Episode 18 Rip Off Britain

We asked you to tell us who's left you feeling ripped off

and you contacted us in your thousands by post, email,

even stopping us on the street. The message could not be clearer.

It feels to me I'm fighting a battle I can't win.

It costs you a fortune and then you get fobbed off.

With money tighter than ever you need to be sure every pound counts.

We had nowhere to turn.

Whether it's a deliberate rip-off, a simple mistake or a catch in the small print,

we'll find out why you're out of pocket and what you can do about it.

Your stories, your money. This is Rip-Off Britain.

I'm glad you can join us again.

Today we focus on something every one of us will have experienced, probably even in the last few weeks.

It's a topic that is consistently said to be one of the biggest bugbears for UK consumers.

We're talking about cold calling. We really have all been there.

The phone rings and when you answer someone launches into a sales pitch about some deal or other.

It's thought eight out of ten of us will have had that in the last month and not just at home.

It can be on your mobile, too. I had one of those this morning!

You may think the answer is to hang up, but it isn't that simple.

As well as hearing about some of the problems they can cause, we'll look at whether enough is being done

so cold calls only go to people who don't mind them.

And we'll see what's being done to those parts of the industry who break the rules.

On today's programme, how unwanted calls that keep on coming target those that find it hard to say no.

I've had days when I just wanted to cry, my guts turning inside out, frustration, anger.

The three letters most commonly heard in a cold call - PPI. Why is it so hard to get your money back?

We've got to go through a world of battle again.

As stressful as it is, I am willing to challenge them again.

Too many of the stories we investigate start with a cold call

and someone trying to sell you something you don't want.

These calls can be more than just annoying. In some cases, they can cause real distress.

The system to stop you getting them doesn't always work.

While the law says if you've opted out of unsolicited calls, no one should ring you out of the blue,

there's been a rise in the number of companies who simply ignore that and not much can stop them.

They're often referred to as nuisance calls, but for Keith Brown "nuisance" doesn't begin to describe

the emotional impact unwanted calls have had on his family.

Keith's mother is in the early stages of dementia, so she doesn't like dealing with strangers.

Keith says she'll often say yes to whatever they ask, just to make the conversation end,

all of which makes her very easy prey for cold callers.

Keith, what did you find that made you realise your mother had been targeted by cold calling?

There were more and more vitamins and supplements arriving.

Over a couple of weeks, it just grew, just like a mountain that grew.

I spoke to Mum and said, "What's going on here?" and I stopped there and went through them all.

There were 22 different vitamins or supplements. She walked me through into the bedroom, opened the drawers

where she used to have all of her clothing.

All the drawers were full of vitamins.

Keith's mum had bought the vitamins after receiving a cold call from an online vitamin retailer.

She'd seen some friends suffer from arthritis and didn't want it,

so she thought the vitamins would help, but one purchase led to another sales call

and soon the stock grew out of control.

Have you any idea how much your mum has spent?

Over the space of seven months, she's spent just over £2,200 with one company

on vitamins and vitamin supplements. Really what was staggering was the scale.

It wasn't £10 and £50 a time. It was £200 a time, £300 a time.

People were just ringing up, cold calling, knowing that she'd buy,

suggesting multiple orders of multiple things, more and more things,

and she was giving her card details.

So what did you do about it? I immediately rang the company concerned and said, "Please make sure

"that you don't call any more. You cannot justify spending that amount of money for one elderly person."

They agreed they would no longer call her or contact her. Have they upheld that? Well, it's been upheld now.

And then just last week, when I came to see my mother, she said, "I don't understand. This has arrived."

And this is from the company? Yes.

Offering to sell her more vitamins.

The vitamins were the latest in a long line of cold call offers to which Keith's mum could not say no.

In recent months, she's paid £1,300 to two tradesmen for cleaning her driveway

and she's previously given hundreds to charities in response to appeal letters.

I think in the last couple of years she has lost over £5,000 or £6,000 on various things.

What effect has this had on your mum?

