along with Laurence O’Mahony … the company number for this new company is now on all ERG websites. ERG maintenance ( no. 09017276) Still exists and sexton is still it’s director. What are these scammers planning now?
Further searching on Endole shows LOM facilities and Easy 24/7 services both run by omahony and both liquidated owing over $250k to trade creditors. Only a matter of time until ERG follows suit.
If you google “Emergency Response Group Westcliffe” you’ll see 46 one-star ratings ( !!! ) from disgruntled customers. That should tell you all you need to know !
I have been scammed by ERG Aswell, had a guy come out on Saturday was told would be £135 for the hour , he came for all of five minutes did not fix the problem they have taken £162 out my bank account and asked for another £598 on top too fox the problem that I was quoted £200 for , I am fuming , anyone every been refund ed I have gone too citizens advice and disputed payment with bank .still now left without water and heating with a young child .
I too have been scammed for a an alleged three hour visit. I had to have an ‘engineer’ on three separate occasions. Ok, the first was here for around an hour and couldn’t find out a simple fault but twiddled a few wires which worked on the heating for about 2 hours and then packed up. The second one came the next day and diagnosed the problem which took about 20 minutes and which was a simple one and needed a new valve on the boiler and had to order one in. Came back 3 days later to fix it and did in about 15 minutes. It transpired that only the power head was needed, not the whole valve which was discovered in a cupboard next to the boiler minus the power head which he had changed. The annual gas safety engineer found this when he did the annual check in November. Cost of valve would have been £52.00 or thereabouts but they are trying to charge me £247.00. The whole demand is for £746.40.
I was asked for credit card details when I phoned but only had an out of date card because my son, luckily, had taken the new one to do some shopping for me. Woman on the phone said that’s ok and would be noted. Invoice received this am saying ‘card Declined, Thank goodness.
Just phoned ERG wherever they are and debated this ridiculous cost. I said I was willing to pay for an hour and a half plus the part of £52 and that was all and would write them a cheque. They don’t accept cheques but NO WAY was I going to give them my up to date debit card details.
Will go to court if necessary but will definitely be contacting Trading Standards, possibly Watchdog, Rogue Traders, Financial Ombudsman etc.
Do not deal with these scammers. Anyway the woman put the phone down on me in the end but I was not being rude at all. Just pointing things out.
Update , the same job erg wanted too charge me £700 for I got fixed for £198 that was the part the labour and call out, erg charged me £162 for five minutes, and did not do the job as wanted £700 in total, the biggest scammers ever, how can this company still be scamming vulnerable people , I did not get no invoice or no reciept , and as I rent will not be able too get this back from my landlord . Why are more people not taking this company too court I for one am going too comment everywhere and going too small claims court.
Good for you Samantha. Get these clowns and thieves named and shamed. Say how you got on eventually.
Just to add to my reply and this involves everyone else on here, why are they being allowed to continue in tthis extortion. Pure theft. Why aren’t they being investigated? I have also reported them to Trading Standarda. SOMETHING has got to be done. Apparently they haven’t paid their engineers either and are running at a deficit anyway. Is this a case for the police to investigate? They still keep on advertising at the top of the page when googled as a ‘local’ firm which they are not.
Hi Anne thankyou for your message, I am fuming what this company is doing. How have they got away with this for so long ?? And no one has done . Anything,? I have been in touch with the serious fraud office and made a report, I also have been on too trading standards who are aware of them, like you say they are advertising local which they are not it is Westcliff and action fraud and going too small claims court,, I have seen hundreds of terrible reviews , not paying there engineers stealing out of people’s bank accounts, or laying there engineers peanuts and pocketing the rest, I will not rest till I get this company investigated and closed down , and I will go too everyone I can too get it done, before they take thousands more off vulnerable people, they need stopping.
Im disgusted this is still allowed to go on. As soon as they get too much heat ERG facilities will dissolve the business owing creditors, just like ERG maintenance, LOM maintenance and easy247services did. They already have their next scam business name ‘sapient maintenance limited’ according to its director Michael (Mikey) Benfield who up until recently was no. 1 sales manager for these scammers. Sapient is registered at 71-75 Shelton st, Covent garden, London but don’t be fooled as that address has over 10,000 businesses registered there. It’s the same Westcliff based rip off merchants in sheeps clothing.
Hi, it’s worth mentioning that yes I did in fact work for ERG Facilities – I decided to leave the company and set up an honest business for myself. I am in no way affiliated with ERG apart from the fact I was employed by them two years ago.
