Elderly Parents Possibly Getting Scammed

[Gazereths]

So I have eldery parents who are being hounded by phone, email and visited IRL by people purporting to be contracted by the UK government. A guy was there for 2+ hours today. The specifiics are about energy saving, basically trying to get them to spends £1000's (even £10.000's in some cases) on loft and in-wall insulation, solar panels and double glazed windows. (they have all of these except solar already, I installed the loft insulation myself and the windows are less than 10 years old and in good conditio)

 

I've tried talking frankly with them about it, explaining that the cost savings would take decades to pay off but to no avail. My mum is more amenable but my dad is adament that it's not a scam and it will save 'in the long run' which it would, but what kind of time scale are we talking about? How much time do they realisitically have left?

 

Any ideas on how to talk to them or better yet stop the companies from contacting them (apart from just nuking their Phone and Internet)

 

 

[Spotty]

The people coming to their house trying to convince them to get work done sound like typical unlicensed contractors going door to door trying to find vulnerable people. If they left a business card or something first see if you can find out if they're licensed and if they're a reputable contractor. If they seem dodgy you should report them to the local police.

 

If your parents still want work done then talk to them about it and about looking at getting quotes from other more reputable contractors. 

[Gazereths]

6 minutes ago, Spotty said:

The people coming to their house trying to convince them to get work done sound like typical unlicensed contractors going door to door trying to find vulnerable people. If they left a business card or something first see if you can find out if they're licensed and if they're a reputable contractor. If they seem dodgy you should report them to the local police.

 

If your parents still want work done then talk to them about it and about looking at getting quotes from other more reputable contractors. 

Thanks for the advice, I will visit tonight and see if they left any cards/contact info and look into them. I highly doubt they are legit, or even if they are legit I doubt they have any scruples.

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, Gazereths said:

Any ideas on how to talk to them or better yet stop the companies from contacting them (apart from just nuking their Phone and Internet)

It's a really hard thing to stop them completely.  For people coming to the door, you can always try a no soliciting sign; with the perk that depending where they live it might actually be illegal for them to solicit if there is a clear no soliciting sign (not like there is much repercussions though).  It might stop them though, as people with that sign might be in general harder to convince.

 

Phone and internet, I think that one is harder.  I find that landline phones tend to get hit by spam calls trying to sell more...but then again landlines get hit with less of the "your account has been compromised" than my cell phone.  So its a bit of a trade off (at least here).  Don't know what it's like over there.

 

Here there is the do not call list, which is a registry that all companies must abide by (or face penalty).  Maybe there is something equivalent there?  Although be noted, this only works for the local companies that are legit business (even if they are spamy and scummy).  This does increase the amount of spam calls in general though because now your number is effectively listed to places outside of the country.  With that said though, if the worry is that they are might believe and enter into a contract regarding the home it gives a really good leg to stand on in convincing them not to sign contracts or anything...as you could always convince them that it has to be spam as they aren't abiding by the do not call registry.

 

1 hour ago, Gazereths said:

The specifiics are about energy saving, basically trying to get them to spends £1000's (even £10.000's in some cases) on loft and in-wall insulation, solar panels and double glazed windows

Sadly this is very common.  Where I live, we have a natural gas company that is *effective* run by the province.  The key is, there are "resellers" who are allowed to sign you into deals for gas at a "cheaper" rate.  Every time they know that gas prices are going to drop for years, they phone around saying that they can lock you in at a "lower" price...except when the gas prices fall, you get locked into extremely high gas prices.

 

Are what they are peddling a scam?  Not exactly.  There is some credence in what they often say to be avoided it being officially a scam...but ultimately a lot of those things are pretty close to being scams (and yes in some cases are scams).

 

Often times they don't even bother looking, or they just "assume" that you don't have good quality windows.  You are completely right though in that it's not worth it.  The payoff period for solar and windows are huge (well unless you have leaky windows like my house did).  Even then, door-to-door sales people often don't give good rates either so the payoff rate is even bigger (or they make up for the cheaper rate by doing a sloppy job).

[Gazereths]

@wanderingfool2Thanks for the info. I looked into a no call list and added the number to the TPS (uk no-call service) not sure it'll be much help but worth a shot.

Sadly by the time I got round, a couple of days after the house visit ,  they had paid £3200 for some loft insulation and had the work done. Damn they work fast, round at 7:30am the next day apparently!

It was some kind of spray-in insulation, looks like a snow storm happened up there. Hopefully it will actually benefit them somewhat, but to make back £3200 in energy savings is probably definitely not gonna happen within their lifetimes

[wanderingfool2]

Spray foam insulation always scares me a bit when it's done by door-to-door people.  There are horror stories of them not mixing the chemicals right, causing an incorrect cure which leached foul smelling chemicals into the house.  *don't mean to scare you, just know that it's something that's happened*

[Guest]

If you installed the insulation yourself, you can probably install the solar panels yourself. 

 

Make a choice deal with your father. 

"If you want solar panels, I'll install them for you and you keep the money in the family. If you don't want solar panels then tell him you're not interested." 

 

Then find a legit company to install them and pretend it's your good friend helping you out cuz he's a lad.