Web Design by Chris Philpot

For many years we have been reporting that a very few local residents seem to take malicious joy from lighting smelly, smoky bonfires whenever they feel like it. Perhaps in the early still of a warm summer evening, whenever they want! One of your webmasters has breathing problems and loves walking in the clear country air yet whenever the bonfires are lit he has to retire inside with windows firmly closed. This is downright unfair! Now we have suggested that the Parish Council might like to consider what they can do - very little if truth be told. So we wondered what else we could do.

Then we thought. Most of the village residents are owner occupiers and they would not like the value of their homes to drop even more so we have decided to truthfully report whenever there is smoke in the air. Perhaps when one or two residents find themselves unable to sell their property something will be done!

After all, all it takes is to call to your neighbour and remind them that their thoughtlessness might well hit them in their pocket! Maybe that will work where laws haven't? Let's see!

 

So what is it all about? This is what we have managed to find out. If you are interested you will find lots of information on the internet as we are not alone in trying to get to the bottom of these people! We would also be interested to find out where they get names from as they seem to know both partners full names and addresses! The calls appear to be on behalf of a business that is at present called "Regency Porcelain" or "Regent Porcelain" (Company No. 06964605). They were first registered in Kent (in fact near the Channel Tunnel - clue - which is half an hour from France ;-)  but are now based in Bristol. Owned by two French men called Laurent Le Du and Jeremy Abitbol (although even these names seem to change - might just be poor spelling!) Take a look at the following official web site for a little more information. http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/sccwebsite/sccwspages.nsf/LookupWebPagesByTITLE_RTF/Court+results+in+Guildford?opendocument http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2009/07/regency-porcelain-in-court-ove.html  OK, but how does the scam work? After getting the phone call you are invited to a "special showing" of Limoges Porcelain at a local hotel and are offered a free bottle of "Real French Wine" (!!!) and some free "fairground china" as a carrot to get you to visit. The sales people are after greedy, naive people who collect porcelain as an investment. Now why pick on this area? ;-) When you get to the event you are shown some genuine Limoges porcelain and are offered "a similar set" at an unbelievable price. This is where the scam has altered recently. It used to be the old "auction scam", where people were told they were bidding for a sealed box which they imply contains goods of great value. Guess what? When you open your box you find "fairground porcelain" which will have cost you a fortune as you have paid a buyers premium and lots and lots of extras! If you ask for a refund you are (quite literally) sent out the back where you are told by some heavies that if you want a refund you had better enjoy hospital food! Yup, in England, in 2010, they actually threaten people! That was how the scam worked "then", but now it seems that after the last court case they have changed tactics and after selling rubbish to the "punters" they are singling out very gullible (or greedy!) people to give them the real hard sell, which goes like this... You are told that a set of porcelain will be specially made for you. (This to try and avoid the law about refunds not being applicable for specially made items.) A couple of weeks later you are visited at home with your order as "they happen to be in the area". (This explains why they insist on confirming your full home address when they ring, no doubt a quick look at Google Earth tells 'em if you worth £3000). When you see the stuff you have ordered you realise that it comes from not France at all, but is a Chinese copy of very poor quality. "Punters" are then told very aggressively that the item has been specially made for them and that they are obliged to take delivery (they are of course not, as for once an EEC law is in their favour) but the more vulnerable can part with up to £3000 (yes) to get the sellers off their backs! So it's a double scam unloading rubbish copies of real porcelain on vulnerable people with a twist in the tail! Now one might almost say that those who are greedy deserve what they get, but it's the repeated telephone calls that really annoy most people! If this could be addressed then we feel this company might have got away with their business tactics for much longer. Your webmasters have tried contacting BT about these dam nuisance calls but they could not be less helpful! It would be easy for BT to stop the calls coming into the country as they attack small localised areas at a time with an automated dialler computer (hence the frequent silent calls) but BT are quite uninterested! Why? They get a percentage of each call! If anyone can find out where the next hotel exhibition is (we suspect Brighton or Gatwick) could they please tell us urgently as we have a BBC News film crew on standby! The visit will be well worth seeing when it gets onto the screen! Please email the webmasters urgently if you can give any firm information.

Remember, if we don't see or smell smoke then nothing will happen - and we will have photographs to prove what we write.

HorstedKeynes.com #1999 backdoor