Ironically enough, for people in that stage, the early stages of dementia,

they don't actually know the scale of it. She doesn't really understand the significance of what she's lost.

It's her savings. If push came to shove, I'd sort her out, so she's protected.

But not everybody has a son or a daughter who can move in. And they're in terrible situations.

If you've not got a really strong advocate, a really strong family friend or relative

to stand up and do this for you, and I am here twice a week, every week,

just screening all the mail.

Keith is a professor in healthcare and social work and has worked with vulnerable old people,

but it's so much worse when the issues are closer to home.

When it's suddenly your mum... I've had days when I just, like, wanted to cry,

I've had my guts turning inside out. Frustration, anger.

My mum is a great woman. She's a great mother. I feel slightly emotional talking about it.

And it's, "What is going on?! How can this happen to my mum?"

When we contacted the vitamin company, they told us Keith's mother had bought "in varying amounts"

since 2009, but in 2012, after a request from Keith,

the account was marked "do not call". There was a further short call this year which they say was

a "clear breach" of their policy, due to "an error on account of the sales agent",

but they had no record of a request to no mailings, though they have now updated the account to that effect.

They've also said since 2011 they've made "significant improvements" to their marketing and sales

and introduced new systems allowing them to randomly review orders,

so that they can spot unusually high volume sales. And they stress that all the people called by them

are previous customers rung "at intervals that reflect their purchasing desires".

They insist that "no cold calls are ever made".

But this does highlight a rather uncertain grey area

as to what exactly constitutes consent to repeated calls.

Some businesses consider that an earlier purchase allows them to call again until you ask them to stop.

Critics say each new approach technically constitutes a cold call.

So our pop-up shop telecoms expert David McClelland explains some of the things you can do

to avoid the calls you don't want.

The first thing is to opt out.

The Telephone Preference Service is a register of numbers that legitimate UK marketers cannot dial.

Once you're registered with the Telephone Preference Service, you should get no unwanted calls.

It's against the law for companies to call when you said you don't want them to,

but, unfortunately, it does not stop them all. Keith signed his mum up to the Telephone Preference Service,

but as the company pointed out that does not stop contact from businesses you've dealt with before,

if you gave consent for future contact. In any case, research by consumer group Which this year

found that people registered with the service still receive an average of 10 unsolicited calls a month.

We asked the Telephone Preference Service why that was the case.

They said signing up...

..particularly from "reputable companies that abide by the regulations."

But they also told us...

And the Information Commissioner...

So what should you do if you receive a cold call from a company that keeps on ringing?

Be firm and hang up. Say something along the lines of, "Thank you. I'm not interested. I'm going to hang up.

"Please remove me from your database." Then put it down. Screening calls is important.

A lot of service providers offer caller ID so you can see the number of the person trying to call you.

If you don't recognise it, don't answer the phone. Finally, if you're inundated,

you can change your number. It's a little bit of a last resort.

Ask for a brand-new number that hasn't been recycled from someone else.

Meanwhile, though Keith believes he has done all he possibly can to stop companies cold calling,

he thinks more needs to be done to prevent people being exploited.

We have got to stop and have some system, legislative systems, to stop these things happening,

to stop this mass marketing going on. And if it doesn't? We're just going to have it continuing, aren't we?

Next, a cold calling scam that can very quickly leave you hundreds of pounds out of pocket.

And it's remarkably common, so much so that it's estimated

that one in six people in Britain has already received a similar call.

Here's everything you need to know about how to avoid being taken in.

When Hilary Palmer picked up the phone in February, what she was told preyed on every computer user's

worst nightmare. The caller, who claimed to be from computer operating system Windows,

said she was at risk from viruses that could cripple her PC and let criminals access her details.

My reaction when the cold caller said there were loads of viruses

was, "How could this happen? I have got some anti-virus."

This lady was insistent that the viruses were potentially dangerous and need to be sorted.

Convinced that her computer was under threat, Hilary listened and followed technical instructions.

