ProSearch Scam

fozmcfc

I received a letter from Prosearch, but it appears to be different from previous letters people have posted.

If anything, it probably breaks some sort of privacy law.

The letter says, they have been appointed by a major corporation to locate the following persons in connection with unclaimed entitlements.

They then give, the persons name and their former address. The person in question, isn't part of my family and in fact I don't know and have never known the person.

The letter then goes on to say, as this person is a former resident in my road, they wonder if I remained in contact with them or have relevant information.

It then says, if I do know them, they would be grateful if I could either encourage them to contact prosearch or provide prosearch, with a suitable address.

They then say I can provide any information via a phone number or email. Or alternatively complete and return the form below in prepaid envelope.

To my mind, the whole thing is a cheek, it would be bad enough contacting someone about another family member, as it would likely still be none of that persons business, but to contact a complete stranger, surely shouldn't be allowed.

Anyway, I won't be replying to them, but just thought, how much of a liberty it was.

Annie200

Hi
I've had a letter of ProSearch informing me that I'm entitled to shares and dividend of £329,51, this is an old endowment me and my ex husband took out out in 1988, I cashed in the endowment in 2008. I moved back to Norway in 2007, and my last address in the UK, the guy who moved in after I left was a drug addict( I was told). I tried to chase up the shares after I got back to Norway, and was told there had been a cheque sent out to my previous address. I assumed the guy who moved in would have managed to steal it and cash it in, so I thought money was lost.

As a result I threw my proof of the shares in the bin.

As I see it Prosearch want 10 per cent commission and 20 per cent vat on the full amount,
so out of the 329,51 pounds I will end up with 230,66 , nearly one third of my money will go to pro search ...,,,

I am glad I googled this and will ring up Equinity and see what they say ...

I do have a couple more questions in connection with this...

I do not have any utility bills in my former adress( its 10 years since I lived there) , the letter states I can only get my money paid in cheque, no foreign currency and it wont pay it directly into a bank account.. Pretty old fashioned if you ask me. We don't even have cheques in Norway anymore:eek:

I am now trying to chase up some old bank accounts in the UK, if not get in contact with old friends to see if the cheque can be paid into their account, that is if it is possible , If I ever get the cheque as I dont have much proof of the old address I lived at..

Any more suggestions ?

Bob_Pitman

My father (90) had a letter from ProSearch regarding some shares - had confirmation that they would charge £2,400 for something Equiniti will charge £135 for.

I notices that the accents on both callers sounded very similar and once I'd found the numbers behind the non geographical ones published I realised they share the same std code.

Careful checking reveals that both companies operate from the same place and share the same registered office!

Clearly it just gives them another chance to fleece shareholders for a greater cut.

sterling99

I am miffed with equinit who are trying it on
Following BG and Royal dutch shell merger I was allocated some Royal Dutch Shell shares and subsequently via prosearch was told I was entitled to over £600 in back dividends
I ignored prosearch, spoke to Equiniti and sent them a letter saying I had not received any monies and to sort out the payment. Today I received a cheque to the amount - minus £115 for 'admin' costs
I am definately not happy that sending out a new cheque (even if they had to stop the cheque from 12 months ago) would incur such a cost - I have raised a complaint with them but It seems I am not alone with being scammed. I was not told that the admin cost would be that much (in fact prosearch would have charged less!)

maggyp

I have just opened a letter from this company urging me to contact my neighbour to get them to contact Prosearch as a matter of urgency. Having read this thread I don't think I will be doing this.

Peter54321

On 23 March sterling99 wrote:

"I was not told that the admin cost would be that much (in fact prosearch would have charged less!)"

Not the case!

That's what I thought when I compared Equiniti and Prosearch and so I went ahead with Prosearch AND I did read the Prosearch offer document carefully NOR am I a complete illiterate. If you were due £600 in dividends the value of your remaining shares would be worth approximately £1422 so Prosearch would have actually charged you 12.5% of £600+£1422 = 12.5% of £2022+vat i.e. just over £300 in admin fees. You say Equiniti are trying it on charging £115 to reissue a cheque and I agree that's an extortionate charge, but it seems you narrowly avoided being conned out of an additional £185 had you opted for Prosearch. If Equiniti charged you anything to stop a 12 months old cheque then you should contest such a charge. A cheque becomes invalid after 6 months, so requires no stopping.

