Tag: cold caller

Nuisance Caller Prosecuted

Louis Kidd, 27, lives at home with his mother in Brighton but was the owner of Prodial – a company responsible for 46 million nuisance phone calls in the UK about PPI (Payment Protection Insurance).

Prodial’s computer systems would dial numbers and play a recorded message about claiming PPI. Anyone who responded would have their details sold on to Claims Management companies.

The automated calls, dialled from a computer server in the south east of England, hit homes across Britain at the rate of over 330,000 a day, at all times of the day and night between January 20 and August 21, 2015.

Complainants said they were called repeatedly and often there was no way to opt out even for people who had never had PPI.

The Information Commissioners Office estimated that Prodial was making as much as £100,000 per month and described the operation as ‘one of the worst cases’ they had ever come across.

The regulator has ordered Prodial to pay a £350,000 fine but the company was wound up before the prosecution and has no assets left. Liquidators are trying to determine where the money has disappeared to.

Previous Companies

Mr Kidd and Mr Carrington (his business partner)  both worked previously at Italk Affiliate Telecommunications, which is itself under investigation by the ICO for making between four million and six million calls a day using similar,  technology to Prodial.

Italk was raided by the ICO in March last year and faces a possible maximum fine of £500,000. By then, Mr Kidd and Mr Carrington had jumped ship.

There appears to be a group of people who know how to abuse the system and some have got away with it for a long time as this has happened with other companies as well.

The Result

Prodial has been fined and is out of business, but the people responsible are free to open more companies and able do the same thing again.

“There is a group of people who know how to abuse the system and some have got away with it for longer than others,” said a source familiar with the investigation.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

Joanne Has a Persistent Cold Caller

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Joanne isn’t bothered by scam and spam emails – just presses delete for anything at all dodgy.

And she has fun with the Microsoft support scam phone calls that have been happening a lot recently.

Joanne says “With ‘Microsoft’ scam calls I tend to feign interest. I go along with what they’re saying, let them deliver their speech and then say ‘Oh, I don’t have a pc’.  Then they hang up, which I find amusing”.

But she has had problems with a very determined cold caller – Zenith Windows.

Constant calls annoyed Joanne and no amount of explaining she wasn’t interested would put them off. She tried a high pitched whistle – still they called.

She threatened to report them for harrassment – no effect.

She threatened a solicitor’s letter – still they called.

She complained to their head office – no change.

When she moved house, she assumed that would be the end of Zenith calls, but they tracked her down through a previous employer.

Fortunately  for Joanne, her ex employer realised the situation and denied knowing Joanne.

When does cold calling become harassment?
When does cold calling become threatening behaviour?

Not good.

Winifred’s Approach to Cold Callers

Confused Cold Caller
 Guest post by Winifred
Winifred says When I get a cold call, I say ‘I am not buying anything’.

They usually say ‘I am not selling anything’

So I say, ‘then why are you calling invading my private time. Take me off your list’

 

One caller was very determined.

I’d told him that I wasn’t buying anything but he persisted and in the end I just put the phone down.

Then he had the cheek to ring back and complain that I was rude to him.

So I said ‘I did not give you my telephone number. I told you I was not interested in anything you had to sell, My home time is very valuable to me. But you would not listen so I put the phone down in hopes that you would finally get the message’

I hope he has got the message.

I might try my cousin’s approach instead. When he gets a cold call, he says ‘just a minute’, puts the phone down and walks away.

This wastes their phone bill and annoys them.

Good.