Fluff from the naval of my mind

I am a sucker for charity appeals. Doubly so for children’s charities. So, when I was contacted by someone purporting to be from the Child Safety Initiative I was pleased to help out. But. You knew there was going to be a but right?

Here’s how this worked. I first received a call from someone who presented themselves as a worker for the charity, thanking me for committing to sponsor books that help children understand how to deal with issues such as bullying. What? Well, I may have done but I was away from my office when I received this call and it is the sort of charity I like to help, so I may well have said I would help out in the past. Then this person says I will be contacted by one of her colleagues who will take the relevant details about my company so that they can be printed on the covers. Curious, but fair enough.

Almost immediately I am called by someone else who informs me the call is being recorded ‘for training and quality purposes’ (by the way, the reason for this separate recorded call is to give the appearance on the recording that their sales pitch is straightforward, without all the bullshit about charity work from the first salesperson). They then steamroller through the details and finally announce that 60 books will be £700. Damn! But okay, this is for charity and for kids and I may have said I would help out.

Two days later an invoice arrives demanding settlement within 7 days (note that period) and things become complicated. Firstly, the invoice is so amateurish as to be comical. The first thing that immediately concerned me was that nowhere on the invoice was the registered charity number. (I checked later with the Charities Register and CSI is not a registered charity.) There was a trading name for the ‘Child Safety Initiative’ a publishing company New Media Marketing, which was odd. I must point out that there is a legitimate child safety charity, the Child Safety Education Foundation, which should not be confused with the Child Safety Initiative.

Having received this suspect invoice, I checked through my records and found nothing about agreeing to sponsor books, worse I did find a note that I had asked CSI to remove me from their contact list back in January 2009. Well, I was incensed that I had been misled, so I immediately attempted to call the company to cancel my order. There was, of course, no answer.

There are a number of points worth highlighting at this point. So far, all contact (barring the invoice) had been by phone. The call from the CSI had been made in the afternoon of 3rd December 2009. This means that any agreement was covered by the UK’s distance selling laws. This very clearly provides a 7 day cooling off  period during in which the contract made on the phone can be cancelled (remember that invoice settlement period?). This cooling off period is to protect people from assholes who pressure sell like this.

The seller is also obliged to confirm any phone arrangement in writing (presumably the invoice would satisfy this condition in part), but the seller must also provide  ’additional information’  and this additional information must include:

• the conditions and procedures to enable the consumer to cancel the contract;
• whether the consumer must return the goods to the supplier if the consumer cancels;
• whether the consumer or the supplier is responsible for the cost of returning the goods to the supplier if the consumer cancels;
• in the case of contracts for the supply of services, information on the consequences of agreeing to performance of a service starting before the end of the usual 7 working day cancellation period ;
• the geographical address of the place of business of the supplier to which the consumer may address any complaints;
• information on any after-sales services and guarantees; and
• the conditions for cancelling the contract, where it is of an unspecified duration or a duration exceeding one year.

I had received virtually none of this information. The invoice has only a phone number, fax number, address, trading name notification and the ‘Children’s Safety Initiative’ banner. No information was provided about the conditions or procedure for cancellation, the only confirmation of what was to be provided was the line on the invoice, no details, nothing.

Furthermore, this information must be given to the consumer either:

• prior to the conclusion of the contract, or
• in good time before or during the performance of the contract and, in contracts for the sale of goods, at the latest at the time of delivery of the goods where goods not for delivery to third parties are concerned. This means that where consumer A orders goods to be despatched to consumer B, the information must be given to consumer A prior to the conclusion of the contract.

Summing up, New Media Publication had failed to provide almost all of the information they are obliged to provide.

So, back to the story. I had tried to call, and failed to get an answer, anyhow I should cancel in writing according to the distance selling law so I wrote a letter and sent it to CSI on the 5th December 2009. I then realised that they could ‘lose’ the letter easily as I had not sent it registered post. Had I been confident that they were a legitimate charity or business I would have not been concerned, but I was concerned.

I was still failing to contact them by phone, but I faxed a cancellation notice to the fax number on the invoice on 7th December 2009, I used a fax service rather than my own fax so I had a witness, a receipt for the service and I kept the fax send receipt. All well within the 7 day ‘cooling off’ period so regardless of any other issues I had made all good faith attempts to cancel the order.

I tried once more to cancel the order by phone. And finally got an answer. To be safe I recorded the conversation. I asked whether they had received my cancellation, “No, we have no cancellation.” I pointed out that I had both written and sent a fax. “Oh, well I’ve only just arrived, perhaps its on the fax machine.”

“Okay,” said I, “can you assure me that this order will be cancelled?”

“Yes”

Result. That, I thought, was the end of the matter.

Oh, how wrong.

I received a call today (8 March 2010) from CSI. Their opening gambit this time was “we are about to remove you from our list”. This is well over a year since I asked to be removed and apparently they were just about to do so. Hmmm!

“Just before we do, I can confirm your books are printed and ready. Which school would you like to receive them?”

“Hang on. I cancelled that order months ago.”

“But the books are printed.”

“Tough. The order was cancelled”

“Well, the invoice is £700 so it’s tough on you. Goodbye.” And she hung up.

Now, I deal with many legitimate charities and businesses and none of them would deal with a customer this way.

Following my initial suspicions I had looked into this high pressure publication selling and it’s a scam, plain and simple. They operate barely on the right side of the law. They do indeed provide books to schools (they are apparently very shoddy, certainly nothing like the quality one might expect given the amount charged), but there their similarity to a real business ends. As you can see from the previous story, they use high pressure sales, rely on people’s poor memory, prey on their good nature, constantly call back, ignore instructions to cancel order, and basically behave in a very shoddy way. The Child Safety Initiative (or more accurately New Media Publications Ltd) are either monumentally incompetent or they are dishonest. I suspect it is actually both. There are plenty of reports of this scam in various forms and Trading Standards bodies have information on dealing with them. This advice is, in summary, ignore them.

I am of course never going to pay their invoice. What is more when they phone in future I will keep them on hold (they are calling a Call-Sure number, paying something like 43 pence per minute so there is  a certain piquant thrill for me here) besides the cost, the longer they are on hold with me the less time they have to call other people. I shall also record all conversations with them. I suspect that as soon as I inform them I am recording the call they will hang up. We shall see.

I shall also be reporting them to Ofcom (who police the telephone selling system), Data Protection (because they have repeatedly failed to remove my details) and Trading Standards (for fraudulent practices). This is all a but of bother and I doubt that any of this will do any good (they have a history of shutting down the publishing company, restarting a new company and carry on without pause), but one can but try.