MIL received a call last week from a company selling some sort of call blocker (we think) in return for a one off payment of £140.

She’s been told many times, not to buy from cold callers, but off she goes and does it again. I realise she’s 85, but FFS, how many times do you have to tell someone?!! 🙄

She’s already had her number on TPS for years and she got sold a call blocker 3 years ago (which i returned and got a full refund for) and the company who were selling (IT Protect) subsequently got fined £40,000 for it after quite a few complaints were made.
Sure enough the money has gone out of her account to a company call IGuard, but I can find precious little on the internet. She’s not received any paperwork or hardware in 10 days since.

Has anyone else had any dealings with this lot, because I want to get her money back for her if i can. I can’t even find contact details for them, unless they are trading under another name.

can you not go via the bank and get a chargeback?
http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/how-do-i-use-chargeback

Banks the first place to go then trading standards ??

I’d be getting in touch if OFFCOM or whatever they are called

Bank or trading standards. Also buy her a call guard phone, mine was under £40 . I get zero scammy calls now.

Excellent, thanks! Chargeback looks to be a possibility. I’ll suggest my OH (who has LPA (lasting power of attorney) and handles most of her mothers financial affairs.
Im not sure Offcom will get involved, but TPS should.
I just need try and find some more info about the company concerned.

A good tip is to deface the security number on your MIL’s bank card. It will obviously still work in cash machines and shops but without the number phone payments ect can’t be made.

Thats a great idea! She doesn’t go out on her own and my OH has a card for the same account, so if anything needs paying for over the phone, she can sort it.

My elderly father fell for some IT online protection scam when he has zero IT devices, £200ish. Nationwide BS wouldn’t refund after investigation as he had bought over the phone hence not taken reasonable care. Can’t find any decent contact details for the company although NWBS apparently had a reply suggesting they were legit – scammers/robbers praying on the elderly, despicable.
Get a call block phone, we have BT ones, they’re a bit crap generally but do block the cold callers using auto dialling as they won’t leave a name and press # so that’s worked thus far.

Wife was telling me of an old fella who comes in to her work who’s carer has had to take his cheque book off him. Paid some **** 4k ish for a bit of tree of pruning. Scumbags!

wrightyson – Member
Wife was telling me of an old fella who comes in to her work who’s carer has had to take his cheque book off him. Paid some **** 4k ish for a bit of tree of pruning. Scumbags!

Wife’s gran got done this way too, the lovely helpful men even drove her to the cashpoint and back so she could pay them in cash 👿 arseholes

Wife’s gran got done this way too, the lovely helpful men even drove her to the cashpoint and back so she could pay them in cash arseholes

Wow. That is despicable. All these examples are. Curiously today, there was an article on the BBC news about some UK arrests involving the Microsoft/software scam. My father who’s in his early 70’s now sees them as a sort of sport.. He even had a cold caller call him back asking to apologise for the torrent of f-words he had to listen too which was impressive and brazen at the same time. Gets the MS one a lot, but again has no internet at this property. He has sadly though been talked into a new call package at one point by a cold caller telephony provider… tried the BT Call Guardian but after 6 months couldn’t work it out properly. It was a lottery when family called if he could or would pick up. Sacked it off in the end. Unsolicited call marketing across the board SHOULD BE ILLEGAL imo.

Problem is a lot of it is orchestrated outside the UK so legality /ofcom guidelines are useless if your number ends up on a list somewhere.

One reason I don’t have a house phone anymore, every one calls me on mobile and you can blacklist numbers or even ranges using wild cards.

Basically I never pick up an unsolicited call. If they don’t leave a message then I Google the number and more often than not, blacklist them.

Problem is a lot of it is orchestrated outside the UK so legality /ofcom guidelines are useless if your number ends up on a list somewhere.

I had a call last week from someone purporting to be an IT person from BT, who said my broadband was sending out viruses that were infecting other computers and it would be shut down if I didn’t take steps to stop the problem.
At the time I was busy, and after a bit of waffle terminated the call.
Next day I noticed I had a phone message, same bloke, but the call was totally garbled, so I deleted it.
Next morning he calls again, so I decided to play along.
When he told me to look for the Windows key on my keyboard, it threw him when I said there wasn’t one there, and was clearly struggling when I said I used a Mac.
He then told me to open a new tab in Chrome and type in a web address, which I did, and hit return, which brought up a web page with a warning triangle and exclamation mark by the text pane.
When I said, ‘oh, that’s interesting, it’s telling me to avoid putting in any personal information as it isn’t a secure site’, the phone suddenly went dead!
I made a wry chuckle…
For a great many people who are far less savvy about computer security, I can see this sort of thing being totally convincing, and there was something in the news tonight about a joint UK/Indian police operation which has already resulted in the arrest of four in the U.K. over similar phone scams.
Not sure it’ll end with them, though.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/microsoft-account-security-scam-call-arrests

Problem is a lot of it is orchestrated outside the UK so legality /ofcom guidelines are useless if your number ends up on a list somewhere.

