Picking up the phone and answering to find musak playing I thought I might be in for the deal of a lifetime, or maybe an offer that was too good to refuse, so I grabbed a pen and paper just in case.

After a few seconds an Indian sounding chap appeared on the line. His broken pronunciation immediately suggested that English was not his first language. He told me that he was “calling from 3com on behalf of 3G” and that my land-line number has been specially selected “to receive a mobile phone absolutely free, including 400 minutes any time any network and 25 free minutes video conferencing, with no roaming charge, no activation charge, ” … etc. etc. “the phone will be a Motorola E1070 camera flip phone…“.

Naturally there would have to be a line rental, and I’d be getting that at a 50% discount. Paying £17.50 per month instead of £35.

I currently have a top-up mobile phone but I use it so infrequently that my last number was reallocated by the phone company because they thought I’d abandoned them: so even if this telemarketer is offering me a great deal, I don’t need it, and I’m TPS registered so they’re not allowed to waste my time.

So I decide to keep them on the line for as long as possible, and mention that I have another call coming in, so perhaps he wouldn’t mind holding for a few seconds. I compose myself, tidy my notes, and return from “my other call”…

Elaborate Bluff, not.

I asked the guy to elaborate on a few things that were unclear, like:

1. Which network the offer was with. He said “3G“. I didn’t want to lead him with any information (like explaining where 3G fits into the mobile phone jargon world) so I mention that “of the phone networks in this country, none of them is called ’3G’”, and he eventually offers “the network is three but it actually called 3G sir“. Um… yeah… this is me, being unimpressed.
2. I ask who’s calling me, and he repeats “3Com on behalf of 3G”. I ask for clarification saying; “3Com as in the company that make network things?” and he says “Yeah, obviously sir, obviously“.

Call Termination

So then he passes me off to the “closer” another Indian sounding chap, for the recorded portion of the phone conversation. I ask the closer where in the world he is and he tells me “Leeds, South Yorkshire”. He asks for my credit card number and date of birth. I say I’m not comfortable giving out this information because they’ve called me, and ask if I can have a phone number to call them back on. He puts the phone down.

If anyone falls for this patter and finds out who’s taking money from their account, do tell all – I’d like to know who to register my TPS complaint against, but the caller withheld their number.

The Odds against Satellite Direct

The odds stacked up against Satellite Direct are not just high, they’re positively gargantuanly mind-bogglingly insurmountable; but this plucky little company won’t give up.

Satellite Direct want to sell us a warranty for our Sky satellite television receiver and they don’t give a stuff that we don’t own one.

It matters not a jot to them that we’ve never had one – why let a trifling little detail like that get in the way of a good marketing opportunity?

Disregarding Things

If you’re disregarding important things like checking that your victims potential customers have a need for your warranty then a few other forgetful moments won’t go amiss either, like forgetting to check if your victims potential customers are registered with the TPS.

We for example are registered with the TPS, so it’s unlawful, for Satellite Direct to call us and even try to sell us anything, but that’s not stopped them calling us twice (1,2) already, and comments are starting to arrive from others who have also been tele-spammed.

Satellite Direct Junk Mail

So if your tele-marking operations were facing repeated TPS complaints, what do you do?

Well I was most impressed today to hear from John Campbell whose 96 year old mum-in-law received a letter from Satellite Direct informing her that she too had an expired warranty on a Sky satellite receiver which has (like ours) never, ever, existed.

So that’s what Satellite Direct do, they switch to junk mail. We’re also registered with the Mailing Preference Service, so it’s also unlawful for Satellite Direct to directly send us junk mail.

It will therefore come as no surprise that we too have received a letter from Satellite Direct UK which opens:

The initial manufacturer’s warranty on your digital satellite (Sky TV) system has now expired and this leaves you open to expensive call out charges and repair costs should anything go wrong!

Profiting from Dishonesty?

If Satellite Direct can repeatedly badger us with this specious nonsense about the expiry of a warranty on a device which has never existed, then we must question how many real Sky customers are buying unnecessary warranties on machines that are still covered perfectly well by the original warranty?

