Has my mum been scammed?

giraffe69

in an unrelated matter, does your mum need any snake oil? my systems have found that she has dry skin on her heels. a 6 month course of my wonder product will clear that up a treat. i take paypal and western union.

I think OP has indicated that his mum did not do the right thing and has attempted to mitigate the possibility of further damage. He asked for any tips on how he might get the money back(probably a forlorn hope). But if you feel that labouring the point of the unwiseness of his mum's response is the best thing to do...................................

brettcta

giraffe69 wrote: »

I think OP has indicated that his mum did not do the right thing and has attempted to mitigate the possibility of further damage. He asked for any tips on how he might get the money back(probably a forlorn hope). But if you feel that labouring the point of the unwiseness of his mum's response is the best thing to do...................................

i do feel like labouring that point, it's been one of those days.

what do you suggest for said labouring? your elongated ellipsis suggests you have a recommendation

unholyangel

brettcta wrote: »

not to come across as being on my high horse, but i'm always amazed that people fall for these types of scam. i understand that some [older] people aren't that tech savvy, but by exercising the slightest modicum of common sense, they can save themselves a tonne of money.

in an unrelated matter, does your mum need any snake oil? my systems have found that she has dry skin on her heels. a 6 month course of my wonder product will clear that up a treat. i take paypal and western union.

I think this was featured on rip off britain (or a similar show). Apparently with help of professionals, psychologists etc they'd built up who was likely to fall for which type of scam. In cases like these.....it is the elder generation as they are more trusting. While we'd all like to think we wouldn't fall for such scams......we don't really know until we're in that position and nor do we know what was said to the OP's mum. Some of them will fish by using the law of averages and use technical jargon to baffle the victim.

I had a call last week........from sky wanting to know if i am happy with my service and if they can offer me additional services/warranties. I found this amusing as sky has never been installed in this property either under my name or under a previous owners. I found it amusing even further given that I'm registered on the TPS, have only had this phone number 6 months or so and a total of 10 people have my number - 3 of which are companies. I know from personal experience that you can be very careful who you give your number to yet companies still get it. The reason? Your phone line provider is selling your details.

For mobile phones you used to be able to tell your network the phone user is underage and they would remove their name from this list. It was the only reason they would exclude you and I've heard quite a few deny all knowledge of such things happening - even though I used to work for one of them while still in school.

brettcta

unholyangel wrote: »

I think this was featured on rip off britain (or a similar show). Apparently with help of professionals, psychologists etc they'd built up who was likely to fall for which type of scam. In cases like these.....it is the elder generation as they are more trusting. While we'd all like to think we wouldn't fall for such scams......we don't really know until we're in that position and nor do we know what was said to the OP's mum. Some of them will fish by using the law of averages and use technical jargon to baffle the victim.

I had a call last week........from sky wanting to know if i am happy with my service and if they can offer me additional services/warranties. I found this amusing as sky has never been installed in this property either under my name or under a previous owners. I found it amusing even further given that I'm registered on the TPS, have only had this phone number 6 months or so and a total of 10 people have my number - 3 of which are companies. I know from personal experience that you can be very careful who you give your number to yet companies still get it. The reason? Your phone line provider is selling your details.

For mobile phones you used to be able to tell your network the phone user is underage and they would remove their name from this list. It was the only reason they would exclude you and I've heard quite a few deny all knowledge of such things happening - even though I used to work for one of them while still in school.

with the point you make on sky, i used to work for them. we'd get people complaining all the time that we'd been calling them to sell them warranties, which turned out to be third parties claiming to be from 'sky warranties' or some other moniker using the sky name to imply that they either were sky or that they were affiliated to sky.

with regards to selling your number, whilst i have no doubts some companies flog our details, sky have over 10 million customers. scammers could just mash their phone keypad and be in with a good chance of hitting a sky customer every 4/5 calls (on average)

unholyangel

brettcta wrote: »

with the point you make on sky, i used to work for them. we'd get people complaining all the time that we'd been calling them to sell them warranties, which turned out to be third parties claiming to be from 'sky warranties' or some other moniker using the sky name to imply that they either were sky or that they were affiliated to sky.

with regards to selling your number, whilst i have no doubts some companies flog our details, sky have over 10 million customers. scammers could just mash their phone keypad and be in with a good chance of hitting a sky customer every 4/5 calls (on average)

I know they impersonate them, hence my point that i'm not even a sky customer

As for selling the number, yes you could mash the keypad.....but whats the chances of you knowing the customers name? My name is far far far from common. Its not really a massive deal to me as my phone allows me to block the numbers I don't want calling me. Quite handy

arcon5

tomt82 wrote: »

Can I get her money back through Paypal by opening a dispute and what kind of dispute should I class it as? As most of the Paypal options seem to be related to ebay not dodgy people ringing her up.

Could I contact the credit card company? The company was paid through Paypal but money came from the credit card to pay the Paypal balance.

She doesn't have any records of the company just from Paypal. The cost was way over what you would pay for it help or anti virus protection (£340) but they don't seem to have stolen anything

Definately screams scam to me.

However getting a refund will be a near-impossible task i'm afraid. PayPal only allow a claim to be submitted within 45 days, and their protection doesn't cover 'services'.

The CC company are also unlikely to help because you paid the third party who then inturn paid the company (the third party being paypal). Even if they was paid directly with CC I think you would struggle to convince them to issue a refund after this period of time. You would need to be able to offer some kind of proof that she was scammed or missold the product - being difficult since they did the 'work' for your mother so long ago.

I think you should see this as a learning curve and make sure it doesn't happen again. Not the cheapest lesson in the world, but on the plus side it sounds like they used Paypal virtual terminal for which you don't have the option to 'cross-reference' a transaction to charge a card again -- so unless they have stored the details via other means it's unlikely she will be charged again.

brettcta

unholyangel wrote: »

I know they impersonate them, hence my point that i'm not even a sky customer

As for selling the number, yes you could mash the keypad.....but whats the chances of you knowing the customers name? My name is far far far from common. Its not really a massive deal to me as my phone allows me to block the numbers I don't want calling me. Quite handy

ah yea, i didn't factor in knowing the customer's name, fair call.

we did get given a note in a 'huddle' once about how these companies get the contact details of new sky punters. i can't remember the *exact* reasoning, but it mentioned something to do with some of the installers that sky contract out to selling on the details given to them by sky. i'm not 100% certain on that, so please don't quote it as fact.

arcon5

unholyangel wrote: »

As for selling the number, yes you could mash the keypad.....but whats the chances of you knowing the customers name? My name is far far far from common. Its not really a massive deal to me as my phone allows me to block the numbers I don't want calling me. Quite handy

They're probably just buying general mailing lists with name and numbers on the basis 1 in X will be a sky customer. With sky being a major player in the market, i'm guessing 'X' wouldn't be too high, making it worth while calling them all.

brettcta

arcon5 wrote: »

They're probably just buying general mailing lists with name and numbers on the basis 1 in X will be a sky customer. With sky being a major player in the market, i'm guessing 'X' wouldn't be too high, making it worth while calling them all.

basically what i said

dan_l

arcon5 wrote: »

They're probably just buying general mailing lists with name and numbers on the basis 1 in X will be a sky customer. With sky being a major player in the market, i'm guessing 'X' wouldn't be too high, making it worth while calling them all.

I think there is a bit more to it than that. Both times I have had a new sky box, within a month of the 1 year warranty ending these types of companies have rang trying to sell me an extended warranty because mine is coming to an end.