Tucan Claims - Is this real?

biondani

What you should do is take a trip to the local police station and log a fraud complaint.

Ian

magpiecottage

Gemma1983 wrote: »

They reassured her they wouldn't take any money - simply just send a pack through the post. They have since taken £249.99 from EACH card.

In that case she should tell the card provider they are unauthorised withdrawals and she wants the money put back.

eeedelli

Yes it seems that these shysters are indeed back on the prowl. I've been registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) for many years (probably in the mid 1990s, from memory) but I received, tonight, an unsolicited call from what was quite obviously an overseas call centre (judging by the 2-second loop delay) on behalf of Tucan Claims. The English of the caller was so poor that it took me four attempts just to establish the name of the person they were asking for and he actually had to spell it for me. It transpired that this name was in fact that of my mother .... who died 15 years ago!

What's worrying is not only the fact that they're calling a TPS number (which makes it a criminal offence rather than just a civil one, I think) but also where on earth they managed to get that data from as there is no way in which it could have been provided legally. It also shows the astonishingly poor quality of the organisation being employed, as the operator was actually asking whether I was that person! Anyone hearing my deep booming voice of incredulity would find it pretty difficult to imagine that I might be called Kathleen!

He immediately started asking questions about whether I had submitted a claim in the last 14 years, which I refused to answer and I asked who they were and where they were based. He told me they were based in the UK and he had to spell out Tucan Claims for me to be able to understand his accent. That 2-second delay on the line makes it seem pretty unlikely that he was actually in the UK as he claimed but no matter since the commissioning client is here and, therefore, the UK law applies to them as the commissioning company. He passed me to a supervisor whose English wasn't very much better but he basically just repeated the process, saying that all the contact details would be at the end of the call but, as I would not answer any of his probing questions which were none of his business, it was clear that I would never get there so I asked several times for contact details, at which point he hung up.

Under the Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), not only is it an offence for a UK company to arrange to call TPS-registered numbers themselves, it is still an offence by them if they have arranged for a call centre to call a TPS-registered number. Furthermore, it is a legal requirement that they supply the contact details when asked, which they failed to do, so that's two charges under the act. They kept telling me that the calls were being recorded for evidence. Good! I hope the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) demands to hear it!

You can fill in a form to the ICO and there's a link to the TPS complaints process from this page [Sorry - as a new poster, I'm not allowed to post links - maybe this will be allowed but you'll have to do it manually: www <dot> ico <dot> gov <dot> uk/complaints/privacy_and_electronic_communications <dot> aspx ]. Perhaps if they get enough complaints, the ICO rather than the MOJ may be able to act on this to get them shut down, in the same way that Al Capone was brought down not by all the murders he committed but for tax evasion! If you want to know what the company is required to do, it's here: [ www <dot> ico <dot> gov <dot> uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/telephone_marketing <dot> aspx ]

Valkyrie131

Tucan Claims called my Mother (75 years Old) spun her the usual rubbish and asked for her card details so her account could be checked for possible bank charges. My mother explained she was not thinking straight as my brother had a serious car accident the previous evening, the "man at the end of the Phone called "Manish" then said Im sorry to hear that, but imagine how useful that recovered money could be! Reluctantly my Mum gave over her card details. She phoned me straight after as she felt that something was not right. Due to her condition (shock from the severity of my brothers injuries) I called her Bank who where amazing and cancelled her card. At this point we was not aware that any money had been taken. I then called Tucan claims, gave her ref number only to be told that she had already been charged £249.00! I went mental! As Mum was not told that she would be charged anything. I escalated this to a Man called Terrance Nathan, explaining the whole situation. He was very apologetic, and due to the situation about my brother and to calm the situation about money being taken without permission he said a refund should be with us in 7 days. My Mum recieved a letter from Tucan stating that she would be refunded in due course. After waiting 3 weeks, I called them again as no money had been paid back. And was informed that it would take 31 WORKING DAYS before a CHEQUE would be issued. I protesed and was told by Terrance Nathan that he would call my mother straight back. Guess what! He didn't. Another 2 weeks later, (long after 31 working days wait) I have been informed by the sales Lady on the phone, that the Finance department would not give any information as to when the money would be returned and said again it would be sent in due course?? 14 DAY MONEY BACK! Ermmmmmmm Where's my mothers money? Surely theres something that can be done. Money was taken on 20th June 2011, Today is the 11th August 2011 and my Mum still does not have the money back that was effectivly stolen as she gave no prmission to take ANY money and told the operator Manish that she was in no fit state to make these choices, yet he still pushed. Disgusted. BE WARNED SPREAD THE NEWS. Take good care All wiill update this if any money is returned x

amymac

I'm also registered with TPS and had a call from this lot today, sounded like an overseas call as described above. I'll use the link to make a complaint too - thanks for that.

