Makes me angry!
Reading in the Guardian the other day about the scam that’s still going on with companies sending out threatening letters to businesses warning them that they have failed to register under the data protection act. The letter goes on to say that unless £95 is sent within seven days then court proceedings could result. The letter looks very official but is a total con.
What makes me angry about this is that its been going on for bloody ages and nobody seems to be able or wants to do anything about it. The last time I heard about this, it was being run from a Padgate address and I received numerous calls from irate people (because of a similarity of name) accusing me of fraud.
The attitude of the police and the trading standards agency is that its the companies responsibility to check these things out and if your daft enough to pay out £95 to a bogus company then its your own fault. I say Bollocks to that! Excuse me I'm hopping mad about this but when is a con man not a con man????? If it was an old lady that was conned out of money then they may take action but if its a business then tough! That’s wrong.... People that go out to deliberately mislead people are rouges and should be treated as such.
Just been debating another form of con that seems to be doing the rounds where the police say they can't do anything about it.
A nice lady asks if they can use your phone because her cars broken down and she hasn't got a mobile. She makes a quick call and leaves. What she did however was to ring her own 09xxx number at £1.50 /min then forget to put the phone down properly. My wife said "That's rubish! Shes not going to get rich on that one" I asked her to work out how many people you could do that to in a day then multiply it by £90 per hour for each person.
Now this in my eyes is a crime but the police say they are powerless because you invited them into your home and gave them permission to use your phone. By the time anything is noticed they've buggered off with tens of thousands of pounds ready to set up again from another location. I don't accept that a con trick isn't a crime and that the only thing the police can do is to warn us to be on our guard angainst such things. Rubbish!
Bill
Mike..Thought I'd better stick this here. Are you sure about the other phone scam / hoax because from what my wife told me today the story made it into the Daily Mirror. They apparently said that BT confirmed that it was indeed possible but as the calls originated outside of the country they were powerless to stop it. Didn't read it myself but the wifes adament shes right. (Nothing new there )
Edited by: Bill at: 12/10/03 7:58 pm
Yes did read that before. Just thought it strange that the Mirror quoted a BT spokesbloke as confirming it. Normally the press do check out things before they print or maybe they didn't in this case and thre BT guy didn't know what he was talking about.
I guessed there has to be some limit on call charges even so £1.50/min =£90 per hour for as long as the phones off the hook. Again I would think that there maybe some cutoff mechanism if no audio is spoken for x amount of time.
And just a follow up on the data protection scam. Heres a list of the bogus companies still doing it. Interesting to note that there all pretty well based in the north west including of course the Warrington one.
**********************************************
Data Protection Enforcement Agency (Data Protection RegistrationService)
Mulain Centre, Union ST, Chester
Data Protection Agency Registration Services Ltd
Unit 5, Omega House, Capital Business Park, Kirkby Bank Rd, Kirkby, Liverpool
Data Protection Agency Registration Services
Omega House, Lloyds Buildings, 126-128 Stanford St Central, Ashton-under-Lyne Data Protection Agency Services
Padgate House 19a Princess Ave Padgate Warrington WA1 3TS Data Protection Agency Services
Hyde House 193 Market Street Hyde Cheshire
Crown Data Collection Enforcement
Hyde House 193 Market Street Hyde Cheshire
The Department of Company Registration
140 Ashley Crescent, London
Data Protection Bureau
PO Box 10899, Birmingham
Data Protection Registration Agency
Rugby House, 23 Rugby Drive, Aintree, Liverpool
Data Protection Registration Agency
Hyde House 6 Plain Pitt St Hyde Cheshire
Data Protection Agency Services
4 Haslow Place Blackpool
Data Protection Agency Services
Harrington House 90 Harrington Rd South Norwood London
Data Protection Agency Services
Fleetwood House, Fleetwood Pier, Fleetwood, Lancashire
Data Protection Agency Services
Summerseat House, 39 Summerseat, Liverpool
Data Protection Processing Corporation
PO BOX 56, Guisborough
Data Protection Agency Services
Atlantic House, 1st Floor, 56 Ramsbottom Street, Crewe
Data Protection Enforcement Agency
Hilton House, 71-73 Chapel Street, Manchester
Data Protection Agency Services
64 Brownley Road, Smallthorne, Stoke-On-Trent
Data Protection Agency Services
Sherbourne House, 80 Sherbourne Road, Blackpool
Data Registration (Renewals)
Hilton House, 71-73 Chapel Street, Manchester
DPAS (Renewals)
30 Myers Road West, Crosby
Data Protection Agency Services, DPA Enforcement Section
Ferrars House, 94 Ferrars Road, Sheffield
Data Protection Commissioner Services
193 Market Street , Hyde , Cheshire
Data Protection Enforcement Agency
Sparth House , 49 Heath Road , Rochdale
**********************************************
This is a scam and the list is growing because both the police and trading standards say they are powerless to act. The scam merchants are even advertising toung in cheek on the internet where they virtually admit it's a scam.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Edited by: Bill at: 12/18/03 4:27 pm
Re: Makes me angry!
Trading Standards are warning people to be on their guard against a scam doining the rounds in the Warrington area.
Apparently cards are being pushed through doors that give the appearance that a delivery has been missed and a telephone number is given. The small print explains that there may not actially have been any attempt to deliver and the call cost will cost £1.50 per min.
OK it's just another scam but I say trading standards should not be warning us, they should be imediately closing this sort of thing down now! Straight on to BT and get the number blacklisted and get the police to arrest the owners.
