Ways to stop overseas sales calls discussion

NonGeographicalMan

madonnamustache wrote: »

I don't think it should take 2000 complaints against one company for the TPS/ICO to do something. I have presented them with clear evidence against a number of companies, and they have done absolutely nothing about them.

On that point we can agree.

I had Enterprise Cleaning Services of Wimborne & Portsmouth ring me four times in three years and reported it to the TPS and ICO every single time. Especially as they were cold calling to try and get in to my home the next day on the basis of a clearly false low quote of £15 to dry clean all the carpets (usually increased to at least £300 if not $599 when they turn up according to web discussions from those who have used them)

The ICO decided to leave matters to Portsmouth Trading Standards who waited and waited and waited until after four years the directors wound up the company (no doubt to then found another one somewhere else doing the same thing) just as Portsmouth Trading Standards had indicated they were finally going to take them to court..

When I do the work of obtaining names, numbers, addresses, times and other details of the conversations I have had with people that disturb me every day, and they wait until 2000 people complain about the same business, it's annoying, to say the least.

The fault has been with the government that required a court criminal prosecution (where overwhelming proof is needed) and where the fine levied went to the Treasury and not the ICO.

The system has just been changed so the ICO can just impose big fines itself and if recipient does not accept the fine then they get prosecuted instead in the criminal courts. But I think the fine money still goes to the Treasury. So taking action is less financially disastrous for the ICO in terms of resources but they still have no incentive to take action (unlike the huge incentive local authorities have to viciously enforce parking regulations).

There seems this bizarre notion that businesses can do wrong thousands of times before any restraining action is appropriate whereas if you or I don't renew our car insurance or tax disc just once the retribution by the state and the Police is near immediate and also extremely expensive for the motorist.

All I am saying is that the ICO has now been shamed in to starting to do rather more on enforcement so ineffective though they undoubtedly have been in the past disouraging people from making new reports to them is not a helpful thing to do.

John_Pierpoint

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

There seems this bizarre notion that businesses can do wrong thousands of times before any restraining action is appropriate whereas if you or I don't renew our car insurance or tax disc just once the retribution by the state and the Police is near immediate and also extremely expensive for the motorist.
.

Especially when the majority of these calls that I am getting are from fraudsters, selling dodgy investments.

NonGeographicalMan

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Especially when the majority of these calls that I am getting are from fraudsters, selling dodgy investments.

Yes that is the main list I also got on to and I have been getting calls about dodgy high risk investment schemes on a regular basis since roughly January 2012 until about a month ago (when the data aggregator who appeared to be the source of the leads took me off their database)

I have had calls from https://www.bricglobal.co.uk, https://www.carbonequities.co.uk https://www.enviroassociates.org.uk, https://www.drummondsinitiatives.com, [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM] and a large number of others selling mainly or wholly worthless carbon offset certificates but also rare earth metals in some case (most still exist today and their websites are still there although the website of one calling themselves EC1 Investments has I see now disappeared). [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM] were in fact promoting a dodgy investment bond investing in sales of distressed properties and the caller had a Nigerian name but affected a fake posh English public school boy persona (it was clearly put on to make out he knew about investments). [text deleted by MSE Forum Team] Drummonds Initiatives were also particularly greedy and trying to make me put £15,000 in their worthless carbon credit certificates rather than the usual preferred initial target of £5,000 These scammers always want direct transfer to their bank account and will never accept debit cards.

They all usually use a City of London serviced office address and an 020 3 voip number. The callers always appear to be people who either currently are UK resident or clearly have been and not the usual metallic dalek like hard to even understand Indian call centre worker tones.

There seems to be one list they are all buying (I think originally created by an Indian call centre that pretended it was doing market research calling itself the Lifestle Research Centre or National Consumer Research Centre and similar nonsense randomly chosed names to see if you might be interested in various things like investments and charity giving) and they rely on the fact that as the worthless investments they are selling are unregulated by the FSA that there is nobody with a large budget available to shut them down. I am never going to fall for their scams but many eldeerly vulnerable people with a more trusting personality will or they would not keep at it.

I have reported all these scammers to the TPS, the ICO and to https://www.actionfraud.police.uk but they are all very slow to take any kind of action. The ICO's criteria of only targeting those organisations they get lots of calls about is a mistake as the PPI and Personal Injury scammers whilst annoying are not intent on the same level of harm to their victim as the worthless investment scammers. But because PPI and personal injury scammers focus mainly on poor and stupid people and make a lot more calls in total the ICO seem more interested in them than the investment scammers who make less calls in total but target well off but elderly and trusting people and cause a lot more harm to each individual victim.

I find it very annoying that the Chief Operating Office of the ICO, Simon Entwisle will never personally respond to my correspondence and nor does the ICO have any kind of AGM that one can go to and put Mr Entwisle and the other senior directors (such as the Commissioner himself) on the spot.

With two of the PPI claim scammers who were more forthcoming than others when I challenged them on why they called me they indpendently identified https://www.media-tactics.co.uk as the place where they had bought my data. This firm only lists an 0843 number and I have not been able to discover any alternative despite trying very hard. Eventually I called them and challenged them on the unwanted calls I was receiving using data bought from them. They admitted they were in effect just a data aggregator who sold numbers on to their clients and whilst they were told all the data they had bought was TPS screened they didn't in fact rescreen it themselves. They then pass on the risk to the clients they sell the data who are legally liable for making the calls but seem to have no capability themselves to TPS check it.

