ProSearch Scam

Oopsadaisy

These scum, sorry reputable company have made the Mirror today.......

Contacted woman, got her dividend and sold som eof her shares as their charges were more than the dividend, so she ended up worse off than before they contacted her.

ashleypride

Oopsadaisy wrote: »

These scum, sorry reputable company have made the Mirror today.......

Contacted woman, got her dividend and sold som eof her shares as their charges were more than the dividend, so she ended up worse off than before they contacted her.

This is pretty much the same as the OP.

When Prosearch reunite the owners with their shares, the 12% is reasonable.
However, when Prosearch reunite dividends to the owners the 12% of total share amount is not, and will often leave the owner in a negative position. This is a very dubious practice.

Their online FAQ states

"ProSearch charge an administration fee for tracing you and re-uniting you with the entitlement due to you. The level of fee has been negotiated by the company in which you held the investment to ensure that it is reasonable and fair to you."



In terms of dividends I would argue that 12% of the total share amount will never be reasonable or fair.


"Details of the fee to be charged are contained on the claim form."


Reading the above I would assume they would give a pre-esitmation of costs before proceeding? Reading the forum I would assume this is not the case?

Endora_2

We too just received a letter from this company signed by a Mark Gabriel stating they were trying to locate the whereabouts of a gentleman who just happened to have the same surname as us but lived at an address just 4 doors away (supposedly), the ironic thing is that the christian name of the gentleman they were/are searching for just happens to be the name we gave our male cat who has been a member of our family for the past 11 years now!! We completed the return slip at the bottom of the letter stating that we are NOT able to assist them with their search and sent it back in their pre-paid envelope. Good job the christian name wasn't that of my my father-in-law as that would've upset my husband greatly as he only passed away a couple of weeks ago (on Fathers day).

MasterMiser

I had a letter from ProSearch today and, contrary to what was said to Browntoa in an early post on this topic, Prosearch is actually a subsidiary of Equiniti.

Gadget66

I have just received a letter from ProSearch asking me to confirm that I lived at a previous address with a previous name. They found me using births, deaths and marriages. I can only assume it is relation to some shares I had in Tesco when I was an employee with the company for 7 years during university and beyond while I continued to train for my current career. I am unsure as to whether to reply to them now since reading this blog and those on another web site. If I reply, do I have to let them do the work or can I cash the shares myself? I just need to be sure what it is they contacted me about before I start making calls to Equiniti. Can anyone help?

Oopsadaisy

Ignore them and start looking for the shares yourself.

These companies actually sell your shares and keep the money if the dividends aren't enough to cover their charges.

Scarlet_Fever

hmmmm.... got a lettter today,. stating i have ZERO shares, and £16.59 in dividends,... how does that work then?

d1gger

Apparently Prosearch made an enquiry against my credit report recently. How could they do this?

mella_3

d1gger wrote: »

Apparently Prosearch made an enquiry against my credit report recently. How could they do this?

I've also just had a notification that Prosearch made an enquiry against my credit report - does anyone have any background on this practice?

hjwh

Hi, Just to add to others' warning Prosearch is a subsidiary of Equiniti that feeds off Equiniti's register of dormant holdings. They may make money on both sides - charging corporates to clean up their registers and taking advantage of ill informed shareholders that dont realise that these assets and dividends are easily claimed from Registrars directly. It seems dubious that Equiniti has the right to share data in this way with Prosearch and exploit their client corporate's databases in this way.

My elderly father was 'repatriated' with shares he had not got round to reregistering (ie. they were not lost) in exchange for a fee of over a £1000 and received a net sum of £11 for his entitlements. The adminstrative cost to prosearch will have been negligible as the processing of the new cheques is conducted by the registrar and takes a few hours of time max! The registrars typically charge from nil to £50 for this service depending on their arrangement with the corporate involved.

So net net - don't deal with prosearch go to the registrar direct - they will help you for a much smaller cost.

In the meantime if anyone has been successful in complaining to prosearch please let us know! We want to make sure that the corporates - especially the Chairman who are sensitive to shareholder issues, the FSA, consumer association etc., all know of this ludicrous scam - prosearch is clearly providing some form of service but a) the cost is out of all proportion to the expense involved b) they are exploiting innocent illinformed consumers and c) they arte exploiting priviledged access to share registrars databases potentially without the knowledge of the corporate customers involved and d) frankly the share registrars should be making a better effort to address the dormant shareholding issue and not wiping their hands of this issue (and through their ownership of proshare exploiting the situation).

Happy New Year..