Here’s Otis Prior, whose company Home Sure Solutions Limited bombarded the elderly with unsolicited coldcalls.
I can only assume he has no sense of irony, given that he’s now moaned about my “unsolicited visit” to his office.
I’d gone to ask if he wanted to comment on the £100,000 fine that’s just been slapped on his company for calling people registered with the Telephone Preference Service, which is designed to stop you getting unwanted sales calls.
“I am surprised that you would turn up without notice at somebody’s place of work during a global pandemic,” he said in a statement on Monday, apparently unaware that Covid restrictions have been lifted.
The statement added that the company’s outbound sales team has been closed for over a year and threatened: “Any stories written about Home Sure Solutions Ltd with incorrect or slanderous information will be taken seriously and will be dealt with by our legal team.”
There was no hint of an apology in the statement for the distress caused by his company’s coldcallers.
Facebook posts from 2019 show Home Sure Solutions recruiting “money-motivated” staff with the incentive of a bonus jaunt to Benidorm, which may be where Prior’s Instagram profile picture of him lounging in a pool was taken.
His company sold warranties on domestic white goods and is one of five companies fined this week by the Information Commissioner for “predatory marketing calls”.
I spoke to Julie, whose brother John has early stage dementia and was targeted by this lot.
One of the policies that John was flogged included cover for his cooker for a one-off fee of £165.
John doesn’t even have a cooker, using only a microwave to heat food.
The same company phoned on at least one other occasion, persuading John to take out a second policy on his white goods, this time costing £9.99 a month.
Numerous other coldcallers plagued the 67-year-old from Yorkshire, with the result that he ended up buying five different policies to cover his fridge-freezer and at least three to cover his washing machine, plus others for his television and satellite equipment, paying around £5,000 in total.
"We speak most days by phone and last March he asked me to come over to look at his finances, he did not feel very happy," she said.
“He had a box filled with paperwork and almost immediately I realised something was wrong.
“There were policies galore on white goods, a lot were duplicates on the same goods, sometimes with two or three policies from the same company.
“Since I got Power of Attorney another two companies have tried to take out direct debits without authorisation.
“These people are lower than low, taking advantage of a vulnerable person, it’s absolutely disgusting.
“I filled in a report with Action Fraud, spending two hours giving the names and addresses of the companies.
“I got a standard reply almost straight away saying there was nothing they could do, they would not take any action
“I felt, why did I bother? It was so disspiriting.”
Action has now been taken by the Information Commissioner’s Office, whose latest five fines total £405,000.
It ruled that all five companies deliberately targeted the elderly by buying marketing lists of homeowners aged over 60 with landlands, saying that the evidence suggests the companies were either working together or using the same marketing list.
The companies fined are:
• Home Sure Solutions Ltd, Hove, East Sussex. Fined £100,000 for 229,483 unwanted marketing calls. Director: Otis Prior, 30.
• UK Appliance Cover Ltd, London. £100,000 fine for 39,167 unwanted calls. Director: James Sydney Michael Sutton, 45. He was also a director of UK Cover Services, which was put into compulsory liquidation in June last year.
• UK Platinum Home Care Services Ltd, London. £110,000 fine for 412,556 marketed calls. The director at the time of the calls was Yugashen Govender, 32.
• Domestic Support Ltd, Littlehampton, West Sussex. £80,000 fine for 69,133 unwanted calls. Directors Steven Lilley, 37, Nicholas Piner, 39, Ini Boulboul, 35 - since resigned. Lilley and Piner are also directors of Domestic Support Ltd, Satellite Consumer Services Ltd, Plumbing Support Ltd, and Appliance Support Ltd, and TV Support Ltd, Boiler Support Ltd and Campaign Support Ltd. They were also directors of Emergency Support Ltd, which was put into compulsory liquidation in 2017.
• Seaview Brokers Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex. £15,000 fine for 4,737 cold calls. Nicholas Lomax, 44, was the director at the time of the calls.
Information Commissioner John Edwards urged everyone to help protect vulnerable relatives and friends by registering them with the Telephone Preference Service and reporting unlawful calls.
“When I learnt the details of these cases I said that we are not going to call this nuisance calling, nuisance is understating it, they are predating vulnerable elderly people and emptying their bank accounts, that’s more than a nuisance,” he said.
“I’m disgusted by this kind of conduct, I think it’s reprehensible, it’s exploiting the vulnerable and it warrants the full force of the law.”
And he said that the directors would be pursued if the fines are not paid.
“If these companies go out of business and evade our fine I want the Insolvency Service to make sure the directors are banned. They do not deserve the protection of the corporate veil.
“Thirty four directors have been disqualified as a result of Insolvency Service investigations that have followed on from referrals from our office.”
If you're concerned about the warranties on your white goods, first check your home contents insurance policy, this may already cover you for breakages, and if you are going to buy extra warranties then shop around - and never deal with coldcallers.
If you are plagued by unsolicited phone calls then it’s worth considering getting a call blocker device.
investigate@mirror.co.uk
