hi they

the BANKING ADVICE BUREAU.COM has changed there name to reclaim2gain they tought they were being clever when they changed the last digit of there contact number which is 01253 757069 if they had nothing to hide why change all there details watch out people

If you’re worried about a strange company holing your credit/debit card
details, you can solve the problem by cancelling your credit/debit
card. Then, if you discover that they’ve taken money from your account,
say to your bank that you have not authorized the transaction.



Your bank will then take the money back for you. And the company that
took your money can only have it back again if they can prove that you
authorized the transaction. I think that the likelihood of them proving
that is as slim as a slim thing from the planet slim. ☺

However, if you do succeed in getting your money back that way,
it might incur a karmic debt because it’s repaying dishonesty with
dishonesty. ☺ Unless you have some handy escape clause like the end justifies
the means. 

Hi

My sister in law had a call on her mobile asking about bank charges. She has had banking charges and she told them that I had sent a letter to the bank requesting they be repaid. (The letter sent was from Martin Lewis web page.- ).We had a reply back from the bank, stating nothing would be done until the test case had been heard in court, which is January 2008. The Banking Bureau told my sister in law, that the letter I sent was not a legal letter and that theirs were and she would get back 100o/o of her charges back. She told me after she had paid for the pack, which, as I have read and it does give the option to send it back within 7 days, of which I am going too. I explained to my sister in law, that as she as already logged a request with the bank to repay the charges, what good is another letter from the Banking Bureau? the banks reply will be the same. I was interested to read the pack as it states on the 27th July the OFT annouced test case, the next sentence states it is due to be heard in late 2006!!!!! I think they have got that wrong. My question is how are these people getting hold of mobile numbers? how can they think she would be better sending their letter to the bank? What makes their letter a legal letter? I will reporting these to trading standards.

Note: This post has been moderated. Please read the moneysupermarket.com User Community Standards and Terms of Service. Cheers

My wife was cold called by Banking Advice Bureau, and was taken aback that they already knew alot of her details, for example they already knew the her sort code & begining of her account number & the first half of her debit card number. As a result of this my wife misunderstood who they were & thought they were calling from her bank & gave the remaining details. They told my wife to expect a form for her to reclaim charges.

When it came she found they had taken money (£39.99) out of her account. My wife is adament that the figure £39.99 was never mentioned in the phone call & she never agreed to any money being taken out of her account. The manager first agreed to send her a recording of the phone call within 48hrs. Then after it never came, they said they had listened to it & she did agree. My wife asked for a copy of the recording, they refused. My wife then asked for details of their Data Protection Officer (every financial institution should have one), and they were hesitant in giving his name out & then said it was a guy called David Morgan. We are still pursuing this.

PLEASE BEWARE OF THESE GUYS!!!

My last information regarding my sister in law and reclaim 2 gain posted on 2nd December 2007, I did post the forms back to then as stated within 7 days, but guess what no refund. These people have to be stopped. A few weeks later, I had a telphone call, but fortunately I knew what it was about. The gentleman on the othe end did not speak very good english, he ask me if I had had any bank charges, I asked him what business it was of his? he then send he can help to recliam then, I asked where he had got my number from as I am registered against nusonse calls? he said they have a dept that have a list. I was outraged and let him have it with both barrels. I ask him if he was aware of the test case in court for the banks that was taking place? I told him that no bank will give any money back until this case has been heard and a decsion made. I told him he had no right to ring me, he put the phone down!!!!!

these people are con and scam artists they rang on my mobile pretending that they were from my bank,knowing my account details.i spoke to them they said they were going to send me information via post,it never arrived after seeing fonejacker on tv it clicked,that they was something not right i immediately cancelled card but already they took79.98,from my account without my permission.these people are sophisticated theives people please be aware of these ***.when i phoned them they had the cheeck to tell me that they have a recording of me authorising that transaction.they are a group of theives .they are refusing to return my 79.98 pounds.

Just an update.... We complained to the bank that this was a fraudulant transaction, and after the bank investigated they also agreed & refunded the £39.99 back into the account :)

If you believe you've been done by these guys - report it STRAIGHT AWAY to your bank because it can take some time for the fraud to be investigated & the money returned. If you don't report it to the bank within 2 weeks - YOU COULD LOSE YOUR CLAIM!!

Just read through the posts on this site and just wanted to add to it.

I'm not a financial adviser or debt counsellor or in any way financially qualified but I am a Trading Standards Officer. I've been following the progress of reclaiming bank charges with interest as i've got some to reclaim myself and have been waiting for all decisions to be finalised. There is NO WAY anyone needs to pay any service to claim these charges back on their behalf, these companies are constantly being reported to us as a scam. The mechanisms are in place for these charges to be claimed back by the consumer themselves, template letters are available and the process is very simple.

The process has not yet fully completed, there are still final stages of appeals to be finished, although it does seem highly likely that the ruling will be in favour of the charges being unlawful. Once the decision has been made, every consumer can claim these charges back without the intervention of companies cashing in on this subject and charging for what we can all do for free. Even if you don't think you're good with words or letters, give it a go, the content is there for you, all you have to do is fill in the blanks. The more people who use these companies and pay for their services, the more they'll carry on making unsolicted phone calls etc.

The moneyexpert.com website has loads of info in their "reclaim £1000s" section - this includes template letters. Alternatively contact your local Trading Standards service or Consumer Direct on 08454 040506 to get the correct advice - and please at least do this before you consider paying for any of these cowboys to do for you what you can easily do yourself.

Hi NoBull,

Bit of an old thread, but I picked up on your interest in where call centre firms get their numbers. I once provided some IT consulting at a call centre company which turned out to be run by a bunch of charlatans. It gave me a very good insight into how these companies operate. Many of them are outbound call centres that sell their telemarketing capacity to the highest bidder. One week they will be phoning you to "come back to Scottish Power", the next to "switch to Talk/Talk". It is standard practice to be provided with customer or "recent leaver" data by the client company when undertaking one of these campaigns. This is completely above board and done in line with the Data Protection Act. The telemarketing company will also agree to prescreen the list given by Talk Talk/Scottish Power against the Telephone Preference System list (the "don't call me" list). For these campaigns they almost always comply.

Most of these call centres also have little internal businesses (particulalry in IVA's bankruptcy services, sub-prime loans and other "financial service" products for not very well off people), or deals with dodgy companies that provide this. The nasty thing is that they routinely keep a copy of the reputable company data, sit on it for a few months and then use it for their own in-house campaigns, and this time they do not screen it against TPS. This is of course a contravention of the DPA, but these charlatans know they are rarely caught. Besides which, the second modus operandi of these guys is to habitually change the name of their limited companies (free to do at Companies House), and also to put themselves into voluntary liquidation every now and again. They then sell off the assets of the company to their new company, and leave the creditors, employees and clients up the swanee.

I have personlly watched telephony agents phone out offering IVA's and other similar services on data that had been provided for completely different reasons. Data of this nature came from a number of high street banks, catalogue shopping companies and a number of mobile telephone providers, who were never aware of the illegal use of their customer records. There is even a second hand market in data sticks with tens of thousands of customer records on them. Going rate at the time was about 10p-12p per custome record if unprofiled, perhaps twice that amount if profiled.

I occassionally read through the messages here, and note with sadness how niaive people are about these things. Poverty and debt breeds desperation, and these rogues play on that. TPS, trading standards, even the FSA do not care about this - I know, I have in the past passed details to all of those bodies and their responses were laughable.