Add todays letter to the call I received earlier this year telling me I’d won a flight to Turkey thanks to Data Partnership Solutions and One4Travel – which work in partnership with Satellite Direct UK and that makes four occasions when they’ve ignored the TPS and MPS and contacted us, then attempted to mislead us.

Countrywide that could scale up to a lot of unsolicited and unlawful telephone calls and junk mails, and a lot of unhappy customers.

Update: Satellite Direct UK’s business practices have subsequently been successfully challenged in the High Court by BSkyB.

Update: Someone claiming to be an employee responds.

Update: Looks like we’re not the only recipients of their unwanted sales calls: Longrider (also called twice) points out a host of others.

Update: Satellite Direct UK’s business practices have subsequently been successfully challenged in the High Court by BSkyB.

Update 2008/03/10: Satellite Direct UK are investigated by BBC Watchdog (it’s available on iPlayer for 1 week after broadcast).

Update 2008/07/05: The director of Satellite Direct UK appears to have been charged with fraud and money laundering.

Update 2009/04/27 Many people are commenting that Satellite Direct have charged them 10x their agreed direct debit amount. It has been suggested that HMCS MoneyClaim Website is a good place to get your money back if you can’t contact Satellite Direct.

Update 2010/02/24The former director of Satellite Direct UK, Dave Reynolds, has been found guilty of £600,000 tax fraud.

Sam: “Hello, can I speak to Ms Reeves please?”
Me: “Sure, what’s it in connection with?”
Sam: “We notice that your Sky warranty is about to run out and … blah blah blah.”
Me:”Right, so who would be providing the cover?”
Sam: “Oh, Sky Engineers … blah blah blah.”
Me: “Right, so who, which company would be providing the cover?”
Sam: “Satellite Direct. Sky don’t do warranties so they subcontract them to companies such as ours.”
Me: “Right. We don’t have a Sky box.”
Sam: “Oh; must be a system error, we’ve been getting a lot of them today, we get all our names and numbers from Sky.”

I took the guy’s name and the company’s number (08702 402 483) for good measure.

Satellite Direct say they got our number from BSkyB. We do not have, and never have had a contract with BSkyB!

And they called using Emma’s maiden name?

Satellite Direct are Telespammers.

I’ve mentioned their call to the TPS.

During the subsequent twelve months, the related articles have been requested more than 25,000 times, by well over 6000 people. Happily, many of those people discovered the articles whilst they were still on the phone to the telesales representative, before handing over enough credit card details for any fraudulant transaction to occur.

Particularly pleasing is the fact that many of those who have bought their “prize” in haste (only to realize the full cost of their purchase after the phonecall) have managed to get a full refund. What’s more, the DOACS should have plenty of good information from those who have reported their disgruntlement.

What’s also promising is that because more people are aware of their rights and demanding refunds:

1. the time taken to discover disreputable companies may be reducing, and
2. the profit margin for such companies reduces with every cancellation. With fewer people prepared to just give up and accept the loss, the scam becomes less lucrative.

Above all, it’s been the comments that have made the articles worthwhile. Comments by scammers, friend of scammers, victims who’ve lost money, victim’s who’ve got refunds, and even (one year on) a commenter who went on one of the holidays and confirmed my previous observation that it’s “just a hotel booking” and not the holiday of your dreams.

What’s surprising is that one year on, the daily readership of the related articles continues to increase, so either:

1. the scams are continuing, or
2. telephone sales by reputable companies who subscribe to do-not-call lists are being undermined by the disreputable companies that just call anyone they feel like.

All in all it’s been interesting. Who’d have thought that writing an article about a phone call could help so many people?

All the websites listed in the first table below are currently unavailable. Some have gone blank by removing the index page, some have been password protected, and some have been misconfigured (perhaps intentionally?).

This could be attributed to maintenance, in which case, it’s one more clue to suggest that they really are related (because servers on several hosts tend not to all go blank at once) or they’ve been purposefully pulled from the web.

Many other similar (clone) sites are still up and running – in case you feel the sudden urge to buy a holiday…

Let’s watch and see what happens to the content over the next few days.

It seems that the Dutch must have borrowed some of luck of the Irish because every single person that received a marketing call was told they had won a holiday.

