The award of “Worst Scam of 2010″ (so far) goes to……SPL Advertising.

I took a call from a lady a few hours ago claiming to be called Susan and stating that she knows the last time she called me I told her that I didn’t want to hear from her anymore, but she had to call me to advise me that my advert was going to print soon and she needed to confirm the address to send my invoice to. (Are you liking the sound of this already….?)

I replied that I did not have the foggiest what she was talking about and proceeded to ask for some more info on the advert, to which she told me that I had “verbally agreed” with her last September that I would place an advert in her publication and now the advert is about to be published, I needed to make the payment.

She told me that as it was a “verbal agreement” she was unable to send me anything in the post apart from the invoice, which was now outstanding for £149.00. She said she was more than happy to take payment over the telephone today as this would save me “time and money” apparently? What a thoughtful person Susan is.

When I asked for the name of her company she was very vague but told me that they were called SPL Advertising and they were based in Manchester. When I asked her for the company website address, she said she didn’t know it (it gets worse….) so I asked for their phone number and the name of her Manager…she advised me she was not able to provide that as the department she worked in was outgoing calls only, so I asked for the main phone number so I could report them to Trading Standards at which point she shouted at me to stop being awkward and advised I would be sent the bill in the post to pay within 14 days.

She also said the telephone number and web address would be on the invoice/letter so I could call back and query it then. So…let me get this straight:

1. The company is nowhere to be found on the net, companies house and does not have a web presence at all.
2. A company that runs nationwide ad campaigns cannot provide a phone number for me to call back on.
   
3. It seems acceptable for employees of this company to shout at their *clients* (that be me apparently…)
   
4. I owe them £149 and it must be paid within 14 days (this is my favourite one…..)
   
5. I verbally agreed to place this advert but when I queried the advert content she could not advise me and said I would be sent a copy of it AFTER I had paid the invoice.
   
6. Her name is Susan but as company policy states they are not allowed to provide their surnames, that is all she can tell me.
   
7. Susan doesn’t like being called a liar as I found out when she hung up on me. Sorry Susan.
   
8. SPL Advertising call from a withheld number so you can’t trace the call or call them back to rant at them then hang up back…(Which I find helps my anger management)
   

When they send me the invoice I will, of course, post it up here for all to read (and laugh at) and I will send it back to them with a copy of this blog and a copy of my letter to Trading Standards, which I am sure will do absolutely nothing and SPL will change their name and carry on as usual…grrr.

Since writing this blog yesterday, I have had the same company call me on my mobile and my husband’s mobile twice today, both times telling me they were calling to thank us for our support with their charity campaign a few months ago. When you question anything they say they just hang up and the annoying thing is they call from withheld numbers so they cannot be traced.

I have also spoken to a number of people on Twitter and they have been called by the same people also trying the same scams over the last few weeks. It seems the company makes a call to you a few days prior to get the contact name and position of someone in the company (Mine was someone calling from “HMRC” to send me some new legislation paperwork for small businesses)  and they then use this name to pretend that that was the person who verbally agreed the work.

I came across this which is quite interesting reading…

http://www.adscams.co.uk/

http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/fakebilling.php – Which actually lists SPL Publishing as Summit Publishing Ltd.