First line financial cold call

wallheathguide

Hi, not sure if this was a scam/phishing call, but I had Firstline financial cold call today. First question was ‘had I heard of Martin Lewis?’ And ‘had I seen the latest programme?’. They started asking about wills etc. I wasn’t sure so I ended call. Has anyone else had these type of call? Sorry if this is not the place to post this?

CliveOfIndia

Can't say I've had any calls from these particular folk, but it's not exactly surprising.  ML is pretty well-known - certainly in the UK, and I wouldn't be surprised if his name has filtered through to other countries as well.  Any scammer with half a brain cell (I realise that rules out most of them !) wouldn't pass up the opportunity to make their claim sound more convincing by quoting a well-known financial guru.

Actually, out of curiosity, I Googled that company name.  There's one registered in the UK that was dissolved in 2013 according to Companies House, there's another with that name based in Arizona.  Hmmm, what do you reckon, scam or not?

Albermarle

Reputable financial service providers will NOT cold call you. So that answers your question I think.

Martin Lewis is probably the Number 1 celebrity scammers use to promote their schemes. Often fake videos of him promoting Crypto. 

retiredbanker1

Was it from 07488 873295 by any chance - I disconnected the call after 10 seconds and blocked the number.

These scammers will probably be back soon with a different number - just put your phone down let them speak their spiel while you get on with your life. 

VPrince

They called me this morning. Said they were promoting a will service something about it being mentioned on a recent episode of ML. im not interested but i told them they had woken me and i couldn't understand what she was on about. Its just annoying that she knew my full name and my mobile number. How?? 

Ectophile

VPrince said:

Its just annoying that she knew my full name and my mobile number. How?? 

Give up on any idea that this sort of information is private.  At some point, you will have given your name and phone number to somebody.  Perhaps when ordering something, or signing up to a service.  It only takes one data breach and every scammer in the World will be able to buy a list that includes your details.

sonearandyetsofa

I get multiple annoying cold calls a week to my business, it's just part and parcel of having a phone these days. I don't get any to my personal mobile because I don't give out the number for anything other than the doctor and a couple of parcel companies.

As a rule of thumb, never admit to being who they're asking for. Never admit that's your number. Pretend the person they need to speak to isn't available, and say they've come through on the wrong line. For best results, pretend to be a business and tell them you don't deal with companies that cold call. If they insist it's important, tell them to send you a letter. If they don't have your address, well clearly it can't be that important - don't give it out. If they ask for your number or any other details tell them you're not permitted to give out information over the phone. 

Also, these days all of these script calls for me start out with "Hi! How are you doing today?" which no one you need to talk to ever says, or they go "I am calling from your energy company/your bank/microsoft" which you can just laugh at and hang up because that just doesn't happen.

If by some absolute fluke it turns out to be an actual important call you want to take, you can then laugh and say "oh yes that's me, I get loads of spam calls". People find it funny, no one I actually needed to talk to has been offended by it so far.

twopenny

I think Martin Lewis is so high profile now it's become the obvious one.
Used to be TripAdvisor when it was top of its game.
Then of course Amazon,UPS , Microsoft etc.

All picking the subject that a huge volume of people will have looked at or used to give the best hit rate.

Lists of phone numbers are sold between scammers and to the newbie want to be.