I fired up my computer and she asked me to type in a few letters

and that enabled a screen to come up which showed me

that there were a lot of red warnings on the computer.

The caller told Hilary that these red warnings were the proof that she had viruses on her computer.

In fact, the screen she was seeing was a completely innocuous part of the operating system,

but like most people who get this call, Hilary was not to know these were harmless.

When I saw the red warning signs, I thought, "This is not good! There must be something wrong."

She asked me to count them and said if there were more than 38, it was really dangerous.

And there were many more than 38.

I was worried that there were so many viruses on the computer

and that this would destroy it.

Hilary was told by the caller that she could help her get rid of the viruses, but she'd need access

to Hilary's computer to do so. So Hilary agreed to let the caller take control of her computer

over her internet connection. When she got remote access,

she was able to control the mouse, which was weird. It would whizz around the screen on its own.

And she was able to get rid of them. This took quite a long time.

I was on the phone for an hour and a half. She kept talking me through it

and she'd say, "There's some more." And she'd put up another file and more would come up.

Of course, in reality, there were no viruses on her computer, but by this point Hilary trusted the caller

so when offered the chance to buy extra virus protection,

she was very interested.

She offered me a package of either one, two or three years

and I plumped for the two-year one.

However, I was still a little bit worried about how much it would cost

and she said she could do me a deal for £150.

The caller said it was a huge discount on the price of £600,

so Hilary agreed and the caller emailed over the paperwork.

She sent a form to my computer which I had to fill in with my credit card details

and my security information. The caller was still with me when I was filling out the forms.

She obviously checked the form, said it was all right,

and then that she would phone me in 10 minutes to confirm everything

and then put the phone down.

Hilary had handed all her credit card details over to the caller, including the security code.

10 minutes pass, half an hour, an hour, and I didn't hear anything.

I tried to get her number,

but obviously it was blocked so I was unable to do that.

Hilary checked her emails for any contact details for the caller, but the emails she had been sent

had mysteriously disappeared.

I contacted my son and told him.

He immediately said, "That's a scam." That's when I felt really sick.

Cos I'm not a person who would generally be, I don't think, likely to be scammed.

But through distractions it just took me unawares.

By the time Hilary realised she'd been scammed,

she thought it was too late to call her credit card provider, the Post Office, to check on her account.

When she did check her email the following morning,

the fraudster had already transferred cash out of her account using Western Union.

There was an email from Western Union which said "Pickup Notification".

So I went in to it and it said that £150 had gone out of my account.

Hilary knew she had to stop the fraudsters taking any more money from her credit card.

I went to the Post Office to cancel the card as quickly as possible.

I was worried that if they had access to my card, they'd take more money.

With the card cancelled, Hilary wrote to the Post Office to ask if there was anything she could do

to get back the money already taken.

Unfortunately, there really wasn't anything the Post Office could do.

As a third party had been used to transfer the lost money, Western Union,

it's not possible to try to reclaim it through the credit card issuer,

not least because although they'd been obtained fraudulently, the details were willingly provided.

So Hilary is left not just £150 out of pocket, but also feeling rather foolish.

I felt a bit...silly, a bit gullible.

They'd left me feeling that how stupid was I that I was scammed.

As in all such successful cold calls, whoever rang Hilary had used a mix of persuasive skills,

lies and trickery to win her over.

I think she gained my trust. She was very clever

in that she talked me through every step of the way and said

the viruses were bad, especially if there was a certain number,

so she got me to count. Getting me to count was making me buy into what she was saying.

When we asked money transfer service Western Union about Hilary's case,

it said it "commits significant resources to combat consumer fraud",

investing in monitoring and detecting systems and working closely with law enforcement.

It added that...

..stressing you should...

That's advice reiterated by Microsoft, the business the callers claimed to be from,

who told us the company...

The company also warns...

But this scam is surprisingly common. When Microsoft investigated,

they discovered one in six of us have received a similar cold call

and almost a quarter are so convinced it's genuine, they follow instructions.

