Berkeley International Mairead Molloy Berkeley International Mairead Molloy international exclusive high-end introduction dating agency rip-off and scam unethical illegal London London

Berkeley International and Founder Mairead Molloy have and continue to engage in unethical and illegal practices, in direct violation of several consumer laws.  I have full evidence and reported them to the ABIA and am now reporting them to trading standards and pursuing this legally.  Here is my story:

I am a well-educated, financially sound expat living in London, my background is very international.  Based on experience, I have specific criteria on the type of people where I find the highest level of mutual compatibility.  I am open to the idea of arranging introdutions and when I signed up for Berkeley’s service, my motivation was to take a scientific approach and use their services to assist me in meeting as many people that match my criteria as possible.  A key area influencing my decision was the heavy advertisement as having an international and affluent membership, which I felt would have a similar background to mine.

At my first meeting with a Representative, it was apparent that not many members were a fit with me.  However I was persuaded to sign up because of all the advertising about their international high end profile and was told that the company constantly expanded the membership as they meet new people that match member’s preferences.  She also told me that every potential match met with her and that the matching would be done by her team based on detailed interview notes.  I agreed to sign up and pay £9,600 for the personalised matching which supposedly included their services networking on your behalf.

As soon as I signed onto the service, the person who interviewed me disappeared and other staff immediately and actively ignored specific criteria and began presenting profiles at random, with no indication of whether they had been interviewed by them or how the Profiles met my criteria, which is a ABIA Code violation.  I was passed through a rotating roster of 5 staff--Two of these people, left the firm and the rest never met me.  

One month after I joined, I discovered that they had lied about a particular introduction who turned out to be a temporary IT worker who had been matched on dates with them for 5 years.  I tried to end the membership and get a refund.  I asked to speak to a manager but the person who I spoke to did not offer me a refund option and did not let me get my money back, instead she offered to continue making introductions which only got worse.  This is another violation of Consumer Protection rules.  The person who I spoke to left the company soon after.

I understand that there is a level of discretion in making the introductions.  Berkeley's contract says that they have "absolute discretion” in setting up matches, but that is an excuse for giving substandard service, particularly when the bad service is due to their own incompetence.  Because of the many staff that I had to deal with and the very poor internal coordination, they contradicted themselves all the time and my criteria were actively ignored without an explanation or acknowledgement of mistakes made.  When I asked directly why they were not addressing my preferences, the explanation that I often received was that they were doing “their best” with the “best intentions” and “provide excellent service” and they would continue introducing me to people that “they felt” would be suitable for me.  Berkeley staff’s obvious lack of basic training and competence is a crime.  

I kept an open mind during the first 6 months and accepted the suggested meetings.  Because the profiles did not meet any of my key preferences and in the interest of not wasting my membership, I refused to meet people who did not fit the criteria and asked to be put on hold: I was on hold for 2 periods totalling nearly one year.  For 2 years, including hold periods, I attempted to work with Berkeley—repeating my criteria multiple times, meeting with staff, providing personal information and giving them time to find more people meeting my criteria. After each hold period, the new profiles sent deviated further from my criteria.  They struggled to find suitable introductions, but Berkeley staff not only refused to refund my fee but put the blame on me and said they were providing "excellent service".

At least twice, I made requests on communication ground rules and how much time should lapse in between communications and being on hold.  Mairead Molloy was very unprofessional.  She appeared to be polite and say the right words but her actions did not match the words, nor did she ever follow up when she said she would.  From the moment that I placed a complaint, it took over a month to meet her to express my concerns.  She missed the first meeting without any prior communication, and later claimed that an email had been sent rescheduling the meeting.  This became a pattern of Mairead ignoring direct requests and then covering it up by saying she had replied. 

While my membership was presumably activated, the staff at Berkeley often did not communicate for 3-4 weeks at a time.  When I was on hold there was no agreed timeframe and no follow up.  At the end of my membership, I was forced to constantly chase Mairead for service and each time she would postpone or delay and said that she had followed up when she had not.  At our meeting, Mairead claimed that she had read all the email and acknowledged that the agency was in the wrong for having sent me unsuitable profiles.  Her offer was to take personal responsibility for my membership and extend it but did not provide any specifics about length of extension, compensation or service standards.  I asked her numerous times about what exact terms for a settlement she could offer me and she never responded.  Then she terminated the membership after ignoring me for 4 moths and it was only after she said that my membership had expired that she offered to extend it for another 6 months.

When I provided her with examples of her unprofessionalism, she would just evade the issues and provide very general answers.  When I became increasingly frustrated, she accused me of being aggressive and treated me with contempt, blaming me for the bad service (“you knew what you were doing when you signed the contract”). 

I was never told what exactly they were doing taken on my behalf.  I had to prompt them multiple times for information, often sending 3-4 messages for one response.  The most details that I received were general references to the people contacted (“I have sent your summary to […] and I am waiting to hear back from…” or “we do our best”).  Mairead asked me to understand “the work we do for you that you know nothing at all about”.  To this day, I am unsure about what work they actually did.  I thought that through the 2 years we interacted, Berkeley staff would have actively sought introductions matching my criteria.  But, after my membership expired, Mairead Molloy told me that she had not deem it was necessary to do any active search for me, even though they did not have anyone matching my criteria.  I have all the communication trail to prove this.

Berkeley claims it is the most global introduction agency, but the profiles sent to me were mostly local British men, more than 70%, even though I asked to meet international expats like myself.  About 20-30% of profiles sent were of men, not in fulltime employment.  There were no CEOs or wealthy men, just the type that you find at the local pub.  Another example is that I did not want to meet men with children and the same profile of a British guy with kids was sent to me three times, the last time with wording changed so it looked like a new profile.  Oh and whenever they sent a profile they called it an introduction which even violates their own contract terms.  So if you sign up and they send you random profiles that is providing excellent service and meets the definition of an introduction, according to them.

In short, I never had a chance of a successful introduction with Berkeley International.  I am so shocked is that, in this modern day and civilised society, there are companies that behave so badly and are clearly running a scam.  The owner Mairead Molloy is a first class con artist so I am not surprised that everyone else follows along.  If you have had dealings with them and similar experiences, please contact the authorities and bring them to justice.