Miscellaneous advice

Morning all, Scams are all around us. They have been for centuries, so nothing new. What's new is the access into our homes more often via the internet. The most alert minds can be caught out, not just the so called vulnerable. When performing financial audits, it was commonplace to find paid invoices for services that were completely false. I received a new message from "O2", telling me that my last bill remains unpaid with details of where to pay it. "That's odd I thought, I don't have a direct account with O2. My account is via Tesco which, upon checking just now, is complete with all transactions visible & viewable. I've forwarded the message as a scam report, who then ask me for details that I cannot give them. I've sent them all that I received. I wonder just what level of intelligence there is on so called scam investigations. So, please be aware of this kind of thing. If something pops up out of the blue, then it probably is out of the blue. Neighbours have had fake non-delivery notices of parcels, with an offer of re-delivery, just send us £2.50. Best wishes all.

Hi Phil. Yes it is. Sad state of affairs to come to a stage where it is not possible to believe anything. I have had a lot of this sort of emails and have come to a stage where I now ignore all of them. If it is from a name of a company that I use then I go to my actual account to check everything is OK. I was inundated a couple of months ago with messages that said my PayPal account had been compromised, click here, but they were all from different places. It is sad that probably the people who are going to fall for this sort of thing are people who can least afford any loss and are likely to get more stressed about it as they do not know how common it is and not just aimed at them. We had a bad experience last year. We had an email from a bank - a real one! - that said we were close to a credit limit, a service we have set up. When I checked there had been nearly £2000 put through, one very large item to Prada which I was quite sure would not be my Christmas present from Roy! We stopped the card straight away but there had been other items put through. Thankfully the bank sorted it all out although it took them a little time to credit the £200 paid to E.ON which we thought a little strange at the time, surely a payment to E.ON would be made against an address. A week later I had a message from a magazine subscription site I had bought my son's Christmas present car magazine subscription from on Black Friday to say their site had been hacked, so that was where the problem was. Internet shopping is so convenient but I am so afraid of entering any details now.

Hi Philip, re your note below "So, please be aware of this kind of thing. If something pops up out of the blue, then it probably is out of the blue. Neighbours have had fake non-delivery notices of parcels, with an offer of re-delivery, just send us £2.50." Had one just this morning at 6.56am

My wife sells a bit on eBay, but always waits for the £1 selling fee weekends. Last weekend was one, so she listed several items, and most sold, with values of £585, £80, £35, and £23. A couple of small items didn't go. The most annoying thing about the costs for her is the Paypal charge so she tries to avoid that where possible. Fortunately, the most expensive item, her late father's mobility scooter, sold to a gentleman in Cov who paid cash and had a friend come over in a van to pick it up from Hinckley, so it was a win-win for both parties on that one! The other items have attracted Paypal and delivery costs, however, so they are less attractive, but still only £1 max selling fee. You have to work it the best way you can.

Hi all, Just a reminder to be on your guard for scam messages or phone calls. A distressed resident in Holbrooks has just sent dosh to Slovakia, after being told her BT bill was not paid. She wasn't with BT. PLEASE, PLEASE & PLEASE, I'm tempted to suggest that if you don't immediately recognise the caller, don't ask who they are. Hang up! If it is legit, then they must understand your predicament, if they don't, they're hardly a friend. Don't call back either as that may cost, if they've hooked to a premium service. The lady in Holbrooks got caught on both counts yesterday.

I got a call the other day saying that there was a problem with software on my machine that was affecting others on the internet. The guy said he was ringing from BT. I just asked 'who is my service provider' and he hung up. Even if I had been with BT I'd have hung up, waited a few mins * and then phoned BT using their contact details, not that given by the caller or the email. * A caller used to be able to hold a line open after you hung up but I think that no longer applies. I never call back a number I don't recognise. If they really want you, they'll call you back. Legitimate callers like banks should never ask you to respond, but instead ask you to call the standard phone number and quote a reference but they're no real friend to customers and leave them open to this type of fraud. Alternatively they could have a code word to demonstrate that they're legit.