Sapient Maintenance is a reliable company who is making a good name for itself.
Michael Benfield-Thorpe was demoted due to his behaviour and conduct towards his managers. Michael did not follow instruction and carried on in ways he saw fit, even after being instructed otherwise. Michael was unable to follow instruction and left the company. Michael had a problem with authority and he did not fit the bill. Staff changes were made to make Michael feel this was a natural change but the structure returned after his departure.
I called ERG to come and look at my downstairs boiler that was not producing hot water in the shower. After a short inspection I was told the boiler was completely broken and would need to be replaced. The man also looked at the boiler upstairs which controls the radiators and was working fine. I was charged £150 for the service. The next day I realised the radiators had stopped working. I called ERG to ask if it was possible that the man could have done something to make them stop working. They offered to send someone else round to have a look but said it would cost me a further £150.
I called another local company to come and give me a quote on a boiler and to look at upstairs boiler. They quickly fixed the upstairs boiler by switching on the pilot (that had been switch off!) and diagnosed the true problem with the boiler downstairs which was a faulty shower mechanism and not the boiler as the man from ERG had wrongfully informed me.
I have a similar issue with Oxford Plumbing Group. In fact, the company seems to have branches all over UK. Therefore, we should be cautious when we see company names such as Bristol Plumbing Group, Birmingham Plumbing Group or London Plumbing Group. When I searched Oxford plumbers, the company was ranked the first among Google search results. I contacted them for toilet leaking. They charged 35 GBP for the first 20 minutes’ work 85 GBP for an hour, and there was no call out charge. They asked my bank details as well. The plumber arrived, checked my toilet for 10 minutes and said he could not fix it. There was no follow-up or invoice from the company. However, after one hour, my bank Barclays called me that a company called London Plumbing Group tried to charge me 195 GBP. Luckily, the transaction was frozen because the bank needed me authorization. An hour later, Barclays said London Plumbing Group tried to charge me another 120 GBP. Barclays immediately deactivated my card. I was really lucky that I did not lose money in this situation.
Most people call such companies when something emergent happen. I guess those companies take advantage of emergency, as we easily lose judgement when water leaks or boiler does not work. Anyway, do not give your bank information to any companies over the phone!
There main office is behind the post office in the blue buildings in Southend
Spot on with this write-up, I absolutely believe that this site
needs far more attention. I’ll probably be returning to read more, thanks for the advice!
Pingback: ERG – Emergency Response Group – Worldwide Scams
They are now buying fake reviews from people living in India on the google maps profile for ERG Facilities
Also on https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/ergfacilitiesltd.co.uk
Oh, and in case you were wondering, LOM stands for Laurence O’Mahony 🙂
And if you do your due diligence research on this guy on Companies House website, where all this information is in the public domain, you will see that when he started his fraudulent career over a decade ago, he actually listed, as the director of his company, his old mother Mary O’Mahony born January 1937 in Ireland. Wonder what she would have thought of all this now?
TOTAL SCAM – run by serial fraudster Laurence Patrick O’Mahony of Southend-on-Sea, Essex (DOB 11Jan1975). Tara Zoe Sexton (DOB 11May1980) is now a Director of one of O’Mahony’s newer scam companies. Look them up on Companies House online. O’Mahony has had numerous companies over the last decade and they all operate in the same way for a few years, as a “call centre” for tradesmen, before they eventually close down. Currently various “ERG” and “All in One Homecare Services Limited” companies are operating to scam anyone who phones their 0800 telephone number. “All in One Homecare Services Limited” operate at First Floor Finance House, 20/21 Aviation Way, Southend-on-Sea SS2 6UN, look them up on Companies House. You won’t find Laurence Patrick O’Mahony listed as a Director on this brand new company, as he is trying to hide from unwanted attention after being exposed on BBC Watchdog “Rogue Traders” in May 2018. However his trusted office staff Amanda Jayne Bailey and Laura Emma Hirst, plus Dave Roberts, a plumber from Dorking, Surrey are now the nominated Directors of this new company. The method of operation is exactly the same. They take your credit card number and charge extortionate fees. Sometimes the local tradesman doesn’t even get paid. If they have scammed you, take out a claim online – research “County Court Business Centre (Online Civil Money Claims)” part of the UK government court system. Costs approx £100. The company is issued with your claim direct, online, no waiting. It’s clear and fast, your best chance to get a result.
June 2019 and I’ve been scammed by them too. The salient points (copied from my latest email to them being:
1 – we were given inaccurate information and utterly wrong advice by your engineer.