Since this site has a story about similar calls, we got chatting, and I was able to show Justin all of the publically available information regarding the companies that are (or appear to be) involved., or in some way associated.

The story was broadcast on last night’s programme, and according to Media Log, it was watched by 1,094,000 people.

So by my feeble calculations, one in 16 Netherlanders are now far more aware of the (mal)practice.

Since it’s now just after the lunchtime, I’m sure the knowledge has spread that such phonecalls are (at best) nothing more than a dishonest marketing ploy.

Earlier today I spoke with Justin Hendriks, who’s the program editor, and he confirmed that the program has received a lot of complaints from viewers who have been told they won a holiday, but then when they called the company back to claim their prize, have ended up giving their credit card details, after which point refunds are predictably difficult to obtain.

We chatted for a very long time and hopefully some of my words will be coherent enough to be helpful to the program makers.

Dutch readers will find more information on the Opgelicht website. For English readers Babelfish does a passable translation.

What often happens is that the surplus from hotels, cruises, theme-parks (etc.) can be bought in bulk by tour operators: this guarantees the hotels trade through these quieter periods. It’s the job of the tour operator to package the vacation pieces together into something the public will buy.

The last word in the previous paragraph is critical: “buy“. I’ll return to it later, but before we go on, also make a note of the last word in the popular phrase “Tourist Industry“. This is business, so caveat emptor.

Vouchers

In Florida, there is a travel voucher scheme, that enables tour operators to sell “the entitlement to a holiday” rather than selling an actual holiday. The vouchers are valid for a pre-determined period of time, which gives the tour operator the opportunity to negotiate the purchase of hotel space after they’ve already got bookings confirmed.

So, with this amazing buying power they should be able to offer some really good deals, yes? Well, not quite as good as they’d like you to believe.

The very best venues, the really, honestly, mind-alteringly fabulous “dream vacation” venues, cost so much that either being “partially full” is part of their operating norm or their waiting list is so long they can charge whatever they want. They’re priced in such a way that they only have to accept people who will pay handsomely for the exclusivity. That’s why you don’t often bump into A-list celebrities by the swimming pool when you’re on holiday; and importantly, it’s why the package these tour operators can offer is not “the vacation of your dreams”.

So what’s left? Normal hotels.

Normal hotels can offer the tour operator favourable bulk rates, but the really shrewd tour operator wants to maximise their profit, so they’ll look for a better deal; and what better angle could there be than hooking up with companies that sell time-share properties; i.e. companies that are willing to subsidise the holidays (on the condition that the holidaymaker swings by their luxury development for a look around) providing a better profit margin for the tour operator.

The tour operator thus provides the time-share sales teams with people who agree to sit through a 90 minute presentation as part of their holiday. This is a dream come true for the time-share sales guys, I’ll explain why by going though a typical scenario:

The Sales Call

1. The victim is somehow contacted, by internet popup advert, or by cold-calling their phone number.
2. The victim is told that they have won a holiday, the holiday of their dreams, to Florida, Orlando, Cancun, the Bahamas, Mexico, etc…
3. …and if the victim confirms today, they’ll even get a cruise too!
4. The caller checks that the victim has a credit card (because they’ll need one when holidaying in the USA).
5. The caller gets some ID and starts to tell them all about what a wonderful break they have won, going through each venue in turn using lots of encouraging superlatives and adverbs
6. Once there is real buy-in and excitement from the victim, and once the full value and spectacle of what they have “won” has been explained, they are, told that they have to pay a small amount, to get the holiday.
7. The size of this amount varies, but £598 is common at the moment.
8. When the victim recoils, the caller points out that they’ve “won” a holiday for four people, so the cost, when divided by four, is really not that much.
9. At this point the caller avoids (or belittles when mentioned) the additional cost of flights, airport taxes, seaport taxes, hotel taxes, cost of travel between venues on multi-site holidays, and of course, spending money.
10. As the victim begins to acquiesce, the caller hands them over to a “finisher”, sometimes called a “closer”, this part of the call is recorded so that if necessary, it can be proved that the victim agreed to the sale; the preceding badgering is not, of course, on the recording.
11. At this point, either
    1. The victim, for some reason, provides credit card details, often with a lot of reassurance that the amount will not be taken until x happens in the future. The money is immediately “reserved” with the credit card company, and often taken within minutes of the call
    2. The finisher realises they’re not going to make a sale and tries to make the caller feel stupid for not accepting this “gift”. If they can’t close the deal, they’ll usually hang up.