In any event since contacting https://www.media-tactics.co.uk 95% of the unwanted PPI, personal injury and most importantly dodgy unregulated investment callers have dried up.

https://www.media-tactics.co.uk were also the call centre linked to this very aggresive 0151 call cente calling all over the UK back in March who then passed the leads they randomly hooked live during the call to PPI and personal injury chasers if the person called said they were interested. See http://www.unknownphone.com/search.php?num=01519091965&page=32

I suggest contacting https://www.media-tactics.co.uk to tell them you are getting a lot of unwanted calls despite your TPS registration and ask to be cleansed from all their databases and see how your unwanted calls fall off. I do also intend to try and make the ICO take an interest in this firm (since it is their data that seems to be the main source of harm) as well as getting the law society to take an interest in a firm of solicitors in Manchester who go under various names such as PPI Claims People who try to drum up PPI and personal injury claims by contracting with these TPS breaching call centres to get leads from them.

John_Pierpoint

Congratulations on your sleuthing, if you can do it, why can the authorities not do it.

A few years ago some scumbag managed to get my wife's credit card details and stole a few hundred pounds worth of stuff on-line (hopefully the "verified by VISA type routines would now trip him up) Eventually an attempt to buy a wide flat screen TV from Tesco was an ask too far. How difficult would it be to send a police snatch squad to deliver the TV ?

The only calls I can add to your list are from share dealers offering to relieve me of small parcels of shares I have inherited, apparently the secrecy undertaking they ask you to sign is the first step in an advance fee fraud.

Mylo_The_Moggy

I've never had any of these "calls" thankfully but have noticed a frequent increase in PPI texts & accident texts.
Never had a loan in my life & never even had an accident.
But there's always "money" waiting for me!

If I ever get a phone call about Windows/I've won money but have to pay blah blah to get it, I will certainly relish winding them up using the things I read on this forum lol. :rotfl::rotfl:

NonGeographicalMan

Mylo_The_Moggy wrote: »

I've never had any of these "calls" thankfully but have noticed a frequent increase in PPI texts & accident texts.

Interesting point that you had no such calls and I have had endless calls until eventually identifying https://www.media-tactics.co.uk as the apparent source of all the mischief I have been suffering (after which they have dried up after telling Media Tactics to expunge me from their lists).

I suppose trying to take people for £5,000 to £15,000 on a worthless investment presented as having the chance to double in a year will in reality be highly target at certain groups who they believe have the necessary money and interest in investing. So they will firstly target anyone who they know already has equity ISAs and secondly concentrate on calling postcodes identified as being in affluent areas where people have enough spare cash to get hoodwinked in to buying dodgy investments. So if you have never had ISAs and live in a council tower block in a dodgy part of suburban London they will not plague you with investment calls. They will however plague you with loan calls instead if you have ever borrowed before.

You seem unusual in living an area they do not target for the investment scams but having also never needed to borrow money. This is presumably the main reason why they leave you alone and only the PPI scammers are troubling you.

Mylo_The_Moggy

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

You seem unusual in living an area they do not target for the investment scams but having also never needed to borrow money. This is presumably the main reason why they leave you alone and only the PPI scammers are troubling you.

I have never needed to take out a loan. My philosophy has always been that if I can't afford something, I save up for it until I can afford it.
That is besides the point anyway. It just annoys me that these companies pluck your number from somewhere & bombard you with pointless texts about PPI & accident claims. I know damn well they are fake as I've had neither. Obviously those who are more vulnerable are in a position to likely fall for these scammers. They are the ones who are easily sucked into parting with their bank details etc.

I should be lucky I haven't had a loan as I could well be bombarded with the phone calls instead!!
Although I do now have the biggest loan you could ever have - a mortgage!!!!!

dardruba

I'm in disgrace. I got a call whilst still in bed from a woman with an Asian accent, The usual - Can I speak to Mr D? I said no you cant - effoff and more.
The next call was the angry manager of the local opticians, the girl was reminding me of my appointment later. I apologised sincerely and asked him to pass it on to the girl. I got there early and apologised to them all, giving them the explanation, 8-12 foreign calls every night and day mostly from callers with Asian accents.
I then asked the manager to change their phone routine to just start by saying "Hello, this is the opticians and..." and they all seemed to think that was a good idea, well thats what We did 60 years ago.

pjaj

I've not had one single unwanted call since last September when I switched from BT to a VoIP telephone service and adopted the number they initially gave me rather than transfer my old BT one.
Pros:

• Cheaper than BT phone service £6 per month, no line rental.
• No nuisance calls.
• Clear, noise free audio.

Cons:

• Change number.
• You need broadband.

Before you say "It's still BT", it isn't, I ditched them entirely when our village had FTTP installed.

Cylon82

Who did you change to pjaj?

I am bombarded with pain-in-the-backside calls which I know originate from BT giving my number out as the name that they ask for has only ever been registered with them!