Door-to-door Callers in SE23

Do we now have the NSPCC in the area?

NSPCC? Online or a phone call away if you need them.

I think it was about NSPCC calling door to door in the area today.

Tewkesbury Lodge Residents has a thread now about them visiting a number of properties on the estate.

I had them in Standlake couple weeks back, Windrush Lane - said to them ‘not interested’

Yes - we had a chap Thursday night. He wasn’t very good. Not aggressive or anything but trying to play it all cool, friendly and street and came across as an idiot I declined.

We also had the NSPC call on Thursday evening. Whoever calls at the door, I tell them I don’t sign up for anything on the doorstep and close the door immediately. Saves them wasting time on a lost cause, to be fair.

Yesterday (Friday) we had a young man on the door at around 8 PM. He had NPCC badge on a lanyard. Two weeks ago also on a Friday, a young man with Diabetes UK badge - this was at 9 PM!

My standard reply is that we give to charity but never on the door.

We or I just look through the shutters & unless they are a courier or postman holding a parcel we just don’t answer the door! If they keep coming back & really banging on the door, I go out & give them short shrift makes me laugh when they say “oh I’m not selling anything” when of course they are.

A couple of saturdays ago we had a charity cold caller from Battersea Dogs home knocking at our flat door. We have a secure entrance to our block of flats so he had obviously been let in by a resident or followed behind someone. When we asked him to leave as we do not allow non residents to walk around the block knocking on individual flat doors, they should only go to the flat of the resident they are visiting, he got aggressive and retorted we did not have the right to tell him what to do. Seeing as it is our private property we responded we very much had the right and my partner escorted him to the front entrance of our block of flats and made sure he left.

I hate the trend of charities indulging in cold calling as they are annoying and intrusive and I think risk taking advantage of vulnerable and lonely people.

They aren’t selling anything. What on earth is a charity fundraiser selling? They are paid a fixed hourly rate to do one of the most thankless tasks in society. The NSPCC does amazing work to protect children from abuse. How anyone on this thread can object to being asked to consider supporting such a worthy cause puzzles me. If you prefer not to support that’s fine, a polite no does the trick. A charity fundraiser will be told no many times but it’s worth it for the few who say yes. The people who say yes save and improve lives.

A polite no is what they get from me. The sellers at the door are not always so polite, sad to say, no matter how worthy the organisation they are representing. And it IS selling. They are asking you to buy a subscription.

There is an argument that if legitimate organisations use door-to-door sales, this gives an opportunity for scammers to do the same. If no legitimate organisation used this technique, it would be so much easier to safeguard the vulnerable, as the message to never buy at the door (or sign your name to something that involves taking your money) would be clear cut.

Hi Faye… I don’t think anyone on this thread were objecting to the charity or indeed the collection method. Most appear to be quite courteous in their response.

You should also note this thread was split off from the Updates from your local Safer Neighbourhood Team where several members were expressing concern about cold callers (not just from charities). The concern that the cold callers were in fact casing homes for burglaries.

Buying a subscription to stop child abuse?

Essentially, yes, when you sign up to make a monthly donation, it’s a subscription. As @starman said, no one is objecting to giving to charities per se, and this thread allows people to let other forum members know when legitimate organisations are calling in the area.

Though since pay was brought up, the CEO of the NSPCC is paid £167,000 per year not counting pension contributions with over fifty staff on salaries above £60,000.

really? I thought most fundraisers were on commission

Objection your honour… off topic… I’ll just leave this here:

It’s an interesting discussion, but since this is the public area of the forum could I ask that we keep this topic focussed on the SE23 situation rather than debating wider ethical issues. We do have areas of the site dedicated to wider debate:

Verified members - if you’d like to join discussions on ethics/philosophy/religion on SE23.life, please join our “Ethikos” group.

Advance warning - replies here may be moved to a discussion in Ethikos if they relate to general ethical issues as opposed to the immediate facts of this topic.