It's perhaps a surprise that in Hilary's case they only took £150

when it would have been very easy to steal much more.

If I could speak to these people, I would say it is despicable

that they prey on vulnerable people, people who may not have very good computer knowledge,

and were able to get money out of them.

We're on the road again and this year we've brought our pop-up shop to Liverpool!

We have taken over an empty shop, transformed it overnight, packed it full of experts

and they're giving advice absolutely free.

And as well as our shop we've got workshops in the street

so that as many people as possible can take advantage, get advice and stop being ripped off.

But back inside our shop, Joy called in for advice from Trading Standards Officer Sylvia Rook.

She thought she'd been sold a holiday over the phone, but things were not as they first appeared.

I was rang in November and they offered me a holiday in Malta. I was on my laptop at the time.

They seemed to be a bona fide website and everything.

How much were they charging? They wanted 399.

Joy still wasn't convinced, so they tried another tack.

She said, "I tell you what, I'll throw in this loyalty card."

She explained that this was something that you travel a lot, which I do,

"So whenever you wanted a holiday, we would find you a better deal."

Finally convinced by the salesperson, Joy signed up and paid using her credit card.

What came initially was just this.

Right. Saying that you've paid £399.59.

And then after that this came... Which is congratulating you on securing your loyalty card.

I said where is the holiday? I've got the loyalty card. Where's my holiday?

And this is what I got after that.

I recognised that as timeshare holidays.

So it seems what Joy had paid for wasn't the week in Malta she wanted.

Instead she'd bought membership of a holiday club. Feeling ripped off, Joy asked for her money back.

I got a reply saying, "Our MD has said you can't have your money back." On what grounds?

"You've signed a contract." You can make a claim against them.

They will argue that you knew what you were entering into as a contract, but it was over the phone

and you are adamant you were buying a holiday. That should be sufficient to pursue it through the courts.

Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, if you make a purchase that's more than £100

and less than £30,000, if there is breach of contract or it is misdescribed

the credit card company is equally liable.

Basic rule of thumb, do not ever purchase anything as a result of a cold call

unless you have made very extensive investigations into that company and even then be very cautious.

You won't go that way again for your holiday, will you? No!

Many visitors stopped off at our complaints corner to let off some consumer steam

and I got some things off my chest.

My biggest gripe is lack of loyalty and service.

And the people of Liverpool weren't backward at coming forward, either.

In this city of our, Liverpool, prices are becoming extortionate.

You don't feel you're getting the best deal or good service.

You're a grown man being talked to like you're 12.

The experts at our shop have put together some free factsheets

with key advice from our pop-up weekend. You can find all of them on our website:

Still to come: two men who took on the cold callers who wouldn't take no for an answer.

I pleaded with them to stop. I'd asked, begged. It didn't work.

I said, "If you call me again, I'll charge you £10 a minute for my time."

If I asked you if there's any type of cold call you've had recently,

the chances are it will have been from someone telling you they want to help you claim hundreds of pounds

in mis-sold PPI payments.

Official figures show that most households typically get seven of these calls every month.

Not only do they make up the biggest share of all unwanted calls that can be identified,

they're also the ones that people say are the most annoying.

Payment Protection Insurance. Three words heard more than any others in the unsolicited calls

to our homes and mobile phones.

Hello? PPI was designed to offer protection if you couldn't make the repayments on any borrowing,

but how it was sold became, for consumers, the biggest banking scandal of recent times.

A whole industry sprang up to help, offering their services to claim back

mis-sold payments on your behalf.

Sammy Morrison from Huddersfield received one of those calls in 2011

from a company called We Fight Any Claim.com.

They told me they were one of the first and best companies

and had I had PPI? At the time, I didn't have a clue what PPI was.

So they explained it to me, asked me if I had a mortgage, any loans or cards or anything like that.

Sammy was told that in return for a fee they could get her back nearly £2,000 in mis-sold PPI.

