Scamming the elderly by post

Gothicfairy

OneYorkshireLass wrote: »

My grandad got sucked in by the RD scam too, paying thousands for books, DVDs and other junk that he's never used nor read (he doesn't have a DVD player either) - just because he thought he was going to win X amount of pounds.

Luckily, after we realised what was going on, my dad managed to stop the RD from sending anything more and got some of the most recent cheques cancelled before they were cashed. He sent strongly worded letters about how my grandad wasn't very lucid and didn't know what he was doing, and threatening legal action if they didn't stop sending junk mail.

It took a while, but they did eventually listen.

Glad your father got it to stop. I wish I had been so lucky but then my father did a good line in "hiding" things so I was not really aware of the problem until much to late. Shame his wife ( my step mother) didn't bother to tell anyone or deal with it but then that is life is it not.

I honestly think that RD are the worst company I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with and I am sure they target the elderly but getting them to stop or be accountable for their actions is another matter all together.

Dreamnine

This isn't Royal Mail's problem; that's like my blaming my ISP for all the dodgy content and sites I visit.

k66yla

Who is making 'unhelpful silly comments'? I only mentioned Spring Global so people can see the source of the majority of this rubbish and the owners. Then they can see for themselves why the powers that be won't do anything about it.
Don't worry RM will be privatised soon and there will be even more scam mail coming through the system.

Emmzi

if parents want help you could organise a mail redirect to your house. yes it'll cost a few quid but is cheaper than the alternative.

Evilm

1) Organise a mail redirect to your house. Then pass the post to your mother once you've checked it.

2) Set her bank account up to require a second signature on the cheque - then once a week (or a month) visit her and sign her cheques that are valid and not to scammers.

3) Get a Power of Attorney and take over her financials entirely.

Somehow you need to put a blocker in place to stop it and complaining to Royal Mail won't do anything.

supermum1958

I would certainly like to redirect the mail, but that needs her signature and consent. Power of attorney - yes, trying that, but it has cost a great deal of money, and when (if) it goes through it still doesn't give me the right to boss her about 0 quite rightly. So I may be able to get signing powers on cheques - and I may not. Meanwhile, the steady flow of cheques goes on....

Here is a reproachful email I sent to the Royal Mail guy who told me they couldn't tell scam mail from ordinary junk mail:

Dear Mr. Guilbert,
Thank you for your reply to my first email.
I do not agree with you that scam mail is not easily identifiable or
immediately distinguishable from legitimate promotional material. I have ten
examples removed from my mother's house on Saturday, and of these I would
say that all are easily detectable from the envelope alone. Five shriek in
bright yellow and red writing that my mother is an exceptional delivery, a
letter to a winner, with sums of £15,500 (Prize Awards Committee), £11,500
(The World of Treats), £7000 (Pots of Gold, which includes a premium rate
0906 phoneline to call) and a new and disturbing entry from 'Phyderma' of
Paris, with an allocation of £145,981.79 in a huge, quite unmissable
envelope. Then there is that old favourite Biotonic, which peddles inferior
products at inflated prizes with the lure of keeping you in a 'draw' for
£15,500 if you make a series of 'minimum' orders. My mother's cupboards are
stuffed with Biotonic products. Their envelope is perfectly distinguishable
and their scams are carried under the Royal Mail postage paid GB number
HQ12039.
In addition to these five, there is another wordsearch for a jewellery
company called Spencer and Mayfair, where you have to call another premium
rate phone line, Star Shopping with its trashy overpriced products, cheques
that never materialise and cheap little 'free' gifts to keep you on the
hook, a prize of 15 million euros from the private bag, Apia Samoa (if you
will just pay a modest release and shipment fee of £15, the Australian
lottery which comes absolutely unmistakable in an envelope marked with a
Queensland address, and last but not lease our old friend the Reader's
Digest, now I believe relocated to the Isle of Man. My mother's living room
is overflowing with their books; whether or not their prize draw is ever
allocated is a matter of lively discussion in chat rooms on the web.
There are others we have had; the Irish Lottery with its envelope decorated
with four leaf clovers and leprechauns springs to mind.
All are EASILY identifiable from the envelopes alone. Many are carried under
the aegis of what are clearly bulk mailing companies. UK Mail is one. TNT is
another. Others have a lower case m on the left, with 'Royal Mail' postage
paid GB numbers (HQ12039 for Biotonic, HQ17391 for Prize Awards Committee,
HQ39508 for Phyderma) prominently on them. *Stopping scam at the borders is
useless when most of it is carried by contractors operating inside the
country. *
My mother is spending conservatively £300 a week on these and other such
things. I grabbed her postman on Saturday and asked him to call the special
helpline allocated by Royal Mail for post office personnel to call if they
suspect one of their 'customers' are being scammed. 'Why don't you call it?'
he said. I replied that I am not permitted to do so. 'Yes, she does get a
lot of mail', he replied musingly. But he had never heard of the phone
number. *The phone number is not adequately posted and publicised to Royal
Mail staff*. My own postman has never heard of it either. It
is also clear that they are afraid to make enquiries; it is obvious from
their reactions that to raise your head above the parapet and ask your line
manager is not desirable. I gave hmy mother's postman my own phone number to
report back to and implored him to find and use the number, but I do not
believe I will ever hear back from him.
It is my belief that the Royal Mail are stalling on all this because it is
profitable for the post office to go on delivering this stuff.
That just isn't an acceptable reason. It would be easy to intercept it all
if there was the will to do so. It is estimated that our pensioners (and
nearly all of the victims ARE pensioners as they are more easily bamboozled,
especially by letters bearing the Royal Mail stamp) are losing
conservatively £3 billion a year.
We just can't afford this to continue as a nation. The elderly are under
financial pressure as it is.
I have reported these frauds to Action Fraud and Consumer Direct, but it was
not cheering. A bored girl took down all the companies names. A week later I
had a letter saying it would all be passed on. But it feels like all my
effort is disappearing into a black hole.
If you could see my mother's bewildered face (she can't remember writing
most of the cheques), my old father, who's 91, trying to work out where all
his dwindling income is going, and me trying to explain again and again to
the pair of them how most of the Royal Mail they're getting now is scams and
frauds, you might feel sorry for us. The elderly who are taken in by these
scams are often somewhere along the process of developing dementias of
various kinds. It is not right for the Royal Mail to hedge and prevaricate
with this tide of scam building up, and it will not in the long term be to
its advantage, no matter how great the financial temptation is.
By the way, theThinkJessica operation is a one-woman operation which nobly
tries to help the growing flood of victims. It has no official status, no
funding and very little help from the Royal Mail. It is run out of the
goodness of her heart by the daughter of a scam victim who is now dead. She
does wonderfully, but it is shameful to cite her in such a case when you
yourselves do so little to stem the tide.
Advice and support and raising public awareness are not enough. You need to
stop the scams from being carried in the mail. If you do not, you will
undoubtedly find that the backlash is far worse than you have anticipated.
Prevarication of this kind should be no part of your policy.