The Contract

The tour operator is now in a strong situation, they have the victim’s money, and a recording of the victim authorising the transaction.

After coming off the phone the victim begins to realise the full cost of what they’ve agreed to, and decides that they should cancel. Of course, not being from Florida, the victim’s knowledge of their legal protection and cancellation rights is limited or non-existent.

Often they try calling the sales number again, only to be lost in the system. “Thunderstorms” are often cited as a reason for transatlantic calls being “unfortunately” dropped.

Financial Incentive

So after a little futile scrambling, the victim is resigned to the loss, and rather than canceling the holiday, which is their legal right, they do nothing. In which case, because the victim does not use their voucher, the wily Tour Operator pockets the full £598 – it’s pure profit.

If the victim takes the holiday, then the time-share sales guys think all their birthdays have come at once, because they have a captive audience of people who they know have already fallen for a high-pressure sales technique to get them there in the first place.

Florida Regulation

Tourism in Florida is regulated by the Florida State Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (DOACS) who are currently taking legal action against Discount Holidays LLC for deceptive sales techniques such as those described here. Legal proceedings are, sadly, only a reactive way to combat the problem; the pro-active way is to educate the victims before they get hit.

With that in mind, please realise that this doesn’t just happen in Florida, it happens all over the world. The result of the DOACS regulation is that the overwhelming majority of the Florida tourist industry is comprised of businesses that work to make it one of the top vacation venues anywhere in the world.

The bottom line is, don’t fall into the trap of believing that an unsolicited sales call is anything but a sales call. So, here comes that word again, if you want to buy a holiday, make sure you select the tour operator, don’t let them select you.

From the article:

Florida officials have accused a Longwood-based vacation marketing company and its associates of deceptive trade practices and other consumer-law violations that could trigger millions of dollars in fines.

Regulators found the organizers of Discount Holidays (aka AmeriVacation, YourVipHolidays, etc) violated almost two dozen consumer laws, officials said. They could be fined $10,000 for each violation and for each alleged incident of deceptive sales activity.

A lawyer for Discount Holidays disputed the state’s allegations, saying regulators have distorted the problems.

Read the rest of the article here and it’s cached here.

Intrestingly the article also states that:

Discount Holidays has ceased telemarking operations, but is processing complaints and refunds, Short said. The state in March refused to renew its seller-of-travel business license, pending the outcome of the litigation.

however, comments [1] [2] on this website suggest that “Florida Holiday USA” are still making calls to Europe.

The FloridaHolidayUSA website is (of course) registered to:

Administrative Contact:
      Jessani, Alamin
      amerivacaton
      7818 Fernleaf Dr.
      Orlando, Florida 32836
      United States
      (407) 363-0561

So it may not be over yet…

Your Rights

According to Florida State Law “You have a right to cancel your purchase and receive a refund within 30 days of the date of purchase” after which, “the seller has 30 days from the time of receipt of your notice of cancellation to send you a full refund”. [source] [corroborating source]

The law exists to regulate Sellers of Travel to and from Florida, as well as Sellers of Travel whose place of business is in Florida – it helps to maintain the reputation of Florida as a welcoming vacation destination and protects the citizens of any country by forcing licensed sellers of travel to follow strict rules, including the ones about refunds; so the suggestions listed here are valid from any country.

Action 1 – Call

1. Call the number you originally dialled.
2. Politely and clearly state that you are calling because you wish to cancel a contract.
3. Ask them to confirm the company name and address to which you should send a cancellation letter.
4. If the person on the other end bluffs or prevaricates, remind them that Florida State Statute 559.933 is quite clear on your right to a full and prompt refund.
5. If they verbally agree to send you a full refund, accept this happily, but you should not stop yet because if they were to forget to send it, or lose the note to say that you’d called, or had a computer crash, (etc. etc.) then you’d have no evidence that you called within the 30 day cancellation period.