They said, "Oh, you've definitely had PPI. We can get you X amount of money,

"but there is an up-front charge." And I was a bit hesitant,

but they guaranteed - not maybe'd -

guaranteed that I would have a good payout within a maximum of 12 weeks.

Convinced by the company's confidence,

Sammy agreed to the £490 up-front fee that We Fight Any Claim.com were asking for.

Satisfied that they would then get on with pursuing the two lots of mis-sold PPI they said she was owed,

Sammy sat back and waited for her cheque to arrive. They were very persuasive

and extremely confident that the two companies I'd had PPI with

were two of the best companies for paying out. They were paying out straight away.

But things didn't move quite as swiftly as Sammy had hoped.

About three months later, after I'd received all the initial paperwork,

I received a form for me to sign and send back.

I rang them up, asked them what this form was.

They said it's for the company. We now give them 40 days legally

to get back to us with a decision.

She had hoped for a cheque, but all she'd got was more paperwork

asking her to sign and give her consent to them pursuing her claim.

Very frustrated, Sammy decided to try to find out more.

I rang the Ministry of Justice and they said at that time it was too soon to do anything,

legally, because it had only been about six months.

It seemed that all Sammy could do was wait and see if the £490 she had paid to We Fight Any Claim.com

would come to anything. But that 12-week wait she'd been promised soon turned into something longer.

The weeks became months and, finally, years.

Two years later of going round and round in circles again and tearing my hair out with them.

In April this year I got back in touch with the Ministry of Justice

and they told me to write to them, saying I'd been in touch with them

and under the Freedom of Information Act ask them for copies of everything they've dealt with on my claims

for the past two years. And that was April and I'm still waiting for a response.

To see if we could help bring Sammy's wait to an end, we contacted We Fight Any Claim.com

to find out if they were any closer to getting any of Sammy's PPI back

and, if not, whether they'd be refunding the £490 up-front fee she'd paid them all that time ago.

The company apologised for the fact that she has not received the level of service it would wish to provide

and says "the reasons for the delays are numerous" and due to factors outside its control,

for example, "delaying tactics" by the companies concerned.

While that may make it seem as if nothing is being done, such tactics are all too common

and take time to work through.

But it says the charges were fully explained and agreed to

and up-front fees "were fully allowable by the regulatory bodies at the time,"

although the company stopped using them back in January, 2012

and customers now only pay a fee as and when money is reclaimed.

They also said they have fully refunded Sammy's fee.

10,000 people a week are escalating their complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service

after trying and failing to get mis-sold PPI payments returned.

Denise Barnaby from London is one. She's banked with the Halifax for 30 years,

but for the last eight months she's fought to get back PPI added without her knowledge to a credit card

that she's had with the bank since 1996. She didn't use a PPI company to help or respond to a cold call.

Denise made the claim herself, which should be straightforward,

but the Halifax denied she was entitled to any money.

When I first got the letter saying I didn't have any PPI added to my credit card,

I was very disappointed. I thought something's not quite right here. I need to investigate and research it.

Determined not to give up, Denise continued to pursue her claim, but the bank refused to back down.

It was like going round in circles,

which was taking an immense amount of time and was quite stressful, to be quite honest,

and sometimes quite depressing.

Denise contacted the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Halifax eventually accepted her claim.

However, Denise's relief was short-lived.

The bank offered her the sum of £1,719.02 -

much less than she felt she was entitled to. When the offer came,

I was absolutely shocked because it wasn't right.

From 1996, that offer just didn't add up.

Denise refused to accept the cheque from the Halifax and continued to chase the bank for her money.

I was very determined that they weren't going to get away with whatever they owed me.

It's my money, so I wasn't going to stop until I got it back.

Denise continued to fight the claim herself and a few weeks later they offered a revised settlement

of £2,598.11. That's over £800 more than their original offer.

And she's keen for other people to follow her example.

My message to everybody would be once you know you're owed PPI

don't give up, be persistent, don't go through any of these PPI companies. You don't need to.

You can do it all yourself.

Keep battling until you do get your money back.

