Postage scams

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Hitch

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28 Jan 2006
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Somerset
Anyone with elderly family that use mail order companies a lot, keep your eye on their post.

Me Grandad is in hospital, recovering from a broken hip. Me dad has buggered off to Spain on holiday. :roll:

Grandad asked me to get the wife to stay at his house on Friday, hes expecting a cheque for £8k, competition prize. (alarm bells start already) A few questions, he suggested I look at his post, see if they have told him what time they will arrive.

Soon as I saw the envelopes, it confirmed my thoughts.
Googled the company name, more conformation, 1010% a scam.
Place your next order in time and you will receive the prize.....

Asked me Dad what he knew about it, told me not to worry, he knew about it, nothing to worry about he says.

Rightly or wrongly, after that, ive had a rummage through, found a couple of invoices, flyers and deliveries.
Seems hes been ordering from them. :cry:

Bags of cheese puffs, £24, pots of mint sauce, £14.....

Further investigation, Ii have found hes spent almost £300, on a few packets of junk biscuits and chocolates from them, i assume only in the hope of winning the money.
Another look through, theres another couple of places hes bought from who do the same thing.

Clearly been put on a sucker list.
Im on the case now, seeing as me Dad is no help whatsoever.

Worst bit, is hes splashed out 7k of his savings on a new kitchen, being fitted next month, I can only imagine because he was expecting the 8k windfall.

Just need to get him told about this, and give me old man a size 11 up his backside now.
 
There was a program on this a while back. You need to get trading standards involved asap. You might also find that convincing your grandad that it's a scam is very hard work. Good luck though, I hate these scumbags that target the elderly.
 
Just taken a call from my Dad about a call he received that he thought might be a scam. It was the old Microsoft Support Centre "we've detected a problem with your computer" scam.

Fortunately I have managed to train both of my parents to just call and ask me if they get even the slightest whiff of something dodgy that they aren't sure about. I'm amazed how often they are targeted even though I'm sure they aren't on a suckers list. The one thing I can't seem to stop is mum forwarding those ridiculous emails warning you about some threat that doesn't really exist.

My imagination fails me when I try to think up a suitable punishment for the scum bags running these scams.

As an aside, the Microsoft Support Centre scam is massive, I can get half a dozen calls a day all from different Indians call "Dave". They clearly have a call centre as you can hear it in the background I just wonder what sort of scale some of these scams are operating on and do all the people making the calls actually know they are taking part in a scam. My guess is that a lot of the telephone scams are just buying call centre time and providing a script, once they catch a fish they pass it on to the real scammers.
 
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