Action 2 – Write

1. Write a letter of cancellation.
   • This is a generic letter template.
   • This is an AmeriVacation template.
2. Send the letter by an international recorded delivery service.
   • From the UK you could use International Signed For.
3. Sometimes the companies will state that “you have to return the package”, this is usually just an obstruction tactic, but if they insist, take photographs (and scan or photocopy) everything that you return (example).

Action 3 – Complain always

If you you’re unhappy about the experience and wish to air your grievance, then please do. Lodging a formal complaint will quickly raise the profile of your scammer so the DOACS can monitor them better:

1. Complain to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (who regulate the selling of travel in Florida) using this form.
2. Inform your “local” national press so that others do not go through the same experience.
   • In the UK there is the BBC’s Watchdog Programme
   • In the Netherlands, there is Opgelicht.

Action 4 – Write to your credit card company

1. Write to your credit card company and tell them that you are seeking a refund from the vendor.
• Explain why you feel the company misrepresented itself.
• Include a copy of the letter you sent to the vendor.
2. Use local legislation if necessary:
   • If you’re in the UK and the vendor refuses (or is unable) to provide a refund, then the Consumer Credit Act 1974 section 75 is your fallback. It makes the credit card company equally responsible for any misrepresentation (which in the case of AmeriVacation there has been), so should attempt to claim the refund from your credit card company.

Action 5 – Help Others

If you succeed in getting a refund, using this or an alternative method, let others know by describing your success below, I’ll modify the above steps as appropriate.

With just a little digging I’ve started to unearth some more information on AmeriVacation, and some “companies” that appear to be related.

It appears that AmeriVacation is only the latest front. They set up a website, to appear legitimate and then cold call people, anyone whose number they can get using an automated calling mechanism (which is very simple to do with a computer). They then sell a package that is not what it appears to be and then make it very difficult to obtain a refund.

Sadly the people that get scammed are often the most vulnerable people who can least afford to lose such a large amount of money.

Through my digging I discovered a little about the history of the scams, and a little about how they’re all related. What follows is a brief review of the links so that others may pick up the trail more easily.

The currently active websites (which can be linked through identical wording, identical phone numbers, IP addresses that resolve to the same physical machines, etc) are:

1. www.amerivacation.com
2. www.expertholidays.com
3. www.yourvipholiday.com (bad press) (more)
4. www.flbahamastravelhome.com
5. www.mydiscountholiday.com (bad press)
6. www.doublevacations.com
7. www.affiliatedtravelnetwork.com
8. www.brilliantholiday.com (bad popup press)
9. www.destinationcenter.net
10. www.myffc.com (bad press)
11. www.mydiscountholiday.com
12. www.floridaholidayusa.com – discovered July 2005
13. www.holidayfloridausa.com – discovered July 2005
14. www.sunrisetravels.us – discovered August 2005
15. www.imperialvacation.com – discovered August 2005
16. www.5starholidays.net – discovered August 2005
17. www.floridatouristbureau.com – discovered August 2005

Now, anybody that sells a holiday from Florida, or sells a holiday to Florida must be registered. The last entry in the above list , “mydiscountholiday.com” claims a Florida Seller Of Travel License Number of ST35170. In fact, this next list of sites all claim to have that same license number.

1. www.mydiscountholiday.com (bad press)
2. www.usafamilygetaway.com (bad press)
3. www.sandyvacationsllc.com (bad press)
4. www.floridabureauoftourism.com
5. http://www.destinationsforyou.com
6. http://www.celebrationpromotions.com

Another useful thing for linking companies is the address, several of these companies have used “600 North Highway 1792, Suite 120, Longwood Fl 32750″ including:

1. www.yourvipholiday.com
2. www.usafamilygetaway.com addres link also mentioned here

That link is important because without it these appear to be two separate groups of companies, when in fact, it’s one big cloud.

The next link in the chain is the phone number, all the sites below are connected because they use the same UK freephone number 0800-917-7462. What’s especially nice is that three of them have also decided to share testimonials too!