Sceptic001

The link to register a complaint with the Telephone Preference Service is here: http://complaints.tpsonline.org.uk/Consumer/

The form asks for the number you were called from. In my case the number was withheld (isn't this an offence in itself?), so I entered zero (it won't let you leave the field blank) and mentioned this in the comment field. If enough people complain about Tucan maybe the Information Commissioner will feel obliged to act.

tommyteague

my wife had a call from a company called Tucan Claims, claiming that because her credit limit was increased on her credit card without signing any kind of contract, she was entitled to £2500 compensation.
sounds very good until they asked for her 3 digit securtity number from the back of her credit card.

is there anybody out there that has had any experiences with this company, and if so any advice


thanks

tommy

dunstonh

tommyteague wrote: »

my wife had a call from a company called Tucan Claims, claiming that because her credit limit was increased on her credit card without signing any kind of contract, she was entitled to £2500 compensation.
sounds very good until they asked for her 3 digit securtity number from the back of her credit card.

is there anybody out there that has had any experiences with this company, and if so any advice


thanks

tommy

We cannot really make comments on specific companies but it is fair to say that having your credit limit increased is not grounds to getting any compensation. I'm afraid that this is a common sales reason to get people to sign and pay money up front to something that has virtually no chance of success.

Most of the better claims companies no longer try this approach.

shazstar

[FONT=&quot]I've just had a call from a sub-ordinate of Tucan Claims (possibly from abroad) who passed me on to his manager "Tim Powell" when I started asking some complicated questions about how he had my number, mortgage details etc. They are based in Bristol (given address was 160 Aztec, Aztec West Business Park, Bristol BS32 4UB (does BS = bulls**t???) and Tim went into detail about me being owed £3500 at least from a paid off mortgage, loans etc and increased credit card limit changes. All this to be in my pocket by mid-December - Yipppeeee - Christmas will be great - he said.

He gave me an "official" reference number and said it was all above board and they were an officially registered finance company working on behalf of the government! He went through all the spiel when I let him get a breath as I acted as if I was really interested yet gullible and made him wriggle over having to explain the ins and outs of this £249.99 malarky and their 2% fee etc, all the while I was on the pc checking out their background - thanks to this forum! His tone became distinctly more defensive and challenging.

I let him think he was going to get a payment off me, saying I had gone to find a credit card and left him hanging on for about 10 mins. After getting the gory story from here of the scam I checked he was still there and then hung up on him and refused to answer further attempts to call me.

I'm also supposedly on TPS but obviously my ex-dir number has got into the wrong hands. I tried the 0844 9796332 number Tim gave me on saynoto0870 and got the following (Tucan Claims - 0844 774 2668 / 0800 6800933) and the 0800 does work but there's a long queue on that phone line!

I will be raising a complaint and possibly reporting the above details to the police and relevant authorities. If anyone has experience of getting somewhere complaining about this please reply on here!

[/FONT]

Gizasmum

I received a call today from Tucan Claims on my landline. The Welsh girl on the other end came across as very bright and bubbly. She said her name was Laura Gooding. First of all she said that I should have received a letter from them in a bright orange envelope last week. When I said I hadn't, TBH if it's crap from a company like hers it would have been binned instantly, she said that she had a cheque for at least £1600 to send me and needed me to confirm my details. She said that this payment was due to the success of a recent massive court case brought against lots of banks regarding them raising your credit card limit without your permission. She then went on to say that the solicitors dealing with this had appointed Tucan Claims as their agent to contact all the claimants to ensure that they were paid out by Xmas. I asked her how she had got my details and she said that the banks had to provide customers details as part of the court case.

I asked her to repeat who she was and she immediately gave me her direct line: 08449796333, Customer Care: 08447742668, a claim reference number and her email address: [EMAIL="laura.gooding&#64;tucanclaims.co.uk"]laura.gooding@tucanclaims.co.uk[/EMAIL]. As the conversation wore on she also gave me the company address as 160 Aztec, Aztec Business PArk, Bristol, BS32 4UB.

She said that Tucan's costs came from the back end (10%) and were deducted from any payment, which was further enhanced by 8% interest backdated, so I would receive a payout of 98%. She said the average payout was £2500, and how handy that would be for Xmas. Yes indeed!

Then the good part started. Did I have my credit card handy? I asked why she needed this and she advised it was so she could verify it for the purpose of the claim. So I asked which card she wanted as I had several. She then said it would be a Mastercard, which I do have. She said she just needed the long number. I asked why, since she already had all my details, did I have to give her my card number. She said that, wait for it, that they kept the minimum information necessary due to data protection. PMSL!!

I told her I was not prepared to give out my card number to someone who had just called me up and whom I knew nothing about. She protested, saying that she had given me all her phone details. I said that she could just have given me a load of numbers, that I didn't know that these were valid or who they were for, and she could just take my card number and use it. She insisted that she was above board and told me she would hang up, stay off the phone and I could call her on her direct number. She then hung up.

Aye right! I had no intention of calling her back. Luckily I have a smartphone and immediately used it to google her company. I could see from the results that it was being branded a scam and being a MSE member went straight on to this topic. I just started to read about the £250 charge when the phone rang. Yes, you've guessed it, it was my new friend Laura. I told her that I was just reading on MSE that her company was involved in a scam and wanted a payment up front, that she had failed to mention. She then stated that any deposit would be refunded and as soon as I pulled her up on this she said any costs would be refunded. I ended the call by telling her to send me the letter again so that I had something in black and white as there was no way I would be giving her my card number. Bye bye Laura, have a nice day trying to catch some other poor sucker. No luck this time.

I can appreciate that many vulnerable and desperate people will be taken in by this scam, so will be making sure I tell all my friends about it. I'll also post on Facebook and Watchdog sites.