neilho - Profile

In my case, Trading Standards have a case open, and have asked me to keep sending stuff through. All it takes is for one of these scammers to leave a genuine mobile no. (or forget to withhold their call, etc.) and you have a trail. This is the advice I've had from Trading Standards & CAB. Saying I'll call you back, I'm busy is also a great way to get them off your back and give you breathing space to do your research if you need to.

You have my sympathy. What many people don't realise is that these guys are confidence tricksters and, as you say, very convincing. I've had 4 or 5 calls since from different companies and I ask them for their name, contact no, etc. so I can call them back. I then pass it all through to Trading Standards who hopefully are doing something with it. Most of the numbers are probably fake but I live in hope that one of the scumbags will slip up and give themselves away.

Wow, thank you so much.

It is refreshing to know there are still so many decent people around. I will spread the word

I know; hindsight is a wonderful thing.

However, the technique they use is mimicking the services you have signed up for before. A lot of genuine business directories have a similar name and the amount I had previously paid to them was identical. They use clever confidence tricks.

I had done my due diligence on the initial company, which were great. I treated this call as coming from the same people.

OK, I was a bit stupid to commit the money without sitting down and focusing on the details, but I was extremely busy at the time.

Yes, they will keep going because a) people like me fall for the trick, b)Trading Standards deem it too small a problem to bother with, 3) legal issues prevent them being named and shamed.

Can somebody send a bit of sympathy my way, please. I've just lost

I think I may have found who some of these guys are. Scam is identical to what was listed above and they have listed me on their website:

xxxxxxxxxx-finder.com (10 post limit means I can't post the actual url, but fill in the rest yourselves)

I will be contacting NatWest to raise a dispute and have already reported them to Trading Standards. This Preston based 'business' are already cropping up in similar cases and fit the bill perfectly (WorldPay a/c, googlemail email a/c, bogus directory renewals).

Hope this helps other honest people and businesses out there.

Thanks