Cold calling

NonGeographicalMan

cepheus wrote: »

I've just been getting a lot of calls attempting to sell me burgular alarms under the cover of a crime awareness campaign in Berks, Wish I'd taken the company name now!

are you aware of this campaign?...... I'm aware of a lot of people trying to sell me burgular alarms.... well we are trying to give you one...... aaaaaargh!

They usually ring up saying they are in your area installing free alarms at specially selected customers homes for free and can they call round in the next half hour. They carelessly omit to mention that the "free alarm" has an annual maintenance contract with ripoff charges like £800 per year for say a minimum five year contract term.

If people are brow beaten in to signing up in their living room they install the alarm within the next 24 hours so even if you exercise to cancel under the cold calling regulations they are then entitled to charge you a large uninstallation charge.

St Johns Secured Homes, SAS Fire & Security are two of the three I have experienced in the last 15 months. This Scottish Daily Record report at https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/life/consumer/consumer-problems/2009/02/08/the-alarm-shark-78057-21106499/ explains how they operate.

I believe my phone number was sold to them by a scam Indian call centre that goes by the name of The Consumer Research Centre or Lifestyle Research Centre.

DVardysShadow

noapron wrote: »

... I suspect it is often not the charity itself calling but a paid call centre. One charity did tell me that as I had donated before they were exempt from TPS rules. I don't want to be rude to them but they just don't like a polite no.

Oh yes, a lot of charities seem to outsource their collecting efforts. A lot of the tin rattlers nowadays are employed by collecting companies who take a cut.

If you give once and get phone spammed for ever, it is certainly a disincentive to ever give to a charity.

NonGeographicalMan

DVardysShadow wrote: »

If you give once and get phone spammed for ever, it is certainly a disincentive to ever give to a charity.

They are pretty good at postal spamming too.

My dad died of a sudden major heart attack in his early 60s so I made a one off modest donation to British Heart Foundation who then inundated me with begging letters every other week and then compounded this by running a terrible tv ad suggesting that if someone had a heart attack it was almost always all their own fault for eating, drinking and/or smoking too much. Many people (inlcuding my dad) actually have them due to putting themselves under too much stress and/or due to genetic factors.

The Woodlands Trust and RSPB were two other charities who wasted a great deal of my annual membership fee through unnecessary newsletters and endless other mailshots.

All this has put me off donating to most charities and I gave up my membership of the RSPB and the Woodland Trust.

diygardener

I was phoned by someone acting on behalf of the RSPB last week. They seemed incredulous that I should have the temerity to say no to their plea for extra money. They also seemed incapable of accepting that I had every right not to tell them the reason why I was refusing.
I detest the sort of emotional blackmail these charities employ. Membership of an organisation does not give them the right to assume they can come begging for more. They should concentrate on increasing membership and understand that it is counter productive to annoy existing contributors in this way.
What annoys me most is that the way they target very vulnerable people who can ill afford extra expenditure. I am fortunate enough not to be in that position (yet), but who knows what the future may hold. Hence I fight now while I am able.
I shall be cancelling my membership when it comes up for renewal unless I receive a meaningful response from their CEO to the complaint I e-mailed them immediately after the call. I urge others to act similarly.

NonGeographicalMan

diygardener wrote: »

I was phoned by someone acting on behalf of the RSPB last week. They seemed incredulous that I should have the temerity to say no to their plea for extra money.

I shall be cancelling my membership when it comes up for renewal unless I receive a meaningful response from their CEO to the complaint I e-mailed them immediately after the call. I urge others to act similarly.

Well done. The RSPB is a hopelessly wasteful charity with its four glossy magazines per year when most of its membership would now be happy to read the same information in four PDFs sent by email. Those magazines must cost at least £1 each to print or £4 per member per year.

I also resigned from The Woodland Trust when they told me they would be planting a tree in my nearest local wood as a result of joining them and when I asked them what the tree was in which local wood they told me they had planted a tree 50 miles away as they weren't currently planting any trees in my nearest Woodland Trust wood. This was not made clear when I joined.

The most unethical begging plea I have had for money was from my former University where the Vice Chancellors sent a letter saying they would be getting in touch by phone about a fund raising appeal unless I got in touch to say they should not do so. Of course they called only a few days later using some young undergraduate trying to earn wages in the evening and I was made to feel like a real heel for not signing up to a four year monthly giving plan that would have cost me over £1,400 there and then.

I registered a complaint about the Vice Chancellor's methods with the TPS and also emailed the Vice Chancellor directly telling him what I thought and that as I was currently unemployed I definitely could not afford it. I have not been bothered by them again.

spike7451

Antispam wrote: »

I got two cold calls yesterday dont normally get them now

Both Indian calls centres one from Talk Talk I told them 3-4 times not to call me

Then some company dont even know what he said, wanted me to help with a survey I said I was on TPS he then hung up, charming

I currently work in a call center selling things (although I'm probably getting the boot tommorow cuz I cant sell for s h1te!) & I !!!!!!! hate it!
The's an automatic dialler which can dial up to 10 calls a minute,when a call is answered or not,if the call result is not set to 'supress' then the number will go back into the database for calling again.

DVardysShadow

spike7451 wrote: »

I currently work in a call center selling things (although I'm probably getting the boot tommorow cuz I cant sell for s h1te!) & I !!!!!!! hate it!
The's an automatic dialler which can dial up to 10 calls a minute,when a call is answered or not,if the call result is not set to 'supress' then the number will go back into the database for calling again.

Don't take it to heart, spike. With autodiallers going 10 to the dozen and all the phone spam around, no one with any sense would buy by phone. It is basically that the method of selling is s h1te

CharlieBilly

That method of selling smells desperation too

Rather than using other methods of selling

moonrakerz

One source of numbers for these pests is when you give your phone number when registering on a website. They then get passed around.
NEVER give your real number, either make one up or give the number of one of these phone pests !

eagleeye

get free number of your area from sipgate.co.uk and dish this out to websites & other places.All calls end up on voicemail and you get notified for each call via email by sipgate.