Final Update - the demise of Lincoln McLean...

I stopped updating this site because I found adding photo's cumbersome on here and much easier on my Facebook page. However, one of the purposes of the site originally was to record the terrible time we were having with Lincoln McLean, hoping that other potential clients of his would see this and think twice about using him, so I will summarise what has happened with him to date.

Unfortunately our legal case went nowhere as the solicitor couldn't guarantee more than a 50% chance of recovering any monies so our insurance wouldn't cover any further proceedings. A private investigator had found that Lincoln has no assets to his name and 14 CCJs totalling £35k already.

I wasn't happy to leave it at that so purely for my own satisfaction, I searched for his name on the internet and wrote to all the sites that I could find that mentioned his services, explaining our experiences with him and asking that they remove his name from their listings. I am happy to say that most did after various conversations and evidence was submitted.

I also made a format complaint to Consumer Services who said that they would pass the details onto Trading Standards Office but that I would only hear back if they wanted to pursue it and I couldn't call the TSO direct. What a load of rubbish - I didn't hear anything for a month so I called Consumer Services again and a much more helpful person then advised that I write to the Trading Standards Office at Kent County Council so I did. I sent them a timeline of events and all the legal paperwork that the solicitors had generated. The TSO called me back within 2 days and advised that several complaints had already been made against LM and that I should call the guy handling the case at the Official Receivers Office.

The chap at the Official Receivers Office was very helpful and sympathetic but thought that my evidence was probably too late to add to the already pending court case, but asked that I send it to him anyway which I did. I then received a phone call from an inspector at the Dept for Trade and Industry who had received my evidence and wanted to meet up to review it with me. I had a 3 hour interview with him where we went through my evidence with a fine tooth comb which resulted in a 10 page statement which I hope they have managed to submit as additional evidence in the case against Lincoln McLean.

I believe LM is going to court sometime in this first qtr of 2008 and both the ORO and DTI say they will let me know of any outcome. I will post again if I hear back. They think that there is enough evidence to send him to jail. Apparently he has already been in jail twice before for fraud and has been bankrupt since 2000 - you can search for him here - http://www.insolvency.gov.uk/eiir/ - if only I'd known about the insolvency listings before!

So that's it really. Although we won't see our 9 grand back, it is satisfying that something might be coming out of this. Our house is liveable now but there is still lots of work outside that needs to be done but because of Lincoln, we have now run out of money to finish it. We have a baby on the way so are down to one salary so the rest will have to wait till I am back at work. I just hope the chimney stack and guttering survives another year!

I am pleased to see that someone else has created a website warning against Lincoln McLean which seems to have detered a few potential clients of LMs from using him. That's really good news! They have linked to my site and also taken one of my quotes from a directory where I logged a bad review for LM. If you have anything to say please post it here http://www.lincolnmclean.weballistics.com/comments.html

If only people who had used him before us would have taken the trouble to report him or bad mouth him on the internet, perhaps we wouldn't have lost out so badly.

Caroline