Petition ban on cold calling for all financial products

Exact_Money

It's all over the news this morning. Millions of people's pension data is being sold to fraudsters and cold-calling companies. I would like to see the FCA, MOJ & ICO ban all cold-calling on all financial products and claims. The then FSA put in place an effective ban on cold-calling for mortgages back in the early 2000s so this can be achieved.

Please could you all raise awareness of this by;

Seconding this forum post to get Martin's attention. He would be the ideal figurehead to champion this ban.

Contact your local MP and raise the issue with them.

Sign one of the e-petitions that have been set up on the HM Government website to ban cold-calling.

Let's take action and stop the cold calling scammers!

antrobus

Exact_Money wrote: »

....Contact your local MP and raise the issue with them....

A bit tricky at the moment. Parliament is dissolved today. No one knows the identity of their local MP until the votes are counted in May.:)

bowlhead99

FCA already don't approve of regulated firms cold calling. Unregulated firms are a different kettle of fish of course. Cold callers in all industries are a headache and can lead to loss of wealth through buying products you don't want as well as being a pain to deal with.

Ofcom's efforts to ban or sanction cold callers have not fully worked although some big (non-financial) groups have been fined by them for various infractions from time to time - e.g. I remember a headline that Talktalk were charged something approaching a million quid for exceeding their 'silent calls' quota.

Legislating and regulating people making phone calls is difficult. What is surely better is to just educate the people answering the phone not to buy from strangers. Growing up in the 70s/80s I remember the TV public service announcements where children were told not to go off with strangers. (example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfnznXW7Azg ) Consequently I never went off with strangers.

How about just telling children and adults not to buy things from people they don't know that contact them over phone, email or by coming to the door? It's not rocket science.

There are legitimately people who are weak and vulnerable and may not understand to say no and may still get scammed. Don't scam people should be a law if it is not already. Then you don't actually need to have a separate law about calling people up and asking if they would like to buy something.

dunstonh

I would like to see the FCA, MOJ & ICO ban all cold-calling on all financial products and claims. The then FSA put in place an effective ban on cold-calling for mortgages back in the early 2000s so this can be achieved.

Genuine regulated companies are not doing this cold calling. It is the unregulated scammers.

le_loup

Oh but, this government "believes" that public service announcements are the very epitome of the nanny state and are therefor very, vey bad.


Unlike party political broadcasts which are very, very good!

Pincher

Better keep it all together.


https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/68067248#Comment_68067248

Exact_Money

Dunston funnily enough I received a cold-call yesterday afternoon, offering a free pension review. It was an unregulated marketing company who wanted to book an appointment to send round a chap to get my signature on some documents, so they could conduct a "free review" for me on my pension performance. They gave me the names of two regulated firms that would conduct the review.

So it may be unregulated firms that are doing the cold-calling but they are definitely selling the leads on to regulated firms.

We can all be as facetious as we like (Antrobus) but the fact remains there is no place in this world for cold-calling!

bowlhead99

Exact_Money wrote: »

We can all be as facetious as we like (Antrobus) but the fact remains there is no place in this world for cold-calling!

So, don't answer the phones to cold callers or react to their requests. It doesn't necessarily need new legislation.

There are of course various special interest groups who have interest in pushing through new rules. For example, your previous posts show that you were at some point a mortgage advisor. With a ban from your regulator on you cold calling anyone, you would likely be the type of person who would see it beneficial if people in other businesses and less reputable firms were also banned from cold calling. However, bans are difficult to enforce and the cost of creating new legislation or focusing MPs' minds on this rather than other issues of the day, may not be as valuable as having the government focus on something else.

While it would be nice if I didn't have to deal with cold calls at all (and I don't really, as I am often out at work during the day and I know I can ignore pretty much any landline call because I don't really give the number out to anyone), the 100% foolproof solution of not buying things from cold calling firms, unregulated or otherwise, has served me well so far.

You mention there is more than one petition I could sign. Inevitably there will be plenty of groups of vocal minorities I could join if I wanted to be an activist on the subject. I don't think it needs Martin the Consumer Champion to push forward as a priority, though you or he may think differently which is fine.

Personally, I don't think MPs (after their break ) should focus too much time and resource on this. Is there a petition where I can ask the government NOT to waste time on this topic?

The problem with special interest groups and vocal minorities creating petitions is that you might have 100k people sign a petition for something, but you don't know whether the fact it is 0.1 million and not 64.1 million people means the 64 million people are neutral and could not care less, or are blissfully unaware of the petition and would have a view one way or another, or are like me and actively think the government should not spend time on the issue because there are bigger fish to fry.

If you asked the government or the opposition their top themes for the forthcoming election, neither of them are really going to run on a 'ban cold calling' ticket because it is not too much of a cost to society to let it exist in its current form and it would not capture the hearts and minds of the populace.

All IMHO of course.

dunstonh

Dunston funnily enough I received a cold-call yesterday afternoon, offering a free pension review. It was an unregulated marketing company who wanted to book an appointment to send round a chap to get my signature on some documents, so they could conduct a "free review" for me on my pension performance. They gave me the names of two regulated firms that would conduct the review.

So it may be unregulated firms that are doing the cold-calling but they are definitely selling the leads on to regulated firms.

Yes, there may be the odd one. However, what you tend to find with these unregulated companies is that they use the regulated company purely to obtain information. Some regulated companies have also had their names used when they are not actually involved at all (their name and FCA number are used but the address is different and they are not aware that they are being used that way). Any regulated firm found to be involved by choice with these firms should have action taken against them (i.e. those that allow their names to be used to get the information knowing that info will be used by an unregulated company).

antrobus

Exact_Money wrote: »

...We can all be as facetious as we like (Antrobus) but the fact remains there is no place in this world for cold-calling!

It's not really facetious, you know. It's more of a fact of life.