VENT: October is Free Wills Month - Scam?

forgotmyname

Spotted this also and enquired, seems you add a donation in the will and the charity your donating to pay the fee instead.

Maybe to play on your concience to donate more than the will costs at the solicitors? Its coming from your estate not your pocket?

daytona0

Looks like they have gradually removed their search option since 2009...

http://web.archive.org/web/20091028132056/http://www.freewillsmonth.org.uk/

If you look at this page you can see that in 2009 they had a dropdown of different locations but London and Cambridge did not feature on the list. Other years it was just Scottish towns, so I think you will be out of luck

So in a nutshell, yes it is legitimate, yes it is charity-based and no I would not automatically assume that your details will be sold on, but they will probably put you into a database and contact you October 2017 with the same offer!

knightstyle

We used https://www.actionaid.org.uk/get-involved/will-aid?gclid=CImQ25e93c8CFeUV0wod8moN5w a few years ago, is this the same thing?
You pay £95 for 1 will, £150 for a pair and all the money goes to charity.
The solicitors we used matched our donation as well.

SolentGal

Will Aid month is November apparently. Not if you live in or around Southampton. I put my postcode in the search facility and all that came up were several firms on the Isle of Wight and the next nearest was 24 miles away near Bournemouth. It would appear that all the Solicitors in Southampton are so impoverished that they cannot afford to take part in Will Aid month!

AngelaClare

I tried it in November was asked to pay £95. Free wills is very misleading

AngelaClare

I followed the link regarding Free Wills November, I was contacted by a Solicester, who informed me I had to pay £95. Very misleading.

knightstyle

Although the title is misleading if you read the blurb you will find that the solicitor gets nothing for making the wills so it is free!
But you are asked, told to, make a donation to a charity in order to qualify for the "free" will writing.
We were under no illusions about what we were doing. If you want a free will there are plenty of free forms on line you can use to DIY a will, ours was complicated due to us having lived abroad and still having a French property.

DoaM

When we did it a few years ago, there was no insistence on making a donation to charity, but it was expected. (In our case it was £125 ... solicitor fees would likely have been higher anyway).

SpammyTheSpammer

VERY scammy to me...

HiToAll

SpammyTheSpammer wrote: »

VERY scammy to me...

How is it a scam?