Charity Scam

queline

My 14 year old daughter was 'persuaded' to buy a ticket for £2.00 in aid of a minibus in our local town centre last week. When I read the ticket, I was horrified to find that it mentions no particular charity and is in fact an entry form for a competition to win a holiday in Portugal. The rules state that entrants should be 18 or over so would be of no use to my daughter anyway should she wish to enter. I emailed my local paper to ask them to print a letter as a means of warning other people and they decided that it was worth running a story! I also went to find the people selling the tickets in the town centre and challenged them, also demanding to see their ID which was decidedly home made. The ticket states that it is run by Tower House Promotions in Nottingham and they have been investigated by the Daily Mirror and the Advertising Standards Authority as well as the Charities Comission! I have written to these people but as they are carrying on doing the same thing even though they have been told not to, I dont hold out much hope of receiving a reply. Apparently they target towns throughout the country. Has anyone else been caught like this?

savvy

This is the sad reason why I hate giving money to people in the street and when they knock my door.................it must be getting very hard for the genuine charity collectors to collect money nowadays!

BFG_2

This is a fairly common scam. The sellers keep most, and the 'printers' get the rest and about 0.00000001p in the pound is eventually sent to some charity or other so they can say they donate the 'profits' to charity.

The holiday draw thing is to get your name and addy for further scamming attempts (fake lottos, etc).

I always read what the people are selling and then if they are a scammer (should that be a scummer?) and I'm not in a hurry, I hang around and tell anyone thinking of buying a ticket the truth. Great fun!!!

queline

Thanks BFG, I shall try that next time! Mind you, plenty of people must have seen and heard me having a go at them in the street last Friday and were hopefully put off from buying a ticket from them. At least my daughter has realised that she needs to say no to these people.

pricefighter

Tower House Promotions are being investigated by the Office of Fair Trading.Why not write to the OFT with your complaint.

klondyke

savvy wrote:

This is the sad reason why I hate giving money to people in the street and when they knock my door.................it must be getting very hard for the genuine charity collectors to collect money nowadays!

For this reason I always use CAF (Charities Aid Foundation) vouchers. Not only is Mr Taxman's donation already added, but if they should fall into the wrong hands, they can't be used, as the money can only be obtained by a recognised charity. ('Recognised' is a bit wider than 'registered' so you can use them in your local church collection, sudden emergency etc.)

see http://www.allaboutgiving.org/