1. www.windsorvacations.com
2. www.myvacationschoice.com
3. www.vacations-paradise.com (bad press)
4. www.sohovacations.com -bullshit testimonial (bad press)
5. www.centuryvacations.com – bullshit testimonial
6. www.firstclicktravel.net – bullshit testimonial
7. www.usafamilygetaway.com

The other address in use is “7632 Southland Blvd, Orlando, FL 32809″ and this is used by:

1. www.myffc.com
2. www.mydiscountholiday.com
3. www.brilliantholiday.com (bad press)
4. www.destinationcenter.com

Currently www.destinationcenter.com looks like a bit of a sales force advertisement. However, by looking at the caches on google and web.archive.org, it’s apparent that it was also used as travel sales site (hence I got the address match above), selling these same packages – i.e. not just a coincidence, this was the same outfit.

So, who’s behind it? Well, according to this story, it all comes back to to a Altef Hemani (aka Alex Hemani), who has a history of such scams.

His name is as good as mud on the internet, so he’s tried to combat this by buying a few websites and and writing eulogies about himself.

Each of those sites, incidentally, is owned by the same company: Travel Express Investments 385 Center Point Cir, Altamont Springs, FL 32701.

What’s especially interesting is that the administrative contact for the domains is Arif Rajan who may be the same business man whos only newsworthy moment until now was that in 2002 he was was questioned and released without charge regarding money laundering for terrorist organisations.

Sources

Naturally the information I’ve been able to gather and present here is all freely available to the public. Please feel free to check, corroborate, dispute, disprove or otherwise extended it through your own investigation.

I have found the following resources most useful:

• http://whois.net/ which provides information about the owners of domain names.
• http://sunbiz.org/ which provides information from the Florida Department of State regarding companies, and the persons legally responsible for those companies.
• http://www.doacs.state.fl.us/ the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which regulates travel in Florida.

So, noting that my star sign is Inquisitive (with Curious rising) and knowing that 0800 numbers are freephone; I called them:

My telephone number is registered with the Telephone Preference Service a UK body that regulates commercial phone spam, so legally they’re not allowed to call me, but they’re trying to force a loophole where commercial calls are banned but, they theorize, by calling it a competition, they can avoid prosecution.

So, not only has this company cold-called my TPS registered number, but they’ve also hung up on me, that’s just plain rude, I wanted to know who and what they are:

So, I called them, again:

Carla proceeded to take my first name and asked for the number from which I’d called to check what prize I’d won. I gave her a false number. Surprisingly this had no ill effect because Carla came back and told me that I’d won £1301 towards a holiday in Florida, and that it was part of a prize fund allocated to 100 people and there were only 10 claims left on the fund – [irony alert] what luck!

Being a happy soul about this I mentioned that I’m in the UK, and that Carla didn’t sound local; she told me she was in Orlando Florida, and reiterated that this was a free call for me (just to make me really feel like I was special).

She then went on to explain that to claim my prize I’d need to pay the balance on a holiday in Florida at a Ramada resort near near Disneyworld – the package balance £598 for 16 days holiday for 4 – effectively an 80% discount.

The is is not a competition or a lottery, this company is selling holidays; there is no way to claim a “prize” without actually purchasing something, at which point they’ll discount the value of that prize from the purchase cost.

From the TPS website: “Under Government legislation introduced on 1st May 1999 and replaced on 11th December 2003 by the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, it is unlawful to make unsolicited direct marketing calls to individuals who have indicated that they do not want to receive such calls.”

Carla also explained that they are trying to rekindle interest in America as a vacation venue. She also explained that they are able to make these amazing offers because they keep their costs low, which they do in two ways:

1. Direct Dialing.
2. Word of Mouth.

Well, by direct-dialling me, unlawfully, they’ve certainly got a little word-of-mouth advertising.