In fact, it’s run at such a scale that they have all the appearances of legit businesses: a lot of the agents making the calls genuinely think they’re working for the companies they claim to represent. A lot of the contact centres are located in the same business parks as legitimate offshore providers.

In fact, given that it is such large scale organised crime, one can only assume there is significant corruption to allow it continue.

As for protecting little old ladies, some sensible advice there but I do find it despicable how some people prey on the vulnerable.

My neighbour, a Pakistani, is a Police Officer. For the last six weeks he’s been off the beat and seconded to a special computer crime unit. He’s pretty damned nifty with IT stuff and now to his delight the Police have made a special effort (phone calls made, strings pulled, noses out of joint etc.) to retain him on the computer job, which is good news because shift work doesn’t half interfere with cycling. I get the impression he and his colleagues are going to be making some interesting progress.

Surly there is a statutory cooling off period?

*Update*
She has received her “caller blocker” box and she’s also signed up for a TV breakdown cover package. The company are apparently based in Bournemouth, so once I’ve sent the box back and got the refund I’ll be making an official complaint to the TPS people and the Information Commissioner’s office.

My neighbour, a Pakistani, is a Police Officer

Why is it important we know that he’s Pakistani? Can’t see a connection to the part about him being on a cyber crime detachment in the police. comin’ over here, solving crime in our communities.. i dunno.. 🙂

She has received her “caller blocker” box

Ironic that the cold caller scumbags sell a box to block people like themselves!

This looks very similar to the Bournemouth companies mentioned here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/beatthescammers/article-4772536/Beware-cold-callers-selling-gadgets-block-cold-calls.html
Get in touch with the journalist maybe? l.milner@dailymail.co.uk

Get in touch with the journalist maybe? l.milner@dailymail.co.uk

Or we could just talk to you here?

Hi Daily Mail journalist. Have you clicked on your own link above?

🙂 is amused

Freelance to be fair, Mark. (-:

But no doubt a guardian or socialist worker link would be fine 🙄

Its because of this, oldtalent.

Really sorry that its a Grauniad link. Sincere apologies:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia-bans-daily-mail-as-unreliable-source-for-website

Also Marks gaff Marks rules.

But no doubt a guardian or socialist worker link would be fine

I’m sure there are other cycling websites where the owners don’t mind funding hate filled rags disguised as newspapers.

You could maybe defect to one of those to show your disgust ?

Point of note on that filter,

It only serves as a warning to people who might click on such a link inadvertently. If people still want to view it then they can (only with a nofollow tag so STW aren’t contributing to their advertising popularity). Nothing is actually blocked.

And of course, if you do want to link to xenophobic horseshit unimpeded you can always look for the same article in the Express.

Its because of this, oldtalent.

That and because it’s funny.

Plus if you do want to link to xenophobic horseshit unimpeded

😆

I should clarify, my words there aren’t intended as a slight on Ms Milner’s article. I had a quick search for her and it’d seem she’s published some decent, credible stories.

Despite being printed in the Daily Andrex, her article here has some decent advice relevant to the OP. In particular, the bits I’ve highlighted here:

Register for the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) free on 0345 070 0707 or at tpsonline.org.uk. Firms will then be breaking the law if they make unwanted sales calls.

The TPS today launches a free mobile phone app called TPS Protect which rates incoming calls on a ‘trust score’ of one to five. Five means the caller is from a firm with low complaints. One means it is a suspected scam.

BT customers can get its free BT Protect service that won’t allow calls from nuisance numbers it is aware of. You can add 100 other numbers to your blacklist.

Sky Talk Shield is free for its broadband and landline customers. It asks callers to state their name then plays it back to you so you can decide whether to take calls. You can block up to 1,000 numbers.

Trading Standards has 1,500 free TrueCall call-blocking gadgets to give away to vulnerable people. You can also buy the device for £100 (truecall.co.uk or call 0800 0 336 330).