Did you catch his name or number? I’m sure Battersea would want to know. Unfortunately cold calling is a thankless job isn’t it? That’s probably why they get aggressive, but that’s not an excuse, they choose to do the job.

If individuals feel strongly enough about door knocking and ‘cold’ approaches from charities they can call up the charities in question and put a block on their address and number. Charities are regulated stringently and must action these requests. It’s all a big unpleasant that people seem to use this forum to complain about charities and the homeless. Not a lot of empathy here from the regulars

I could address all the excuses not to give here but obviously we’ve been asked to keep away from the ethical and philosophical component of the discussion.

Please don’t equate not responding to cold-callers with not giving to charity. I donate my time, skills and cash to several charities. I never speak to door-to-door callers.

If you’re referring to the people who come door-to-door, they are paid sales staff doing a job, not committed supporters of the charities concerned. I can understand you feeling people here are being harsh if you thought they were people going out of their way and chosing to take a low-paid position for altruistic reasons. But that’s not the reality of these sales people or ‘chuggers’ who stop you in the street.

I know lots of very committed people who work as street fundraisers. If you want to make assumptions that’s your choice.
Check this link out for your rights and how charities are regulated.

Forum members are complaining about unwanted door-to-door solicitation, and in topics elsewhere we’ve seen (understandable) complaints about certain beggars who are either aggressive or deceptive (known by the police to be not genuinely homeless, for example).

Let’s make our points respectfully and without casting aspersions on other forum members please. I’ve seen first-hand that @RachaelDunlop is generous to charitable causes and goes out of her way to promote them.

This forum is not really my scene and I’m struggling to find a delete account option. Would you delete my account pls Chris?

Oh dear, I feel responsible for this disagreement as I started it off for complaining about ADT knocking on my door asking for details of the security on my house… didn’t realise it would escalate to this!

Faye for what it’s worth, I do support a number of charities but I never ever sign up on the doorstep as its something I like to think carefully about, which I always explain politely. I can imagine it’s a difficult job traipsing door to door in the cold.

Thanks Daffodil. I work in the 3rd sector with brilliant and kind people who try to help others. It’s such a shame when people are so dismissive of fundraisers when a majority of them really want to help others.

I used to work in the charity sector and I whole-heartedly support what Rachael said.

It’s such a shame when people are so dismissive of fundraisers when a majority of them really want to help others.

Indeed. Just as it would be a shame to leap to conclusions about what someone thinks of charities when they are raising a legitimate comment about the “sales techniques” of third party sales staff.

Interesting

RULE Fr14: Stickers
Fundraisers MUST NOT knock on a door which clearly displays a sticker that explicitly states “no cold calling” “no cold callers”, “no charities”, “no charity canvassers” or “no charity fundraisers”.

Shall I put in a bulk order for cold-hearted forum members?

That rule book is missing one glaring thing. Their commission. That should be one of the first things they have to state when engaging in a conversation.

I felt disgusted after giving a few years ago and learning how much some of the agencies take. Never again. If I want to donate I’ll go on the Internet.

I don’t see why you should be apologising. Most people are decent & hardworking & do their best to help charities where they can.

I don’t know if you have deleted your account yet, but would like to say I & my family donate to charities either by sending money, direct debits, donating to children in need etc…apart from them keep knocking & if I am not persistent in telling them no, or not opening the door in the first place, what about older people whose door they knock on & harass. My mum lived her last 9 years out in very good sheltered housing where she was protected from unwanted callers, but she did get unsolicited callers that frightened her even though she was on tel preference list. If she had still been in her previous home she would have been very frightened by someone strange & sometimes very ‘pushy’ knocking on her door, especially about 8 o clock in the evening. I’ve got to say I agree wholly with the other forum members comments.

Yeah do that. Door to door fundraisers don’t need to waste their time on people who have already made their minds up. Like I said at the start all you have to do is check the guidelines to know how to opt out.

