Is Established Titles Legit? (Updated 2023)
If you’re reading this blog post, it is likely that you’ve seen and advert promoting ‘Established Titles’ on YouTube, Facebook or elsewhere, and perhaps you are wondering if they are legitimate or if they are a scam.
We have done our own research, and offer this information in the spirit of friendly consumer advice.
Firstly, we’d like to invite everyone to make a comparison between their offering and our own product.
Highland Titles vs. Established Titles
Is Established Titles a scam?
This question has been asked more frequently since December 2022, when a very public controversy over their partnerships with Youtube creators blew up on the internet.
- Established Titles traded for at least 7 months (between April 2020 and November 2020) from a website with no company name. Their website has now been updated and states that the company behind the website is Galton Voysey Limited.
- Their Trustpilot reviews are revealing. Please read them here before buying.
- The only named person on the website is Ms Katerina Yip, although this appears to be a spoof page written for the purposes of providing amusement rather than information for customers.
- Although they are charging $50, the standard offering is only a downloadable certificate. Anything printed costs $30 extra and a frame costs an additional $59!
- They have been promoting a 80% discount “sale” on their website for over a year now, so make of that what you will.
Does Established Titles have a presence in Scotland?
- The contact address on their Trustpilot review page is listed as Dumfries, DG2 8AW, United Kingdom. Dumfries is a town of some 32000 people. Why would anyone provide such a useless address?
- The only address on their website is Lessendrum, Huntly, AB54 6XR, Scotland. This would appear to be an area of land from which they purport to sell their souvenir plots. It doesn’t appear to be the postal address of a building to which post can be delivered and therefore cannot be the registered address of any company.
Key Differences
- We have been trading openly and honestly for 16 years
- We meet thousands of our customers face to face every year at our nature reserve
- We trade with the advice of our Scottish solicitors, and the legal rights (specifically, a personal right to a souvenir plot of land) that our customers obtain are made clear on our website
- We uniquely identify each and every souvenir plot that we sell with latitude, longitude and OS co-ordinates
- We have an average score of 4.7/5 on the independent review site, Trustpilot, with more than 15000 reviews
- Our nature reserve has hundreds of 5 star reviews
- Our nature reserve is an official 4* tourist attraction with Visit Scotland, Scotland’s national tourist board
- Our conservation efforts in Scotland are substantial, as the video opposite shows.
It is most unfortunate that some unfounded marketing claims previously made by Established Titles have given our industry something of a bad name.
Souvenir plots in Scotland were first defined in 1979 and have been bought and sold ever since without any known problems.
The question for consumers is whether or not they feel misled by marketing claims and whether the quality of the Established Titles product is good enough for the money they charge. People can decide that for themselves.
To be fair to Established Titles, they have upped their game since we first published this blog post a few years ago. They now give the exact location of their plots and they have a plot look-up feature on their website.
They have also made some changes to their website to emphasise that they’re selling a ‘hilarious gift’ rather than something to be taken too seriously.
So how do we compare? Feel free to comment below – we love to receive feedback.
What you should do next...
- Browse our plots to claim your title of Lord or Lady of the Glen
- Discover the masjetic Kilnaish Estate
- View our fun gifts and accessories, inspired by the Scottish Highlands