We contacted the Halifax, who told us:

In light of Denise's concerns at the amount of redress, the bank rechecked the calculations

and found "an automation error which resulted in an incorrect amount being calculated."

The bank said it's "very sorry to have made a mistake".

They have offered her £100 for the distress and inconvenience caused.

But Denise's fight isn't over yet.

She's now in the process of claiming back PPI she thinks she was mis-sold on loans from the same bank.

I'm willing to go all the way for my loans PPI and if it means we go through a world of battle again

as stressful as it is, I am willing to challenge them again.

Although slower than expected, Denise did the right thing my making her claim herself.

It's by far the best way to reclaim PPI you think you might be owed.

You can do this absolutely free.

You do not need to use a claims management company.

Go to the Rip-Off Britain website or which.co.uk and you can find

a pool of resources to help make your complaint. First, gather evidence. Pull together your old paperwork,

policy numbers, when you took out the policy and who sold it to you.

Once you gather all your evidence, use some of the template resources on those websites.

You can fill out your details. They'll generate a template letter

with all the information to make a valid complaint.

Send it to your lender and after eight weeks you should get told if your claim has been accepted.

An estimated 22% of all cold calls are about PPI claims.

Using a claims management company may seem a tempting option,

but making the claim yourself means you get to keep all of your money

and you can find full details as to how to make your claim on our website:

The thing about the cold calling industry is that those companies involved will claim

that there are actually people who don't mind receiving an offer over the telephone,

but the numbers of those who are not at all happy about unsolicited calls, nuisance calls,

has been steadily rising. So if you've ever felt aggrieved at being called by a company

that you have absolutely no interest in doing business with at all,

you'll be particularly interested in our next story and how some people who are sick of cold calls

have fought back and won. I'm about to meet one of them now and he'll tell you how he did it.

Some people might consider Steve Higgins and Richard Herman consumer heroes.

Both of them successfully took on the cold-calling companies who would not take no for an answer.

Steve was being badgered to reclaim PPI that he knew he could never claim

and Richard was being hounded daily by calls from the same call centre, one that is based overseas,

but working for companies in the UK.

Richard, how did you first become aware of the volume and nuisance value of these unsolicited calls?

An occasional call, one wouldn't matter, but to get two calls a day

and to receive calls with the same characteristics made me realise it was probably the same company

over and over again. I realised I had to stop it.

Richard figured that if he stayed on the phone, they'd eventually put him through to someone in the UK

who, wanting him to sign up, would tell him who they were.

I said, "You need to stop calling me. Take me off the list." I felt that would work, speaking to the UK,

and I said, "If you call me again, I'll charge you £10 a minute for my time."

What reaction did you get then? I don't think they took it on board, but I assumed that was the end of it.

So what happened? About a week later, to my astonishment, they called me again,

but I carried on until I got through to the same company in the UK.

I said, "I've already told you not to call me."

I said I'd be sending an invoice for my time.

It had taken 19 minutes before the call centre put Richard through to the UK company, PPI Claimline.

So, true to his word, Richard sent them an invoice for that time,

asking them to pay him £195.

Their reply was a little surprising.

They wrote back to me to say they'd never ever called me,

but I had recordings of all the calls they had made to me.

But it was true. PPI Claimline had not made any of the calls themselves. They explained

that they pay other companies to generate their leads and find people who might be interested

and then put them through to someone who could seal the deal.

So although it was PPI Claimline who wanted his business,

the company actually making the calls was a marketing firm called AAC, based in Bishop's Stortford.

Determined to prove his point, it was that firm Richard decided should pay for his wasted time.

He started small claims proceedings against them, but before the case was heard, AAC sent him a cheque

for £195 plus £25 to cover his court fees.

I got paid and the cold calls stopped, so it was great.

But then you started getting more.

I had about two months with no cold calls, so about three months later

I started to be cold called again. I played along with it again

and said I'd charge for my time.

And when he was called again by another company generating leads for someone else,

Richard invoiced them, too, this time successfully claiming another £230.