I support McMillan as their nurses looked after my terminally ill mother and mother in law. I decided to give to their charity after they showed enormous compassion, care and help. I only give to them. If that makes me cold hearted then pass me a sticker.

I have worked in the charity sector and give to charity. That does not excuse charity fundraisers getting aggressive or trespassing on private property when they have been asked to leave.

Sadly there are instances of elderly and vulnerable people feeling pressured in to signing up for more donations than they can afford.

Just because some people don’t want to hand over bank details on the doorstep to people they don’t know doesn’t mean they are cold hearted. It simply means, in a lot of cases, that people are wary of handing over details to people they don’t know on the doorstep. Furthermore, philanthropy tends to be quite personal. The charities I support may be different to the charities my friends support. So the people who come to the doorstep may represent organisations whose particular area of concern is not of interest to the person whose door they are knocking. I don’t think it’s fair to call people cold hearted because they don’t sign up for charitable giving on the doorstep. I wouldn’t do so. My charitable giving is done in a different way and I am not going to change that. I wouldn’t be rude to a doorstep charity collector provided that they were also polite, as the last one I had was. I wasn’t going to engage in any transaction with him, but I think we were both perfectly polite to each other.

I think @Andy was joking about forum members being cold hearted. I also think he was joking about offering to order them door stickers.

I always wonder about these ‘no cold callers, no junk mail’ stickers. They make a house look so unfriendly and unwelcoming. Some cold callers (a minority, I admit) are quite interesting to talk to - I always look forward to the Jehovah’s Witnesses who are such nice people with whom one can have a very interesting theological discussion. If on the other hand I don’t want to talk to a cold caller, I’ve never had any difficulty in telling them quickly but, I hope, politely to go away.

So far as ‘junk mail’ is concerned, some of it can be quite interesting. Otherwise, it takes little time or effort to consign (to take an example at random) a Conservative Party leaflet to the recycling bin.

Lets not turn this into a politics thread please.

Our friends at MoneySavingExpert have created a “no cold calling” sign which you can print off with variants for charity and/or religious groups.

Lewisham council also has one.

https://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/business/trading-standards/information-for-consumers/Documents/NoThanksSticker.pdf

I might order this one.

Many councils appear to support the creation of No Cold Calling Zones. I don’t think Lewisham Council does.

that Lewisham “No Thanks” one looks like it’s giving the middle finger salute - crude but effective

Today had a lad on the doorstep flogging cleaning supplies - apparently as part of a youth offender’s rehab programme.

Last time, I asked for details of the programme and was called a “time-waster”.

This is a well-known scam and the poor kids going door-to-door are often under coercion. Might be worth flagging to @SgtBiddle if these guys are working the area.

Some bad feeling on here for what to me sounds like basic logic. We are today inundated with ways to donate to charity, so door-to-door visits from people brandishing bank details forms are understandably less successful and less trustworthy than in years gone by. There’s no way to guarantee someone tipping up at your door is legitimate. And I’m roiling at the accusation that people who don’t want the interruption/awkwardness/potential aggression caused by turning away a D2D caller are “cold-hearted”. I choose my charities and donate when I can in ways I can control.

Just had an aggressive young man on the door step (9 PM Saturday!) , with the suitcase of brushes and cleaning materials. If an institution or gangmaster is putting them through this, I feel sorry and would investigate or write on their behalf. I have found it hard to find out exactly what’s going on, however, as when I have asked previously the question was avoided, and I was told I was wasting his time.

After this evening’s unpleasant experience on the doorstep, I would like a copy of the Lewisham sticker. Has anyone found out how to obtain one?

Sounds like it may be the same guy who was doing the rounds recently in East Dulwich - a few reports of similar aggressive attitude on the ED forum.

If the ‘Nottingham Knocker’ is agreessive I’d call the police. You should never be made to feel like that especially in your home. @SgtBiddle

Not to scare but this is my understanding of these sort of cold callers.

Just had one knocking on our door. Told we were not interested as not home and was on video doorbell. @SgtBiddle have a picture if you want it?