I can’t stand cold calling. It is an intrusive interruption which can be hard to avoid, particularly when firms make unsolicited calls to my mobile phone.
Yesterday lunchtime my phone rang and I recognised the number being displayed as someone who had called me several times at the end of the previous week.
Answering the phone, just in case it was important, I was greeted with:
“How would you like £1,500 cash?”
This was before any introduction and before describing the context for this attractive sounding cash offer.
When I asked what I would be getting this sum of money for, I was told “Well, I assume you have taken out a loan or had a credit card in the past?”.
It then quickly became very clear that this was a claims management firm, touting for business and looking for cases of Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) misselling.
I was able to end the phone call very quickly at this point, but not before making a note of the number and recording the details of the firm.
Since 23rd April 2007, claims management in England and Wales has been regulated by the Claims Management Services Regulator, which is part of the Ministry of Justice.
There are two main factors which wind me up about claims management firms.
The first is that they are prohibited by their regulator from making unsolicited cold calls. The phone call I received was definitely unsolicited; in fact I have never had a PPI policy in my life and I have certainly never asked a claims management firm to call me.
The second is that there is no reason for anybody to ever use a claims management firm if they have a valid financial services complaint.
Complaints against financial services providers are subject to strict rules, and these allow consumers to refer their complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) should they be unhappy with the outcome. This results in a very user friendly system which certainly does not warrant the assistance of claims management firms.
By allowing a claims management firm to handle your complaint, you are typically giving away a quarter of any compensation payment to that firm. In the case of the company who called me yesterday, they charge 39% as their fee!
I have written to the Claims Management Services Regulator setting out my complaint about the call received from the claims firm yesterday and looking forward to hearing about how they will deal with it.
Claims management firms need to shape up, stop with their sharp practices of making unsolicited cold calls (or sending random text messages) and stop targeting consumers who do not need their help in the first place.
