Police forces have been caught selling confidential details of road accident victims to insurance companies, claims management companies and ambulance- chasing lawyers.

The referral fees earned by one force, the Met, amounted to more than £5 million since 2009 and represented more than 10,000 people subsequently pestered to make a personal injury claim, one saying that he had been contacted 340 times.

Referral fees, which have greatly increased the cost of motor insurance, and the income of Police forces, will become illegal in April.

Meanwhile the legal ombudsman has put a shot across the bows of solicitors trying to market themselves by revealing that a legal firm, unnamed, charged an unnamed wife going through a divorce £4,000 for photocopying, aggressively chasing her for the money when she was unable to pay.

Given that an A4 black and white copy costs around 1p to produce, and the on-street price is around 10 pence this could represent a massive 40,000 copies at 10p, or 4000 copies at £1 each, or 1000 copies at £4 each, or 100 copies at £40 each. Whatever, the ombudsman service felt it was “extortionate” and ordered the unnamed firm to waive the charge, along with another £11,000 worth of fees. Continue reading →

Ethical Consumer magazine has published ratings for ethical behaviour for seven supermarkets, based on the firm’s impact on the environment, its treatment of animals and people and its stance on such things as genetic engineering and anti-social finance.

1. The Co-operative 6.5 (Most ethical)
2. Marks & Spencer 6 3
3. Waitrose 4
4. Morrisons/Tesco 2.5
5. Sainsbury’s 2
6. Asda 0

BT, a firm which makes considerable profits from billions of unwanted telephone sales calls now wants to fill its boots stopping some of them reaching their targets.

The BT 6500 is a handset that BT say will block 80% of the marketing calls, often from outside the UK and with number withheld, and costs £44.99. Apparently BT’s clever marketeers got the idea from the 50,000+ calls it gets every month to its nuisance call advice line.

Rumours that BT’s next marketing move is a very expensive system for telephone marketeers that gets calls past its new device, should be treated, in our view, as a real possibility, so watch this space….

Manchester is the worst place to live if one is trying to lose weight, according to Weightwatchers.

The firm recently compiled a list of UK cities and counted the number of inhabitants per junk food outlet, including take-away shops and cafes. Manchester had the least number of people per outlet at 492 followed by Bristol with 623, Edinburgh with 725, Brighton with 768, London with 820, and healthy Glasgow with 923.

The results come as obese people are being told that they could lose benefit, and therefore only be able to afford junk food, if they fail to shed the excess.

Have you ever been to a seminar or session at an exhibition or conference that was promoted as an educational opportunity but turned out to be an obvious sales pitch, with the seller enjoying a captive market from the stage?

If you have you will not be surprised to hear that some speakers (sellers) pay for their slots at some events, and at others are persuaded by the exhibition or conference organiser to speak for free and the chance to sell to the audience, hence the number of sales pitches that have to be endured. Continue reading →

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has warned payday lenders – legal loan sharks that charge up to 4,000 per cent APR – to clean up their act or face closure.

This follows the OFT uncovering significant amounts of evidence that the aggressive marketing and seriously shabby way the lenders treat their victims pushes many vulnerable families into a crippling spiral of debt. One example given by the OFT is the continuous payment authority that many lenders insist is signed by their borrowers, a document that enables the lenders to clean out the bank accounts of their victims if they are late in paying. A full report on the abuses is expected from the OFT this January.

Meanwhile website Mumsnet has banned advertisements from all payday lenders on the grounds that it does not want its name associated with them.

A group of multi-national TV manufacturers who ran a cartel to fix the price of cathode ray tubes across the world has been fined a record £1.19 billion by the EU.

The EU found that the illegal cartel, which included Panasonic, Phillips, Samsung, Technicolour, Toshiba and LG Electrics fixed prices of the now-obsolete tubes, which accounted for 70% of the cost of a TV set, for 10 years between 1996 and 2006, when they were replaced by LCD and plasma technology. Secret meetings to determine prices took place on golf courses, the EU were told. Continue reading →

A boycott of internet retailer Amazon for its tax avoidance has been called by the publishers of Ethical Consumer magazine.

Back in November Amazon admitted to MPs that it based its UK and European operations in Luxembourg for the lower tax rates and claimed not to know its UK turnover.

Other large firms now coming under public scrutiny for the tax they avoid and leave the rest of us to pay are Starbucks and Google.