2 – Having misdiagnosed the fault, your engineer then worked illegally on a public sewer
3 – Your engineer did not fully unblock the drain, as evidenced by Southern Water just four days later
4 – we were charged over £250 to misdiagnose, then insufficiently ‘rectify’ a problem. We should have had a free call-out and been given the correct advice to contact Southern Water instead.
5 – the signed paperwork you attach is merely evidence that your engineer attended our house. It does not in any way suggest that we carried out an assessment of the work undertaken, or agreed that the work was satisfactory.
6 – We contacted you immediately to inform you we were unsatisfied with the work carried out.
Trying one final email claiming compensation, then will be heading down the small claims route. Any advice gratefully received!
Unfortunately these criminals are still deceiving people.
SCAMMERS ERG Facilities / ERG Plumbing / ERG Eelectrics
SCAMMERS. Do not be fooled by the glossy websites. If you search for a local plumber on google for a specific town, erg comes up on the search engine. They use local telephone numbers to direct your call to ERG Facilities based in Southend-on Sea, Essex. They deceive you by insisting that they are a local company to your town. They take details works needed and then simply ring around local trades to employ a local trade to do the work at your home. I talked to the engineer that attended a minor job at my home. The local company advised me that they had never heard of ERG until they received a telephone call with a minor job at my home. ERG have no tradesmen or indeed any technical staff. They merely take the call from the public, and pluck a contractor out of the telephone directory. The local contractor advised me that his bill to ERG was just over £300.00, I have a copy of the local contractors invoice to ERG. ERG then charged me over £672.00. ERG requested that the local plumber did not talk to me. ERG insist that the local contractor are one of their official contractors. The local contractor has advised me that they had never heard of ERG until they rang the contractor. ERG make vast profits for just taking your call and then ringing a local contractor. They advertise that they are local, they advertise competitive rates. They are not local, and they do not have local competitive rates. Local contractor would have charged just over £300 and they mark up the price to £672 for receiving your call and then making a call. They also advertise no call out fee for completed work. Don’t believe this. They took £150 from me. Do not give this company your card details. They sent me a series of 3 invoices all with different descriptions of the work. They said an expansion vessel had been replaced which it had not. They were sent an image of the original expansion vessel still in place and still remained adamant that the expansion vessel had been replaced. They really increased the hours work. The job took 1 hour 40 minutes. They remain adamant that 4.5 hours was taken to complete minor work. Directors Tara Sexton and Lawrence O’Mahony will not take calls. They have been listed on Companies House as directors of similar companies prior to ERG. ERG featured on bbc watchdog rogue traders in the recent past which highlighted the tricks that the company uses. The programme shows the call centre even had a worker saying a customer was being awkward and another colleague then said charge them an extra £100.00. Watch the programme. It is available on YouTube. The company has existed in different names with directors Tara Sexton and Lawrence O’Mahony. Prior to ERG they operated as Easy 24 Services Ltd. This company was dissolved in 2016. Prior to this, they operated as LOM Facilities Management Ltd. The business model used was the same as ERG for fleecing customers. LOM was featured on BBC radio 4 in 2014 and the business tactics were the same used by ERG to day for fleecing customers. LOM was dissolved in 2011. They have a lot of websites. ERG facilities, ERG plumbing, ERG electrics, ERG Pest control and so on. Do not be fooled, scammers 100%. There business model is built on deception. Take a look at electriciansforum.net. The amount of ERG contractors that do not get paid is huge. Not only do ERG get your money at massively inflated rates, they often then do not pay the contractor that they picked out of the yellow pages etc to do the job. Be warned. If you use this company you stand a high risk of being scammed.
i cannot believe these scammers are still doing this, and have not been stopped, wow how do these people sleep at night, hope someone will take them down one day.
They have now told me £132 refund which is a start in the right direction. But, this still means that ERG still made a massive profit of £237.22 for just picking up the phone to a local plumbing contractor.
ERG are still at it I wish I had read all these reviews before I gave my visa debit card to them over the phone.!!! I spotted a rat in my garden and they were top of google ads. I should have gone by my instincts when they asked me for my debit card details but I was in a panic They came out once a day after they said they would and spent literally 5 minutes putting a box with poison down then took £300 out of my account the next day. Despite saying they would come out again on 4 different occasions they haven’t been seen since and that was 4 weeks ago- they are outright thieves I just wish I knew how to make sure nobody else falls into the trap that I did