| 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.
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