Usury with books

Many of these dubious door-to-door canvassers have been around for years and are real persuaders. They are looking for a gullible target group and mainly contact older age groups. But working people also fall for the scam of overpriced books if they believe in the alleged increase in value.

The purchase of facsimiles is not to be discouraged across the board. These are reproductions of historical printed works, for example magnificent antique bibles, atlases, musical scores, etc. Of course, this only applies if the price and quality are appropriate. This is because dubious publishers sell facsimiles far above their actual value. It quickly becomes a loss-making business when mass products advertised as unique are foisted on laypeople. Their value does not stand up to independent scrutiny. It is advisable to obtain an expert opinion from a court-certified expert, which will also stand up in a court case, before signing the contract.

According to certified experts, partial facsimiles are almost impossible to sell. No matter what was promised at the doorstep sale, a sale only brings a fraction of the new purchase value. The help promised during the sales talk for the subsequent resale also fails to materialise and the staff can no longer be contacted after the contract has been signed.

The people who come to the flat sometimes claim to be from a renowned publishing house, for example Bertelsmann or Brockhaus. This is simply a lie to get a foot in your door. The book clubs of these publishers (Lexikothek) had several million members in the 80s and 90s. Only they haven't existed since 2014 and the old customer databases have apparently fallen into the wrong hands.
 

Over the phone, potential customers are offered the opportunity to have their own collection inspected for a lucrative resale. At the appointment on site, they are then advised to purchase missing items, for example from an encyclopaedia series. The addition would make the collection much more valuable, they say. After the purchase, however, the books are not resold as hoped and customers are left holding on to their copies - old and new.

The victims are persuaded to "certify" their existing book collection. Here they sign a contract granting them access to their home for an inventory in an online database. The promise is that their own book collection will be much easier to view for potential buyers and that this would significantly increase its value.

Elderly people in particular are persuaded to have their own library catalogued by the company representatives. In this way, when they pass away, everything should be passed on to their heirs more easily and collectively. Here, the advertisers rely on the emotional connection to the cherished book collection and the desire to preserve it as a whole. The company pays dearly for the inclusion in its own sales platform and subsequent sales processing for the heirs. A higher than real sales value is promised to make this expensive but rather pointless service appear more interesting. Laypersons are unable to verify the exaggerated material values. Even the listing on the sales platform does not increase the value that heirs are supposed to benefit from. Normally, the value that was deliberately overestimated in the sales pitch did not exist from the outset.

Given the high costs, instalment plans are often part of the rip-off. If a customer has been persuaded to make a purchase at an advanced age and cannot afford it on the spur of the moment, a loan application for a specific bank in Germany is co-signed. In the worst-case scenario, these loans can jeopardise the existence of the company, as in one of our cases involving a recipient of the minimum pension. We are aware that the associated German bank appears to have granted the loans without a legally required credit check. We advise you to legally check the loan agreements. As a rule, there is a right of cancellation in accordance with Section 13 of the Consumer Credit Act, and the sales agents usually do not have a business licence to broker loan agreements.

Specialists know that books can only be a good investment if you are well versed in the subject matter. It is true that sought-after and genuine book rarities achieve value growth rates in the stable double-digit range. However, care must be taken here too! Facsimiles of printed antiquities only have a chance of being resold if they have been produced accordingly. You should not simply take the word of sales staff, who are quick to offer dubious self-certifications from the publisher, that this is the case. Instead, have them checked independently. The publisher's own digital platforms, where your own collection can be listed, also generally do not increase the real prospect of a sale, as misleadingly advertised in the sales pitch.

Substantial fees can be incurred for the auction of valuable printed works. Expenses include catalogue/illustration fees, insurance (about 2% of the estimated price), compensation for the so-called resale right (about 4%) if the copyright of the artwork has to be paid when it is sold, transport costs, appraisal costs, a withdrawal fee if you change your mind and the largest part is the success commission. This so-called "buyer's premium" is due when the auction hammer strikes. The commission is around 25% of the sales proceeds. For speciality items with a small group of potential buyers, such as book antiques, this can be higher. In total, up to 60% of the final price may be due.

To summarise, it can be said that these services are scams with fake values. Whether reproducing antique copies, supplementing missing encyclopaedias or managing your own book collection, the promised increases in value are misleading. As soon as the deal is finalised, any support promised at the time of purchase for a resale does not materialise. Anyone who has been ripped off in this way and lost several thousand euros often feels very ashamed of their own gullibility. Time and again, we see that only representatives or relatives of the victims contact our advice centre.

The scam has been running in Germany for over 15 years and has repeatedly been the subject of German radio programmes (WDR, Sat1, ZDF, BR). Dubious offshoots and domestic partner companies are also increasingly active in Austria, Switzerland and Belgium. In 2023, "Der Spiegel" repeatedly reported on the fraud with books, the two videos open the Spiegel TV reports on YouTube.

The list of the law firm SDK from Bielefeld includes a large number of companies involved. This specialised law firm, which appears in the video, is representing around 2,500 fraudsters in German courts and is disputing millions in damages.

The third video from SpiegelTV sheds light on who is behind this dubious scam. Anyone who has suffered a major financial loss is best advised to contact the police and the SDK or other legal organisations, for example. The out-of-court route no longer makes sense in the case of commercial fraud.