You were completely misled in the same way I was, because the Prosearch Offer document IS highly misleading and makes it appear that they will only charge 12.5% of the reissued cash entitlement when in fact their charges end up being around 50% (for the Royal Dutch Shell acquisition of BG missing cash entitlement).

That so many people in this forum have been misled by Prosearch marketing material is evidence in itself of how misleading it is.

Fransmum

As soon as I received a letter from ProSearch stating I had dividends due from HBOS to the value of approx £750, with details of an address I last lived at around 20 years ago, I jumped onto Google and found this conversation. I read all your comments carefully and checked the Lloyds, Equiniti and ProSearch websites. I also called Lloyds Banking Group but got nowhere with them. I decided against contacting ProSearch, but called their parent company Equiniti, giving them the ProSearch ref. I was told to send them a copy of the ProSearch letter along with my own letter stating my change of address (I also sent my Council Tax bill as proof of address and confirmed that I did used to live at the address given). They said that within 14 days I would receive a cheque less a set fee of £95. Yesterday I received a number of cheques totalling £737 plus a share certificate for Lloyds Banking Group! :j I still am not sure how I came to own these shares - I can only think I might have had an HBOS mortgage all those years ago, as I don't think I had any savings then.
I do think that Lloyds Banking Group should give their shareholders back any sums due without those shareholders having to pay fees to their registrars, however I am very glad that I did not ignore that letter from ProSearch. I am grateful for all your posts but obviously don't agree with some of the conspiracy theorists that this is a 'scam'. Best wishes to you all.

nickwhite392

I too nearly fell for this scam from Prosearch. I have 170 Royal Dutch Shell shares and was due about £1500 cash entitlement from the merger, but let the cheque for the cash entitlement get out of date by 7 months. I was looking at a fee from Prosearch of 12.5% plus VAT of the total amount of my entitlement, which surely would have exceeded £700 in fees. But instead, by ringing Equiniti shareholder helpline, they were within minutes able to confirm they would reissue my cheque for a £135 fee.

Seems as though I avoided being conned out of an additional £600 or so thanks to the very helpful advice here.

Onetap

I received one of these letters from Prosearch, saying that I was due about £70 in uncashed dividends from Lloyds Bank shares. I have lived at the same address since 1991 and the only reason for my not having cashed a dividend cheque is that I hadn't received it. I still have the shares and the share certificates.

I wrote to Equniti, asking for my dividend payment. They sent me a cheque for around £55 saying they'd "...charged an administration fee of £15 (including VAT) to cover costs."

The very odd thing about this is the payment date on the letter attached to the cheque; 10/05/1999.

Equniti had sat on my money for 18 years, presumably in the hope that I would have died or moved house, allowing them to keep the money. Why didn't they write to me in 2000, when the original cheque had expired? Why didn't they add the payment on to later dividend cheques?

The most galling thing about this is that I had a young family in 1999 and money was tight. £70 would have been very welcome. They misappropriated my money for 18 years, kept any interest that it had accrued and then have the effrontery to charge me for their services in giving it back nearly 20 years later.

Can they do this? Isn't there any code of practice for handling unpaid dividend payments? Does anyone know what Equitini have been doing? Is there anyone I can complain to?

I feel that I've been robbed.

geronimo1963

My father recently passed away after a long illness and I was reviewing all his papers and my mothers. I unearthed two cheques from Shell from 2016 which my parents, who are elderly and finding complexity difficult, had filed rather than cashed. Roll forward and Prosearch step in one year later and "offer" for a limited time to reunite them with this unclaimed dividend and shares issued to replace their BG shares. My mother, who has early dementia and my father, a normally meticulous and detailed man, signed the forms. Prosearch deducted over £2000 from their entitlement charging 12.5% of the cash AND shares value. How companies like Shell willingly work with these companies is beyond me. I am now trying to recover the money but I imagine there are many elderly shareholders who they have ripped off judging by the amount of dirt that comes up on a search,