Any information on GRA transport service, Manchester?

[dietlindems]

Hello,
I hope somebody will be able to help.
I am writing from Germany. My father found an interesting car on mobile.de, generally a trustworthy German online car sales platform.
A short while afterwards the platform removed the posted car due to suspected "general fishiness", as the seller wants payments to go through GRA transport services, a transport and escrow company located in Manchester (the seller also seems to live there when not working on an oil rig). My father is to make a 50:50 down-payment to this escrow company, then the car will be shipped to his address for a 1-day perusal. After acceptance of the car he would have to pay the second half of the purchase price and the car would be handed over.
My question now is whether anybody knows anything about this company and its trustworthiness?
I found the company in the Manchester register, but it was de-enroled in 2011, on their website they claim they were "consolidated" in that year and went big and international due to their huge success.
Can this escrow service be trusted?

Thank you in advance for any input you can give.
Best regards, Dietlinde

[lightfair]

Hello Dietlinde;

everything (literally everything!) you wrote is typical for a scam. Especially the "oil rig" part. You certainly did already a lot of "homework" on your own in investigating the "company". So mobile.de pulled the ad; and you found a lot of inconsistencies in the store of the alleged escrow company. And you (or perhaps your father) is still somewhat willing to go forward with the deal?

What I need is the web address of the alleged escrow service. You can post it here (or you can send it by private message).

I'll probably move this topic into the "Escrow" part of the forum later.