Possible local phone scam?

Possible phone scam to be aware of? I’ve just had a call to my photography business work number from a local ‘crime prevention’ publication, purportedly being distributed to over 30,000 addresses in the local area and for which I am supposed to have signed up for a 1/4 page ad for my business on 8th June and for which I now need to pay! Needless to say I have no knowledge whatsoever of placing advertising in such a publication and slightly suspicious that the caller (from a withheld number) should hang up as soon as he hears “absolutely no knowledge of this” … Anyone else had similar calls in the area recently?

Yep. I also come across invoices that say on the back that if you write anything on the face of it it means that you agree to the order. It goes to my Rich uncle needs help of getting his money via my bank account file. They usually target bigger companies where managers change and new ones assume it was done in the past.

Sometimes some organisations have weird way of raising funds, and they are not very forthcoming that they need money and you could support them by placing an advert that you don’t really need or want. Up to you but I would never do it while expecting the advertising will be of any impact.

Dreadful. I’m sure I’ve heard the advertising scam before. It’s shameful.

You may already know but if you get a call from a number you don’t recognise (assuming it hasn’t been withheld) you can put the phone number into Google. You might find it’s your mobile phone company calling you. Or you might find it listed on one of the various websites where people post phone numbers and what happened. E.g., “020-5555-1234 - Caller said someone in my family had been in a car accident…”

Shocking! My bank card got cloned recently & its quite scary what people can do when we have no knowledge of these things

I had to spend so much time at the bank on my day off filling in so much paperwork!

Scam I came into work today:
VAT-Reg-No.org or European Central Register for collation and publication of VAT registration number
Or European Dabase Services Ltd based in Austria

A fax came with a lot of data prepopulated and having a contact person from our company of someone who had retired. In a big box in the middle it asked to confirm the data and send it back. In the small print it says a fee of £960 per year is payable. Notice period is 3 months before expiry of the contract. Some people thought that I needed to respond to this today. #not

But all businesses that are VAT registered will be on the European Commission website thanks to all the taxes we already pay. No need to spend any additional money as a cost of registration.

So the official website is www.ec.europa.eu

My current favourite (not really) is the accident one. I respond by saying it was actually my live-in caretaker and I’ll get her to answer the questions… can you hold? I put the phone down and go watch the latest episode of the Great British Menu.

I used to receive at least two of three calls a week from accident claims companies. Instead of being rude, I played a game to see how long I could keep them on the phone by starting with asking them whether it mattered that I was drunk or that I do not have a driving licence and going from there. A bit childish but it worked.

Now if I can just work out a way to get rid of the PPI calls.

I find handing them over to a small child to discuss the issue works a treat.

My current tactic is to pretend I’ve phoned them about their accident. Sadly I don’t get many calls about such matters, so I’ve still got to try it out a few more times.

Last time I tried it the woman politely said “okay I’ll take you off my list”, which was a little disappointing, and yet completely effective.

I’ve despised these people since a few years ago when my daughter was at home alone and answered the phone only to be told that someone in her family had been in a car accident.

I have no qualms whatsoever in making their lives a misery with whatever takes my fancy at that moment: time-wasting tricks, lies, bad language or shaming them with outright accusations that they are lying and they know it.

I don’t accept that they’re just trying to do a job. Most of them live in one of the fastest-growing economies in the world so if they feel that it’s a pretty awful job and there has to be a more pleasant way of earning a living, then that’s fine by me.

My best one was when I asked them whether they would be able to assist me with a case against NASA as I got whiplash from an incident at work in apollo 13. It was clearly an overseas call centre but I was surprised that they still wanted my details. They eventually gave up after about five minutes when I asked them if the uk courts jurisdiction extended to mars.

For accident claims I tell them the person who they called about died in the crash. I have not had any more of those calls in over a year.

PPI I tell I used a PPI claim form and recovered over £100,000. Similarly I have had none of those calls for a good long while.

The Microsoft calls I handle depending on how much time I have and my mood. Record was over 20 minutes and I ended it by saying I had a Mac.

The last time I told a Windows scammer that I didn’t have a Windows computer he called me a liar. And some other choice names. I happen to have a lot of whistles around the house (training my dog). A sharp blast down the phone is very satisfying.