It has got to be a scam

I received in the post today 3 identical letters all with my address on. One was addressed to me, the other two to people who have never lived here, to my knowledge. I have been here for 19 years and I know the name of the previous owner and it's not her.

Inside is an extremely official and kosher-looking document purporting to be from a company called Bank-Smart, offering to refund my payment protection insurance for a loan taken out from the RBS in 1999. I would have to fill in a third party authorisation and give details of any companies that I may have used to obtain loans etc which may have been subject to PPI.

The whole thing looks totally convincing - VAT reg number etc. It's just that I know for sure that I did not take out a loan with RBS in 1999.

Has anyone else received anything like this? Perhaps every address in the UK has been deluged with duplicate fishing letters to fictitious people?

 

No letters just scam emails which I reported.

 

What I do is ..

a) open letters addressed to me - if they're junk, I burn them (especially the bit showing the name, address)
b) if they're not addressed to me but carry the correct address (i.e. they've not just been mis-delivered), stick 'em straight in the recycling bin unopened.
c) spam emails purporting to be from banks, I forward to that bank's phishing department.

Depending on what it is, and how belligerent I'm feeling at the time, I have been known to tear into tiny pieces, the contents of junk mail, stuff all the bits back into their thoughtfully enclosed pre-paid envelope and send it back or, stick ... the bits from Readers' Digest into the National Trust envelope (and vice versa) and pop them in the post

 

Madahhlia , be carefull it`s a scam , they just try with every possible person in UK , a kids who work with me got told that he had some ppi on an overdraft , the moment he gave the bank detail to get money in he got take off £250 .

they bombarding me as well untill i start to tell them that already had my money back and they stopped harassing me .....

that is just an example of the modern culture , car insurance have sold peoples details to solicitors firms and they had to pay back billions in claim , then banks have done the same things and losing billions of tax payers moneys .....

 

Stick 'em in the compost!

 

Don't worry, i shan't be falling for it! Just wondered how they happened to single out me and two apparently fictitious housemates for the honours.

 

it would be interesting to contact WATCHDOG the show and hear their opinion. Also to look for some similar issue on moneysavingexpert.com

 

Probably in much the same way as Readers' Digest used to write to tell you (and just about everyone you knew) that you 'alone' were the lucky recipient of a prize in one of their (never ending) 'draws'!

I recall an occasion when myself and the two neighbours on either side each received an identical envelope telling us we'd won a prize in a 'RD' competition none of us had entered - only one of us bothered to send the claim form back (it was free) and, although he did receive the promised 'road map of Europe', it was half quarto size (that's how long ago it was!) and the print so tiny you needed a powerful magnifying glass to spot anything other than the slight variations in colour on each page Completely useless!

 

I checked this out and the internet is full of horror stories about Bank-smart. They do genuinely offer a PPI reclaim service but as Sal says, extract hefty random fees from their victims at every opportunity.

Got me thinking though - could I be owed PPI? It would be daft to forgo a spot of compo through ignorance! I've never had a loan except for my mortgage and as I recall, turned down any suggestions that I should take out PPI. But they seem to be suggesting that people may have paid it unknowingly on a variety of accounts - or have I got that completely wrong.

 

First of all Madahhlia, don't fall into the trap that these companies are trying to set for you - they're trying to make you think you might be entitled to some compensation when, in the vast majority of cases, this just isn't true.

PPI relates only to 'loans' either by direct borrowing - i.e. a loan from a bank, building society or other institution (a 'Friendly Society' for example), mortgage, HP agreement - or to a credit card and, in a very few cases, store cards. They're insurance policies designed to cover the re-payments so, if you can't work, become ill or lose your job the policy 'kicks in' and pays some, most or all of it for you (the amount/proportion it pays will be set out in the policy document). If you've got or had a loan, or taken out a new credit card, in the last six years then it's good idea to check your policy to see if this insurance was included.

In the case of a mortgage you probably will have (or have had) PPI, it was probably sold as a 'Mortgage Protection Policy' or if you had an endowment mortage as a 'Life Assurance Policy', it will run 'in tandem' with your mortgage, you pay it as part of the money you pay each month and it stops when the mortgage ends (if you had the endowment mortgage/life assurance policy combo, you may find that, when the mortgage is paid off, there could be a small lump sum payable to you if it was a 'with profits' life assurance policy - but that's a whole different issue).

PPI is a good thing - if you've regular, large payments to make you want to know they'll be taken care of if (to use the words of an insurance company) '... something unfortunate should happen' - but what these companies are talking about is PPI being mis-sold and that includes ...
being told it was compulsory - when it wasn't
being sold it - without even being asked or told it was being added
being asked whether you actually wanted or needed it - you may have the means to pay off loans (e.g. from long-term savings you don't want to touch at moment)
having employment cover - but you were self-employed
being asked about pre-existing medical conditions.

If none of these applied to your mortgage (or any loan) then it wasn't mis-sold and you're unlikely to have PPI on any accounts.

And just as a BTW - these companies have set themselves up to make money (no surprise there) by taking a percentage - often a hefty one, anything up to 30% - from any compensation they might recover for you .... if you do think you've been mis-sold PPI or have reason for a complaint, avoid all these companies like the plague, to reclaim it yourself all it takes is a letter to the bank or firm that sold you the policy and lodge your complaint directly with them.

 

Would anyone like to buy some air? I can supply bags of fresh air for a modest fee.

This is what the PPI companies are doing. They are taking advantage of a combination of two facts. 1) The courts have ruled that PPI was mis-sold in many cases and that people who've been ripped off can claim it back and 2) Most people either don't know this or don't know that it simple and free to make start the process yourself. In other words, these companies are selling fresh air. You don't need them.

Martin Lewis (the money saving expert) did a piece on this a while ago. He gave examples of people who actually ended up with pence. The PPI companies having taken everything they'd claimed, saying it was their fee. There was also a piece a while ago showing statistics for success rate of claims between individuals and third party PPI companies. More claims were successful when done by the individual than when done by a company.