Royal Mail delivering 'human tragedy' of scam mail

[Paul Whitehead]

I received a pack from a company offering my family a free holiday at a cost of £89. It didnt worry me untill I read the last line of the letter. It said "You dont have to do anything to get your free holiday, your account will be automatically deducted to join the holiday club unless you phone ****"!! We reported this to traiding standards and after a visit to the citizens advice and a google search of its phone number we found out it was related to a company called SIMPLY DVD, or SIMPLY HOME ENTERTAINMENT! My wife ordered a dvd though this company, some time before. Anyway, when I went to the bank to protect my account, the manager phoned the number and reported everything to a secret agency! Junk mail started in the 80s and has grown.
I dont know how many people get scam mail, but it should be vetted.
One old guy on my round gets loads of begging letters from charities because he donated to them when his wife died. He hates it.

My advice to anyone who gets mail to their address, from a company that they have never heard of before, and it claims to know their personal details, go to the citizens advice, and your bank. Dont phone the number yourself, as it is a premium rate number.

SIMPLY HOME ENTERTAINMENT have got alot to answer for. C@#n%!

[andy2007]

Firstly was this Panorama programme made for children? They had the presenter zipping off to some island in Scotland to pick up - and distribute pizza leaflets ha! ha! that was funny - then down to Cornwall , then wandering in a wood cutting down trees. His time would have been better spent explaining the difference between leaflets, so called direct mail and scam mail. Leaflets are simple. They are not just delivered by Royal Mail. Local restaurants do it, they fall out of local papers and oddly the Radio Times. Direct mail most usually comes from reputable companies. But scam mail is different. It is deliberate fraud. Stop it at source but another way would be to stop the companies selling mailing lists, the banks, the mail order companies, magazine subscriptions etc. Wouldn't stop it but might reduce the volume.

Good point--and I wonderonder why this selling of your information doesn'e come under the data protection act.

It does. If the Company operates in the UK, they have to say somewhere (usually in the small print), that they may pass on your details to 3rd Parties. There also has to be a box for you to check, to say that you don't want them to do that. If they pass on your details, despite you checking the box, they're in breach of the Data Protection Act. But good luck proving it. How are we supposed to know who these people are buying our details from?

[Paul Whitehead]

Who would miss the BBC? Panorama has exposed some great issues, but they have also blown alot of topics out of proportion. They seem to repeatedly attack the postal system, and run it down. Everyone I work with in our office delivers to the highest standards. Considering the ammount of drops have almost DOUBLED for every postman in the past two years, for less pay, (door to doors?) the delivery of every item has never been better. The only thing that lets the service down are the prats who bring in modernisation and methods of working changes etc. (see my post about modernisation).

[BELIAL]

RM intercepts 6 million scam letters in 12 months RM delivers 62 million items a day

[andy2007]

And more importantly, it's illegal for Posties to interfere with the delivery of this Scam Mail. Only the Police can do that. Despite the fact that there are many Posties who're well aware of people recieving this crap. We desperately need a change in the Law, to allow us to divert these items to the Police.