Had a text this morning saying Royal Mail has my parcel that has unpaid postage of £1.09 and gives a website with which to pay. No chance of that happening!!!!!!!!!!

I agree with Helen, I never call back any call and never reply to emails saying they are from a company. If in doubt I always go to the original site. We got so fed up with scam calls on the phone, we were getting them nearly every day. We are on Talk Talk and they have a system that when someone rings for the first time they are asked for their name and you have to press 1 to accept. We have not had a spam phone call since. If it is someone you know once you have accepted them for the first time they don't have to do it again. You can also put numbers of people you know on a list on your account page.

That's a coincidence, I only had a call at the weekend. As soon as I picked up the phone (I only have a landline) it said on the little monitor 'Unknown number'. I immediately put the phone down and that was it. I find it very hard to understand why people still get conned and are silly enough to pay out money over the phone. Am I wrong or does it seem to be mainly women that are scammed? No matter how many warnings are given someone always gets caught.

A lot of people do get scammed and annoyingly it is within the ability of companies to stop it. For a start they should stop using overseas call centres and alert any caller where a call is coming from. There also needs to be a system whereby a person's competence to handle remote transactions is checked. Ironically, I have trouble operating one of my accounts because the login system is so convoluted.

Passports and driving licences. There are numerous problems with getting replacement documents at the moment if you can't do them online or at the post office. Complicated issues are taking months to be resolved. It's possible to get your passport renewed online so long as you can supply the right digital photo. There are plenty of instructions on how to get the right one taken. From completing the online form and physically sending off my old passport it took not much more than a week for the new passport to arrive. Current passports though don't include a digital signature which is necessary for a driving licence. If you have a current passport with a digital signature, it's easy to replace your driving licence so long as there are no changes (eg change of address). I found the post office driving licence renewal very easy and I imagine the passport process is much the same. They take your photo (only available at some post offices, so check which ones) and signature and fill out all the forms for you. They give you a receipt that is evidence that you've renewed your licence and you are able to continue driving so long as there is no reason why your application would be rejected. The driving licence took from Monday to Thursday to arrive. If you've got any complications for either your passport or licence, or will just need either in a hurry, apply very early and keep copies of anything you send them. I got no reminder my driving licence renewal was due.

Alert for credit and debit card holders (all of us?) - the contactless limit is going up to £100 in October. Useful... for pickpockets and burglars. Especially risky if you have more than one card.

I got a text message today asking me to get my "NHS Covid Pass". Despite entering a load of gibberish on the website, they were happy to send my pass for £4.99. Let's be careful out there. Peter.

Thank you for all of the contributions on these scam risks. I'm more vulnerable than I used to be. As part of drama, we were always looking for sketch plots to exploit, but I'm out of that, certainly for now. I had a phone call recently, telling me that my appliance insurance was up for renewal. They wanted to make sure that I had their correct bank details. I wised up to this one in time to play act. I explained that I was the housekeeper, but needed to buzz His Lordship's office. The phone went dead in microseconds. I can't pretend to be clever, as I'm out of practice of doing this. Few folk can pronounce my name with ease, so that's a dead giveaway on the phone. "Can I speak to Mr. Griotrsoonen?" by which time I've already hung up. I recently sat next to a scam engineer, whilst he was dealing with the most incredulous issues. I couldn't believe what I was seeing & hearing. Best wishes all.

We had a spam blocker on our TalkTalk phone where people had to say their name to get through, which worked very well and we had no scam calls, but it became inconvenient when we were having doctors and hospital phone calls so we cancelled it and also changed our broadband supplier. Since then we have had a few calls but one made me laugh. He said the warranty was up on my washing machine. I said I wasn't surprised, it is nearly 20 years old and put the phone down!