Bill
John Regular Poster
Posts: 87
(2/12/05 7:45 pm) Reply
Re: Makes me angry!
To be fair Bill they may also be trying to prosecute as well and as long as they are then attacking the problem in two ways by warning us as well doesn't do any harm. If they are trying to prosecute then they may not be publicising the fact so as not to warn the culprits.
I'm sure they will do something about it eventually but as you can see from my original post here, I've had first hand experience of scams like this and although I reported it immediately, it went on for literally years.
It really shouldn't take anytime at all to close down this kind of operation and that’s what makes me angry. It's not like you have to find these people. In this case, one call to BT should put an instant stop to their scam. The police can then take all the time in the world to trace just who BT pays the dosh to. In the mean time nobody can get ripped off.
Call me Mr Cynical if you will but it seems to me like trading standards are dining out on things like this. Constant warnings are always greatly appreciated by the public and any publicly funded organisation that has the support of the general public has a secure future. Look beyond this though and you have an organisation set up to protect us that has no teeth.
Bill
PS Just to illustrate what I mean check out the article in this weeks Guardian about car dealers that park for sale vehicles on public roads making them look like private sales. This has had loads of press coverage and people are getting pretty miffed off that trading standards has not done anything to put a stop to it.Edited by: Bill at: 3/12/05 3:12 pm
John Regular Poster
Posts: 88
(3/12/05 6:53 pm) Reply
Re: Makes me angry!
You could well be right Bill, looking at it another way, if Trading Standards were effective then there wouldn't be anywhere near as many scams as there seem to be. If the people who operate them had profits or property confiscated, by say 10 times, what it is decided they made through the scam then there would be a real deterrent. However I don't know how you'd prosecute those that originate abroad. I suppose you could deal with the local contacts though.
This weeks Guardian... major report from Trading Standards warning businesses of a scam doing the rounds yet again. This time it's form someone sending out invoices for advertisements in some kind of emergency services year book however the companies haven't agreed to placing the add.
So what's new? This has been going on for years and I've complained about it to both the police and trading standards but they do buggar all about it as usual. It's not like it's hard to nail these people as they put their address on the invoice where they want you to send the money to.
Their based in Liverpool and get your details from lists that circulate of any company that have made donations to various charaties. We now tell anyone ringing looking for donations to sod off which is a shame really but I know for a fact that once a company is on the list, you get bombarded with similar calls and inevitably the number, if not witheld, is an 0151 number!
>
> -Subject: Beware: Scam
>
>
> I am posting this to you to warn you of something that happened to me
> as I am a victim of the latest scam while shopping. This happened At
> ASDA and it could happen to you. Here's how
the scam
> works:
>
> Two good looking 18 year old girls come to your car as you are leaving
> while your are placing your packages on the floor of the front seat.
> One starts wiping your windscreen with a rag while the other comes to
> your window saying "Hi" while bending over with her breasts almost
> coming out of her blouse. It will be impossible not to look. When you
> thank them and offer them a tip, they say "No" and beg you for a ride
> to another Shop.
>
> You agree and tell them to sit in the back seat. On the way, they
> start having sex with each other. Then one of them climbs over into
> the front seat and performs a sexual act on you, while the other one
> steals your wallet.
>
> I was assaulted last Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, but I
> couldn't find them Saturday or Sunday....
John Regular Poster
Posts: 108
(6/2/06 4:11 am) Reply
Re: Makes me angry!
Hi Stuith,
I was really sorry to read about your dreadful experience. It must have been terribly traumatic for you. In fact it upset me so much that I was lying in bed thinking about it and couldn't sleep so I decided I would go and confront these two floozies myself. Unfortunately despite your very explicit warning I got distracted too and the very same thing happened to me. Then I woke up
Re: Makes me angry!
Sometimes I think some of wrongs in our society are like a merrygo round, they just keep comming round and round again and nothing ever seems to get done to stop it.
Take yet another example from last weeks Guardian where the police are warning people about cards being pushed through letter boxes from a fake deliver company. The card says that the company was unable to deliver a package and invites people to ring a £1.50/min number that then keeps them waiting.
Clearly this is a scam and a con but the point is that it's been doing the rounds for ages. Surly to goodness it can't be that hard to track these people down or at the very least get BT to block the scam number. The police are doing the job of trading standards here, warning people to watch out rather than taking direct action.
Bill
John Regular Poster
Posts: 159
(27/6/06 12:22 am) Reply
Re: Makes me angry!
I heard this one the other day although strictly speaking it's not technically a con as I belive the person doing it has obtained legal advice from a solicitor but you can make your own minds up.
Someone I know knows somebody who has an apartment in Manchester that she has been trying unsuccessfully to sell. Therefore she has decided to raffle it as a prize and is selling raffle tickets at £5 each. The raffle tickets state that 50 pence for each ticket sold will be given to charity and also there is a multiple choice question which asks where Manchester is. I think that the charity donation and the question is what makes it legal. Also there are other smaller prizes quoted on the ticket. She has got to sell 35000 tickets before she draws one for the prize.
The thing is is that if she doesn't sell enough tickets she doesn't have to give the prize and she doesn't have to give any of the money back. Also (and this isn't made clear) that the other prizes quoted are actually prizes on other raffles and are not being offered in this one.
Makes me angry!
Didn't read it myself but the wifes adament shes right. (Nothing new there 
)
Edited by: 
Re: Makes me angry!
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