JUST BIN IT!

IF YOU live outside South Devon, England, you probably won't have seen my Torbay Times Pensioners Platform column for November-December 2015, so here is part two of that column....

Lord Toby Harris Chairman: National Trading Standards

ACCORDING to officers working for National Trading Standards (NTS) many UK pensioners are being ripped-off by scams arriving through their letter boxes in the form of unsolicited mail. Between April 2014 and April this year NTS officers identified nearly 11,000 victims aged, on average, 74 years. Typically, they had been cheated out of more than £1000, but the NTS believes the losses are much higher.

Indeed, NTS figures point to prize draw scams alone costing the UK public £60million, with an estimated 380,000 victims each year. Lord Toby Harris (pictured above), who chairs the NTS, said: “It is not just money they take from innocent people. Many victims feel they have lost their dignity, their self-confidence and their sense of security. We [at NTS] have limited resources and I am all too aware that, in many areas, we may only be skimming the surface of the problem.”

So, don’t become a scam victim. If you receive an item of post through your letter box that you don’t recall asking for, or you’re not expecting. And if it’s telling you about a prize draw or making other offers that look too good to be true, that’s exactly what it is … too good to be true. Just bin it!