maninthestreet

supermum1958 wrote: »

I would certainly like to redirect the mail, but that needs her signature and consent. Power of attorney - yes, trying that, but it has cost a great deal of money, and when (if) it goes through it still doesn't give me the right to boss her about 0 quite rightly. So I may be able to get signing powers on cheques - and I may not. Meanwhile, the steady flow of cheques goes on....

Here is a reproachful email I sent to the Royal Mail guy who told me they couldn't tell scam mail from ordinary junk mail:

Dear Mr. Guilbert,
Thank you for your reply to my first email.
I do not agree with you that scam mail is not easily identifiable or
immediately distinguishable from legitimate promotional material. I have ten
examples removed from my mother's house on Saturday, and of these I would
say that all are easily detectable from the envelope alone. Five shriek in
bright yellow and red writing that my mother is an exceptional delivery, a
letter to a winner, with sums of £15,500 (Prize Awards Committee), £11,500
(The World of Treats), £7000 (Pots of Gold, which includes a premium rate
0906 phoneline to call) and a new and disturbing entry from 'Phyderma' of
Paris, with an allocation of £145,981.79 in a huge, quite unmissable
envelope. Then there is that old favourite Biotonic, which peddles inferior
products at inflated prizes with the lure of keeping you in a 'draw' for
£15,500 if you make a series of 'minimum' orders. My mother's cupboards are
stuffed with Biotonic products. Their envelope is perfectly distinguishable
and their scams are carried under the Royal Mail postage paid GB number
HQ12039.
In addition to these five, there is another wordsearch for a jewellery
company called Spencer and Mayfair, where you have to call another premium
rate phone line, Star Shopping with its trashy overpriced products, cheques
that never materialise and cheap little 'free' gifts to keep you on the
hook, a prize of 15 million euros from the private bag, Apia Samoa (if you
will just pay a modest release and shipment fee of £15, the Australian
lottery which comes absolutely unmistakable in an envelope marked with a
Queensland address, and last but not lease our old friend the Reader's
Digest, now I believe relocated to the Isle of Man. My mother's living room
is overflowing with their books; whether or not their prize draw is ever
allocated is a matter of lively discussion in chat rooms on the web.
There are others we have had; the Irish Lottery with its envelope decorated
with four leaf clovers and leprechauns springs to mind.
All are EASILY identifiable from the envelopes alone. Many are carried under
the aegis of what are clearly bulk mailing companies. UK Mail is one. TNT is
another. Others have a lower case m on the left, with 'Royal Mail' postage
paid GB numbers (HQ12039 for Biotonic, HQ17391 for Prize Awards Committee,
HQ39508 for Phyderma) prominently on them. *Stopping scam at the borders is
useless when most of it is carried by contractors operating inside the
country. *
My mother is spending conservatively £300 a week on these and other such
things. I grabbed her postman on Saturday and asked him to call the special
helpline allocated by Royal Mail for post office personnel to call if they
suspect one of their 'customers' are being scammed. 'Why don't you call it?'
he said. I replied that I am not permitted to do so. 'Yes, she does get a
lot of mail', he replied musingly. But he had never heard of the phone
number. *The phone number is not adequately posted and publicised to Royal
Mail staff*. My own postman has never heard of it either. It
is also clear that they are afraid to make enquiries; it is obvious from
their reactions that to raise your head above the parapet and ask your line
manager is not desirable. I gave hmy mother's postman my own phone number to
report back to and implored him to find and use the number, but I do not
believe I will ever hear back from him.
It is my belief that the Royal Mail are stalling on all this because it is
profitable for the post office to go on delivering this stuff.
That just isn't an acceptable reason. It would be easy to intercept it all
if there was the will to do so. It is estimated that our pensioners (and
nearly all of the victims ARE pensioners as they are more easily bamboozled,
especially by letters bearing the Royal Mail stamp) are losing
conservatively £3 billion a year.
We just can't afford this to continue as a nation. The elderly are under
financial pressure as it is.
I have reported these frauds to Action Fraud and Consumer Direct, but it was
not cheering. A bored girl took down all the companies names. A week later I
had a letter saying it would all be passed on. But it feels like all my
effort is disappearing into a black hole.
If you could see my mother's bewildered face (she can't remember writing
most of the cheques), my old father, who's 91, trying to work out where all
his dwindling income is going, and me trying to explain again and again to
the pair of them how most of the Royal Mail they're getting now is scams and
frauds, you might feel sorry for us. The elderly who are taken in by these
scams are often somewhere along the process of developing dementias of
various kinds. It is not right for the Royal Mail to hedge and prevaricate
with this tide of scam building up, and it will not in the long term be to
its advantage, no matter how great the financial temptation is.
By the way, theThinkJessica operation is a one-woman operation which nobly
tries to help the growing flood of victims. It has no official status, no
funding and very little help from the Royal Mail. It is run out of the
goodness of her heart by the daughter of a scam victim who is now dead. She
does wonderfully, but it is shameful to cite her in such a case when you
yourselves do so little to stem the tide.
Advice and support and raising public awareness are not enough. You need to
stop the scams from being carried in the mail. If you do not, you will
undoubtedly find that the backlash is far worse than you have anticipated.
Prevarication of this kind should be no part of your policy.