Certainly from my point of view it's changed the number of calls I get completely.

Until recently, I had about four months without any. It's made me feel much better. I felt victimised before

because there's nothing you can do to stop them. Most people who get a nuisance call put the phone down.

You actually, as an individual, stood up against a very large organisation.

That took knowledge, but also time and courage.

I think I had to do it. I was fed up being victimised.

The only way to get my equilibrium back was to do something about it.

We wrote to the companies Richard invoiced to get their take on this.

Most didn't reply, although PPI Claimline told us...

They accept that the marketing company they used should not have called Richard again

once he requested to be taken off the consent list. They say...

Richard has now set up a website Say No To Cold Calls that offers help and advice

on how to take cold callers to task,

knowledge that he's used to claim back a considerable amount of money.

And, impressive as that is, fellow cold call crusader Steve Higgins

has also had some extraordinary results after getting fed up with unwanted calls in family time.

We were getting around six, seven, eight phone calls a day.

And I work away. When I come home, I like to spend quality time with my wife and kids.

That was often being interrupted having to answer these calls, putting the phone calls down.

It was just ridiculous.

One company in particular kept calling, telling Steve he was entitled to a PPI refund.

Steve knew this was not the case.

I'd claimed PPI in the past, so I was well aware I'd no right to claim PPI despite them telling me I had.

During two months in late 2012, Steve received 94 calls,

of which he thinks the majority were from the same telemarketing company, working for Synergy Leads Ltd.

However much he asked them to stop, they didn't.

I'd pleaded with them to stop, I'd asked, I'd begged. It didn't work.

It was a barrage of calls and I began to log them. That's how I know I had that many calls.

Steve had had enough. He decided to take action. The next time they called, he again asked them to stop

and told them he would invoice them £10 for every subsequent call.

I spoke to their supervisor on the other end.

I told him I'd asked them to stop and he said he couldn't do that.

I then told him I would be charging him £10 for every call that they made. He put the phone down on me.

I hit on a figure of £10 because I looked at how much time I was spending on each phone call

and then I'd look at my line of work and my chargeable tab.

But the threat of invoices did not work. The calls kept coming.

I tried to complain by email, by writing, by phone. No response.

It was then I decided to take this further.

So Steve went to the government website Money Claim Online and filed a claim

with the Small Claims Court. It cost him £60, after which Synergy Leads didn't offer a defence

and the case was found in Steve's favour. The judgment was for £1,000.

It was 94 phone calls at £10 a call, £940. And then I also got £60 court costs,

which the company had to pay. So it was £1,000 in total.

We wrote to Synergy Leads at their registered address and asked them to comment on Steve's case.

They haven't responded. Steve has quite a track record in winning money through Small Claims.

In the past 16 years, he's taken 150 companies through the courts for everything from unfair bank charges

to mis-sold insurance. And he's been awarded a total of around £75,000 in refunds and costs.

Since he wont his case, he hasn't had a single cold call.

If just one person looks at what I did and follows the same path,

because it's cheap and you don't have to see a solicitor, it's very easy.

So if one person does it, I'm really quite pleased.

The more people do it, the less these calls will happen. Companies will sit up and take notice

and decide against phoning people who shouldn't be phoned.

Here at Rip-Off Britain, we're always ready to investigate more of your stories.

You might have a cautionary tale and want to share it with us so others don't do the same thing.

You can write to us at:

Or you can send us an email to:

The Rip-Off team is ready and waiting to investigate your stories.

It really does seem extraordinary that so many cold calls are still made to people who don't want them.

They absolutely shouldn't be approaching you if that's the case.

But remember there are other ways to reduce your unwanted calls.

For example, do not put your number in the phone book and if asked to tick a box opting out

of what they call "Carefully selected offers", don't tick the one opting in!

And there's lots more advice on our website:

That's where we have to leave you, but we will be back again very soon

to look at even more situations that leave you feeling ripped off.

Until then, bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd