Hi,

In December 2006 the engineer called to service my fire extinguishers. On leaving I was asked to sign his work sheet which I thought was to confirm that he had carried out his work.
When I received the bill it had risen by 50% over the previous years. I paid but canceled further work. Later I received a bill for breach of contract for five years. I refused to accept that I had signed a contract This February 14 2008 I have just won the case held in the small claims court in Ashford Kent. However, won is debatable as I had to close my business for the day and must have spent at least 12 hours in writing letters etc. Also you cannot put a value on the stress. It is far better to spend time checking what you sign, even if you recognize the caller.

Derek

We had a salesman come to the door trying to get us to change our electricity supplier. We had gone out leaving my 16 year old daughter at home, he got her to sign to say that he has been a few weeks later knock on the door, it was a bloke wanting to read the meter, thought nothing of it a week later we got a final bill. I rang to ask why a final bill and was told we had changed our supplier. This company was British Gas. We stayed with our old supplier but how low can you get.

Keith

we had same problem with chubb fire the guy came out to service equipment i signed, later to get a bill for £500 2 extinguishers £150 each plus service 2 others i phoned around and 3 companys quoted me £80 each i told chubb to poke it and cancelled my contract with them then they halved the bill straight away !

We got a bill from Chubb for replacing a fire extinquisher - 180 odd quid, when i complained and said what about my Unipart discount, it was re-invoiced at £45

Regards
Dave

It gets worse!

Much worse!!

My brother is a Barrister and has recently dealt with a case where an elderly person had their HOUSE stolen!

The way it was done was pathetically easy. The owner was asked to sign for a "Delivery", in fact the "Delivry record" was a deed of transfer.

You would not believe that this was so easily done. You might think that it would be easy to rectify too. But (although he won the case) it was not. The point is that the record on the land registry is held to be the correct one and once changed (albeit by fraud) it is very difficult to reverse.

What is more, this sort of scam is not at all uncommon.

Be careful, very careful!