Scams Awareness Feedback and *New* August Campaign!
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
In July there was a national campaign for Scams Awareness Month which Wyre Forest Citizens Advice took part in. Out of the many clients whom we discussed scams with, many seemed aware of scams and said they felt confident in recognising them.
However, scams and fraudsters are becoming more and more clever. I receive many emails each day demanding my bank details or else I won’t be entitled to money that is 'rightfully mine, and usually they go straight to junk. However, I did receive one I hesitated on and almost clicked on the provided link, as it was from Outlook. What made me stop was how it was titled:
‘Dear Customer’
If it is someone claiming to be a bank or one of your providers, they will know your name.
Many clients said they received cold calls and junk mail (both via email and through the post) on a daily basis. Unfortunately, as we found out, despite people’s confidence at spotting scams, they are still ongoing and we still had clients come to us who had been involved in a scam – usually where the fraudster asks for a small fee which will lead to 'great' things e.g. advertisement of business, a new church, shares… So whilst we feel we may be able to identify a scam, there are always new ones popping up. Don’t let your guard down, for the scammers certainly never will!
Moving forward, this month’s campaign will focus on parking and car park charges. We have had a fair amount of clients come to us about private car parks, all who had appealed and all had been rejected. I looked into the matter and saw we have quite a few parking charges issues from both private and local authority car parks. The issue of ‘smart meters’ cropped up a fair amount. We want to see:
-
How clear parking signs are
-
How confident people are to appeal
-
How many have experienced problems such as a faulty machine
-
If people do feel the charges/penalty was unfair, why was it
