Consumer Wealth Limited

Snufflz

I have been approached by a company called Consumer Wealth Limited who want to review my pension and potentially save me money. It was pretty hard sell over the phone and I'm distrustful especially since I can't find any reviews or mention of them beyond their own website.

Has anyone else had contact from them and are they trustworthy?

Thanks.

Elaine.

Browntoa

cold call


hard sell


make your own mind up if its legit , its the new PPI phone spamming

bigadaj

Browntoa wrote: »

cold call


hard sell


make your own mind up if its legit , its the new PPI phone spamming

It's a lot worse than PPi phone spamming.

You could lose your pension rather than a few minutes of your time, find a regulated local ifa if you need help with pension planning or simply check your plans with people on this forum for an alternative view.

Snufflz

Thanks for that. I agree. I will have nothing to do with them.

Aretnap

Regulated financial professionals are not allowed to sell investments by cold-calling, so either it's a regulated company which is breaking the rules, or an unregulated one operating on the shady fringes of the law. Either way it's not someone you want to entrust with your retirement savings.

The usual business model here is to persuade you to transfer your pension to a SIPP, then persuade you to invest it all in some dubious exotic investment (airport parking spaces, storage pods, student flats, Brazilian forests etc) by promising unrealistically high returns, downplaying the risks, or perhaps claiming that the returns are "guaranteed" (they're not). At best these investments are high risk with a good chance of losing you most or all of your money; at worst they're outright scams. Either way, the only people who get rich out of them are the people selling them.

dunstonh

Never act on cold calls.

Genuine regulated financial services companies do not cold call offering pension reviews. It is an area with a high level of scamming and has led to the regulator and other bodies publishing multiple warnings. Most of these companies are not FCA regulated. The few that are doing it are best avoided given the high risk nature.

If you want your pension reviewed, use a local IFA of your choosing.

Anthony_Stacey

Just to let everyone know that I had one of these calls, from a company called pension Safe. They wanted to send a courier with documents that needed to be signed there and then. I explained that will never happen. If they thought that they could help me, then they could send the document in the post, so that I had time to read it, to be sure of what I was signing, with no pressure of someone waiting for a signature. They agreed and sent the letter by post, in a hand written envelope. I then looked up the website, but it's "under construction." I then looked at the second piece of paper, which is a letter of authority, destined for the insurance/pension companies and it has the name Consumer Wealth in the top right hand corner.

I will not be taking this any further.

fatbeetle

Should these companies not be reported?

ex-pat_scot

fatbeetle wrote: »

Should these companies not be reported?

You can - but they are a virus. They keep mutating and aren't too bothered about anything beyond a quick bit of paperwork, then a fat commission, then vanish.

dunstonh

They wanted to send a courier with documents that needed to be signed there and then.

A normal regulated adviser is unlikely to do that. However, all the scams use a courier.

Malthusian

fatbeetle wrote: »

Should these companies not be reported?

If by that you mean "is it my moral duty to report them" then yes. If you mean "will it do any good if I report them" then no. It is extremely difficult to prove something is a criminal fraud and not just a badly run business until it collapses. The job of the police is to secure convictions and it is in their interests to let a scam run until it collapses as they have a much higher chance of a successful prosecution after that point.

*edit* I say this as sometimes what leads people into scams is the assumption that if the scheme was a scam the police or the regulator would have shut it down - which is totally false. The only people capable of stopping scams are investors - by not putting their money into them.