The comments below add a lot of detail and you might also be interested in this followup article.

sam also mentioned “consumer 1st ltd”. a quick google and i’ve found that it may be Consumer First (a national financial services and consumer marketing company, based in Ohio and Texas).

sam is going to email the account manager, and copy me in on it, so I can get an update

i left my number as the chap requested, but nobody called…

yeah, right.

jonathan left his name, and a premium rate phone number (09061253203) for me to return his message. i found this a little odd, because the call trace showed him to be calling from a different number (0013104645500).

i like to check up who’s calling me and why, so i googled mr. simmonds and his company, and his phone numbers.

the closest i came was a uk company called “cruise connections” who are ABTA registered (i.e. reputable) – the ABTA website is very good and provided me with this info…

i called Orr’s travel and explained that i was checking up on whether a phone number i had was one of theirs and without prompting the very nice lady on the phone asked if i had perhaps encountered a “Mr. Simmonds”.

it appears that Orrs have received several enquiries about this chap and he has nothing to do with them. they have informed the trading standards council.

so if you get a call and wonder if you should call him back – my guess is that if you do you’ll only be putting money in the pocket of a scammer by calling his premium rate line.

looking elsewhere i found this nice quote: “These scams are illegal; these premium rate lines are set up just to fleece consumers.”

If you encounter “Mr. Simmonds” or othe such scams, you should inform ICSTIS ( the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services).

i’ve also found a thread full of others who have been targetted.

inbound number analysed: 0013104645500

taking a look at the inbound number it breaks up like this; the call originated from:
00 (international) 1 (USA) 310 (Los Angeles) 464(Gardena?) 5500 (…)

googling turns up some interesting matches suggesting that many people have been hit by this scam outfit before and that the calls originate from the USA – though be warned – the “antitelemarketer” matches redirect to the most hideous picture on the net (tubgirl) so i advise you to use the google cache instead of clicking the links.

Update 17th Jan 2005

Today I received the following email:

Competition Information Lines – Unsolicited Telephone Calls

We are writing with reference to your complaint about a premium rate competition line to notify you of the outcome of our investigations. Please accept our apologies for the delay in our reply.

As you will know, ICSTIS regulates the content and promotion of premium rate services, (that is to say, services that begin with the digits 090). Our aim is to minimise consumer harm by ensuring that the companies responsible for providing these services abide by the ICSTIS Code of Practice.

ICSTIS initially received reports from members of the public who reported having received an unsolicited automated telephone call to their landline. The promotional message advised the recipient that they had won a free cruise round Spain and to call a premium rate number in order to make a claim. On the basis of the complaints received, emergency action was taken to bar access to the service, pending the completion of our investigations.

However, as a result of the receipt of further complaints and following additional investigation, we discovered that one company was responsible for the promotion of five separate competition information lines, offering different awards, all of which were advertised by way of unsolicited telephone calls into consumers homes. Consumers dialling the various premium rate numbers referred to during the promotional messages accessed recorded competition information lines which gave the caller information about the item they had been awarded and details of how to claim.

The ICSTIS Committee has recently considered the facts of the case and found that each of the five services provided by the company were in breach of the ICSTIS Code for the following various reasons:

• The use of equipment to automatically dial numbers in order to make unsolicited direct marketing calls, as appears to be the case with the delivery of these promotional messages, is generally illegal.
• The promotional messages suggested that recipients had recently or previously entered a competition, which was not the case.
• A promotional message contained a significant silent gap between the main body of information given about the competition, including the premium rate claim line number, and a statement detailing the cost of dialling the number – this appeared to be a deliberate attempt to mislead consumers into believing that the message had ended and to replace the receiver without first hearing a pricing statement.
• The full cost of a call to the premium rate service was not stated in the promotional message, which is a requirement for competition services.
• The promotion of the services was inappropriate as the messages were not targeted, meaning that any member of a household had the potential to receive and respond to a promotional message. The messages were also received by individuals whose telephone numbers are registered with the Telephone Preference Service and those whose numbers are ex-directory.
• The company’s contact details were not included in the promotional messages.
• There were references to awards being ‘free’ when the only means of claiming them was by dialling a premium rate service, at a charge of �1.50 per minute (from a BT landline).
• Information specifically required of competition services, for example, a closing date, significant terms and conditions and/or costs which might be associated with an award or prize, was not stated in the promotional messages.
• A service was found to be operating after the company was instructed to suspend access to all of the services and numbers under investigation, pending the completion of our investigations.

The Committee decided that sanctions should be imposed against the company in light of the breaches found and it has therefore issued a fine totalling �300,000 across the five different services. Access to each of the services has been barred for twelve months and the company has also been barred from providing any premium rate competition service for twelve months.