It made my day....
This event made my day and brought me a new personal record, so I thought I should share it with you.
Yesterday afternoon I was sat at my PC playing World of Warcraft in a group with 5 other people and killing some 'we're well hard' L80 horde at Honor Hold who had ganked my L62 deathknight. So I had relogged to a L80 toon and decided to wipe the floor with them for some light-entertainment. Then my telephone rang and caller display showed the call was international. I have a few clients based abroad, so I answer the telephone and find myself speaking to a very heavily accented lady who sounds like she is from Asia or that sort of area. I immediately suspect a sales call.
She introduces herself and says she is calling from UPI (UK) who are regulated by the Financial Services Authority. I'm regulated by the FSA myself, so I am duly impressed. She is sure that I know about the current economic climate and the effect the credit crunch is having on people and she wanted to call to provide assistance and help me save money. She assures me this is not a sales call and she will not be asking any personal questions. By this time it is completely obvious even to the inept that this is a sales call of dubious nature, thus rule #1 of the Cold Calling Game kicks in.
Now I'm in the middle of some intense player-versus-player gaming action, but I continue the conversation with one headphone cup on one ear and the telephone on the other. So despite the fact the Telephone Preference Service with whom I am registered should stop such calls, I persevere to entertain myself.Originally Posted by TL's Rule #1 of the Cold-Calling Game
I ask more about the company and she confirms they are regulated by the Financial Services Authority and the Ministry of Justice. She also says she is regulated by the OFT. Must be a pretty impressive business if it is regulated by all that lot I think. When I ask for her FSA registered number she gives me CRM7863. This is clearly not an FSA number (I know, I have one myself so I know the format), so I play the call along more and figure out by some quick alt-tabbing & googling inbetween killing people in Wow that this is an Ministry of Justice reference number.
I ask her if she is UK based and she says she is. The telephone continues to say International caller.
By now she is telling me more about the credit crunch and despite saying she would not ask me any personal questions she starts to get around to asking if I had ever had any loans or credit cards since Apple 2007 and the amounts involved. I ask more about the Apple 2007 system and suggest I want to buy it as Windows is not very good. it takes her several minutes to back track the conversation and unravel Apple 2007 and turn it into April 2007 (I wish I had it recorded, it sounded like Apple).
I say I might be interested and ask about the credit terms. Tricky bit of PvP going on now so I put the telephone handset on my desk and concentrate on the shoot'em up action on my screen. About a minute later I pick the telephone up again and say "I'm sorry, that sounds good but you broke up in the middle, could you explain it again". The telephone now goes back to my desk while I rack up a few more kills.
A minute later I pick up the telephone again and she is asking me about the amount of the loans or credit cards I might have, so I ask about credit the terms again. I say I do not know the amount but she needs an amount and is quite insistent. I state that if the terms are right then £50,000 would be ok. This gets her interested. Several minutes later she realises that I was offering to invest £50,000 in her scheme and asking for the amount of interest I would get, whereas she was trying to get a credit info from me. It might help her to be able to speak better English I guess. Oh well.
She explains that she is not selling something, so I try to sell her plumbing services. I offer a very good warranty on her plumbing for £150 per year, but that as I liked her I would charge her just £99pa. She says that she does not need any plumbing work done. I verbally confirm to her that she thinks that her own plumbing is in fine working order and that I would be happy to check it out if she wanted. I make sure she knows I offer a very personal service for her plumbing and then ask if she could explain the credit terms of her offer again.
Anyway, to cut a very long story not so very short, I managed to keep playing Wow, get about 28 honor kills in PvP in Hellfire Peninsula, put her call on the desk for up to a minute at a time and keep turning her conversations in circles for a new personal record time in my Cold-Calling Game. I am so proud of my afternoon's work.
Postscript:
Using the CMR reference number I then obtained the details of the company UPI (UK) Ltd and put in a call to their Compliance Officer. He sounded rather shocked at one of the call centres they use:UPI (UK) Ltd's Compliance Officer tells me that he will investigate as all calls made are recorded so he should be able to track it down if the call was made on their behalf. He confirms they do use overseas call centres, but he doubts it was from one of theirs as the quality of the information given was so poor and incorrect. I am not impressed but his response is not entirely unexpected. I await his call back.
- cold calling someone on the Telephone Preference Register which breaches CSR Rule 4, which requires marketing to comply with the DMA Direct Marketing Code of Practice and the potential breach of Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003
- the criminal offence commited by claiming to be regulated by the FSA when they are not
- the civil offence commited in claiming to be regulated by the OFT when they are not
I called the FSA and told them that UPI (UK) Ltd was claiming to be regulated by them. They will investigate.
Call #2
Bizarrely, I had just put the telephone down on the FSA when I got a call on my main home telephone. It was from, you guessed it, a call center working on behalf of UPI (UK) Ltd and in association with 'Creditcrunchers'. This call was much more compliant than the first, but this telephone number was also on the TPS register so he also broke a whole bunch of regulations like the first caller. He claimed I could have my entire credit card balance reduced to zero if I had been mischarged. This netted him another breach:This breaches CSR Rule 2 in the Claims Management Regulation Conduct of Authorised Persons Rules 2007 which requires them not to exagerate possible returns - his stated example is not the norm and therefore should not be used for advertising purposes. This is also a potential breach of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008Exaggeration of financial information in advertising, for example misleading information about the size of settlements obtained for clients.
The caller then refused to identify himself or his company when asked, which breaches yet another rule. Hey ho, when you're going to get raped by the Regulator make sure you get raped good & proper is what I say. He did at least acknowledge eventually that he was not based in the UK, but in India.
So, I then called the Ministry of Justice, lodged a complaint and provided all the above information to them. I feel a trip to UPI (UK) Ltd's offices in South Wales coming on real soon.
Moral of the story? Don't cold call 'an authorised and regulated by the FSA' person and **** him off if he has the time and inclination to hand you your behind.
Job done. New record set. I think I deserve a coffee.
TL.
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