The retro scams that are making a comeback
Some old scams are coming back into fashion.
There's nothing new under the scam sun – just novel twists and fresh ways to deliver the message. Email delivers hundreds of thousands of phoney messages for the cost of a packet of envelopes, let alone stamps. However frauds – non-existent lotteries, impossible investments, and charitable appeals where the only beneficiaries are the senders – remain the same.
So this week is back to basics – swindles and downright extortions with little connection to new technology.
A knock at the door
Last week, two men knocked at my door. “We're in the area and we could tarmac your drive,” one said. Well, I don't have a drive, although I do have a path through a tiny garden to my front door. It's made from broken paving stones (courtesy of the local council) and despite a few weeds, it works.
Nevertheless, I asked what it would cost. I was quoted £450 – in cash to “avoid VAT problems” - and, needless to say, they wanted the money upfront to “buy materials”. That would have been the last I saw of my money. They had a badly printed leaflet with a mobile phone number and an email address. Neither, of course, is proof of anything and certainly no way of tracing them.
Now had I paid, they would either have disappeared or returned for more with additional home maintenance “discovered”. They may suggest that I need to get my house painted or my roof repointed. And these suggestions would have brought demands for thousands of pounds. And if, as likely, I did not have cash, they would have taken me to the nearest bank where I could have withdrawn the money.
Bank staff have been alerted to older people suddenly taking out large sums - £8,000 to £12,000 is common – especially if accompanied by non-family members. But they don't always spot the problem. Besides, there is nothing much they can legally do.
This “tarmac” scam is on the increase – as with burglary, boosted by hard economic times.
The designer watch swindle
But another revived scam is the “designer watch” swindle. Once confined to mail order pages in weekend newspapers and magazines, this has now spread to door-to-door criminality, according to the Trading Standards Institute.
What both the doorstep sellers and adverts do is to offer a “top brand designer watch", supposedly worth £599 for just £99. The trouble is that neither you – nor anyone in the legitimate timepiece market – has ever heard of the brand. Instead of the “in the area today” line, they come up with “this is surplus” or “this watch is well known in Europe and I have just a few left before I leave for home” or whatever.
You can probably buy something similar for a fiver in a street market. Only you wouldn't because you think that the watch is appalling ugly and that it won't last more than a week or two.
Like computers, all watches do much the same – they tell the time (and sometimes the date). But while you may know the difference between a £1,000 laptop and one costing £500 because the more expensive will have greater capacity, faster processors, and a better screen, it's harder with watches.
You can spend £9.99 on a perfectly good Casio watch at Argos. I have one and it will last me years. Or you could pay £50,000 for one of those timepieces advertised in luxury magazines. It should last longer (if not stolen). I don't have one but I doubt whether it would really be 5,000 times better than my Casio.
But I once had a £25 fake “Rolex” from Thailand. It lasted a month – the forgers tried to replicate the genuine Rolex machinery which is impossible for that price, although had they put in a cheap quartz movement it might still be working.
Designer watch and jewellery scamsters back up their claims with adverts or page grabs from internet sites. Any reasonably computer savvy teenager could do this.
The legal position
In current consumer law, anyone selling an item for more than £35 during an unannounced visit to the door must give full written instructions of cancellation rights, such as notice of a seven-day cooling off period. The Trading Standards Institute says that anyone selling door to door without offering these rights would be committing a criminal offence and should be treated with scepticism.
But if you are going to scam people, the rules are just a minor impediment at best. Have you ever heard of a housebreaker who is put off by the illegality of burglary? Or of victims who get their cash back?
More on scams
Tragic phishing scam victims who didn't even own a computer
12 surefire signs you're being scammed
The pensioner who lost thousands to cold-calling scammers
How scammers make thousands from the desperate unemployed
The scammer who promised I could make money from dog faeces
The retiree waging war on the eBay tractor scammers
The worst scammers I've ever encountered!
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Comments
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Tony, I want to thank you for writing this article, I read it yesterday morning then went out of the day and forgot all about it. In the evening my friend and I went for a walk with her dog, we were chatting and I remembered something, I asked her who that guy was I heard her chatting to that morning in her dining room, she told me that it was a guy who had knocked on the door and asked if she wanted her driveway doing. I looked at her in alarm, but you're not having it done are you I said, no she replied, I relaxed again, then she said but he is going to create a door for me at the side of the house, my alarm grew again, you didn't pay him did you I said, she looked at me, she had, how much I said, she wouldn't tell me, it's a scam I told her, I read an article about it this very morning. Her first instinct was to say no it's not, the guy was very nice (he was) she was sure it was fine, how did you pay him I asked, cheque she told me, cancel it and tell him your friend said you need a cooling off period and a couple more quotes before you decide, that way if he's genuine he'll be fine with it. She agreed, in the few minutes we were talking about it she started to see that it was actually all a bit strange, one minute he was a driveway expert then he's knows all about knocking holes in walls and fitting doors. I told her that from the snippet of the conversation I over heard I thought the two of them were old friends, they sounded like they knew each other really well, the way they were chatting and laughing, they had literally met 10 minutes earlier. One last thing I asked her, did her ask for cash? yes, he had. There's your answer. So thank you Tony, with your article you indirectly saved at least one really nice person who has been through a very bad year a lot of money and heartache she really doesn't need.
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It is the pikey season again to be sure. Why is it the 'political correct brigade' just love these people that would swindle anyone of their money and pay nothing to the government? Some morons over the road had them in recenty to 'butcher' their trees. Seeing me, with lots of trees, he was right over offerring to 'sort my trees out'. Ho , Ho I said. These have TPOs on them you need to get council approval before touching them and then you have to do the work to BS approval. We live in a conservation area so any tree above 75mm diameter needs approval before touching. I told the neighbour later who claimed they did not realise this. Well I shall not 'shop' them, this time, but they deserve it for employing pikeys in this way. In fact I should have them fined treble what they paid to the pikeys for the stupidity of their actions.
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I fell for the tarmac scam in my salad days. I was lying under my car, changing the oil. A man with an Irish accent suddenly appeared, and offered to retarmac the drive. We agreed a price. On the right day, they turned up and retarmacked the drive. They then asked my wife for the money. They had jacked up the price by £50. My wife told them that I had the money, and they would have to call round when I came home from work. When he called again, I had come home and my wife had told me. Being Arblaster, there was a crossbow by the side of the door, cocked and loaded. When he turned up I had the money ready for him. He then asked for the agreed price plus £50. I stated what the agreed price was. Just then - not prearranged - my next door neighbour just appeared faster than you could say William Tell. He looked at the banknotes in my hand and said: "Money. That's what I like to see." The pikey, thinking reinforcements had just arrived, said that there must have been a misunderstanding, and he would accept the price that we had agreed. I paid him, and that was the end of that...until the weeds started coming through the tarmac. Never do business with anyone who turns up at the door. It will always end in disaster.
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05 July 2013