Telephone Scam?

Over the last week or so we have been getting a fair number of phone calls from someone claiming to have documents showing that my wife took out a personal loan from a finance company, sometime in 2005 and paid it off in 2007. Part of the loan was a PPI. The telephone caller wanted us to sign up to claim this money back. Trouble is that we have never actually taken out any loans ever (except many years ago for our first new car and discovered then that PPI was useless, so we have always turned it down since then). My wife has not had any income for the last 20 years, acting as my full time unpaid carer, so no Finance company would ever have lent her money. Looking back through our Bank records there is no evidence of us ever paying any money out to the Bank concerned in the that time period.
Now we think that they are encouraging us to fraudulently claim the PPI money back . Or they want to charge us for trying to claim it.
So what do you folks think?

 

It's a total scam. They will ask for a huge sum of money to be given to their courier so you can get a big cheque. I get this all the time. I play along keeping them thinking I'm buying it. Really just keeping them on the phone as they get p'd off when they waste 30 minutes of their time for nothing. Don't judge it's fun and I don't get out much. A new one is the hospital calling to make an appointment so they need confidential info. Don't fall for this either. I went through chemo 2 years ago and I use a wheelchair so it sounds believable but if it was the hospital they don't cold call and want your date of birth etc. I play along as long as I can keep a straight face or lose my temper.

 

My wife did play along, but as soon as she said that our bank records showed no payments to the bank concerned, they put the phone down.
Never have believed in things where they appear to want to give us money.

 

That's what we have at home, the BT8500 with number blocking (also block withheld number and international calls), with 1 additional handset I think it was about £36 from Robert Dyas when on special offer and with a further 10% discount, never been bothered by scammers, cold callers or simply people we don't want to talk to since we got it. Peace and quiet at last.

The only calls PPI that have got through were to a mobile number (sim card from ebay, £1 for £5 credit) from several companies who didn't know my name, nor that I haven't taken out any loans (other than a mortgage) in over 30 years, but were adamant I could claim, so kept it in my spare mobile in the car until all calling credit used.

 

I have the solution to scam phone calls. We didn't have a land line installed when we moved in. We both use mobile 'phones - £10 a month - unlimited free calls to landlines. I can't see why anyone would want a landline to make calls. I also use mobile broadband.

Any numbers I don't recognise go unanswered and blocked - so if they call again the phone instantly hangs up.

You can purchase mobile telephones that look like normal landline handsets (although we don't bother with these).

Saw recently that BT were increasing their line rental - is it £16 a month now? £6 more a month than I pay all in.

Mobile broadband is rapidly increasing in speed. I wouldn't be surprised if landlines become obsolete.

 

I just hang up.

 

I send emails requesting calls to my mobile, phone calls cost money. If I'm in a supermarket or somewhere else with free wifi, I don't phone Mrs Scrungee, I email her.

 

We don't get any phone scam calls now, we used to get a few a year but that was it