As at least one othe poster has stated on this thread it would be illegal for RM to willfully delay or obstuct the delivery of mail in the manner you wish them to do, regardless of the suspected contents of the mail.

mazza111

Even if these are clearly marked, RM still have a legal obligation to the customer (the person that's paying for postage) to deliver them. Most of these items would be also selling things, RD for example, how on earth would u propose to stop people selling things through the mail? It's big business for them. How many of us have had a catalogue for example, only to find a few weeks later we get a special discount for another catalogue thru the post in the next few months? It's smart business sense and advertising to use the postal system for advertising.

I know how hurt and angry u must be that your mother has been conned like this, but u really can't put the blame at RM's door on this one, they provide a service for the paying customer. You could intercept these letters and mark on them unsolicited mail, RTS. But you will have a long battle, once these companies have your name and address they will keep sending.

Edit- Just actually read through your letter, most of the companies are selling things, overpriced or not, it's advertising their own products. I really think your parents are going to need help with this, if they can't tell a scam from normal junk advertising mail, then it's time to step in and do something. Have to agree with what other posters have said, it's your mother who needs help with this.

Gothicfairy

Just thought I would add : You can not redirect anyone's mail without their consent which is half the problem as most would not fall for such rubbish normally.

Power of attorney is not cheap and not easy to get as I found out, my father would have a normalish day one day and the Dr would then say he was fine but the problem was the next he could be wondering the streets lost and scared.
He never saw the same Dr twice so they never got to compare him which made getting the official paperwork signed difficult and by the time we did it was to late, he died 2 weeks later.


I however don't agree that the RM are responsible as I don't want some big brother going through my mail and working out what I am alone to read or not.
I do think there should be something in place for these sort of cases but that is not down to the RM it should be easier for the families to maybe check the mail over with a member of the RM staff there first or something..(yes I do understand that would take staff etc )
As my case and the others who have posted on this thread show, it is not just the plain scam junk mail that is the problem..Proper mail from proper (so called ) companies are just as bad if not worst.

supermum1958

k66yla wrote: »

I'm a postie and I despair at the amount of scam letters we have to deliver. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it, sackable offence and prosecution if any mail is found to of been wilfully delayed by any RM employee. Also there is the official secrets act that employees have to sign so no information about peoples mail can be disclosed.
Google Spring Global
Also try registering with PPS - Postal Preference Service
and TPS - Telephone Preference Service

There is a special phone number posties can ring to report if they think one of their customers is being scammed. It is supposed to be promoted to posties freely. But when my postie asked his boss for it, he was told it didn't exist, and it was up to the customer to ring customer services. AS IF! They don't realise, that is the whole problem.

The number is 0207 239 6655.

One of my gripes with the Royal Mail is that they don't publicise this. Another is they insist the customer him or herself has to report the scams - but they are the least likely to do so.

It's a figleaf.

Any postie who has tried using the number, please post and let us know what happened!:T