Many companies use surveys of the public – stopping people in shopping centres etc. phoning two weeks after you bought a product from them and asking you to help them fill it in or by email request or cold call and so on.

Often, these are genuine surveys and the person standing in front of you or the caller is paid to get you to reply to their questions and sometimes there is a small reward such as a product tester.

But many cold call surveys are to get information that can be sold on – e.g. if you say you have pets then your name, address, contact details etc. can be sold to any number of pet insurance companies.

So, after the survey you may find yourself bombarded with calls from businesses you don’t want to deal with.

But there are other reasons they call e.g.

1. They use the information you provide to trick you e.g. with a list of which magazines you subscribe to you may a call claiming one of the magazines subscriptions will end unless you pay immediately.
2. Giving someone your name, phone number and birthdate can be enough for the scammer to make charges against your phone number
3. The scammer starts asking survey questions then switches to a hard sell thereby bypassing the laws on cold calling for sales purposes
4. A reward of some kind e.g. a discount cruise but where you need to pay a small delivery charge and once the scammer has your credit card details they can make any charges against your card they want.

Cold caller surveys may not be what they seem so be careful or just refuse to answer any questions.

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