Watchdog must turn off this ‘TV care’ firm
D.C. writes: My 87-year-old mother has just been scammed by a cold-caller. My wife called round and found my mother on the phone with a debit card next to her. My wife asked the caller what it was about and was told they were from Sky. My wife thought it was dodgy, so ended the call. I checked the bank account I share with my mother and found a pending payment for £252 to Tech Support Services, Spain. I phoned the bank and got the card cancelled.
COLD-callers posing as Sky to trick people into giving their card details is nothing new. Typically, they try to sell so-called maintenance or warranty schemes, or they tell Sky customers they are on the wrong package deal and if they give their card number they can be transferred to one that is better value.
You and your wife did all the right things – and well done for that – but it was what happened next that startled me. You rang the number that had cold-called your mother a nd f o und it belonged to a company called UK TV Care Limited. This is a company so dodgy that it simply should not be allowed to be in business.
I warned against UK TV Care as long ago as February last year. It was tricking people then, offering a scheme to insure satellite TV equipment. The scheme was provided by a sister company called Sky Protect Limited, the same name as the genuine warranty scheme offered to customers by the genuine Sky TV business.
Neither of the two rip-off companies was authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority to market any kind of insurance or warranty cover. They claimed customers were protected by the Financial Ombudsman Service, but this was a lie.
At the time, the regulator refused to comment on UK TV Care. Four months later though, it put a warning on its website that consumers should be ‘especially wary’. The watchdog explained: ‘We believe this firm has been providing financial services or products in the UK without our authorisation.’
It issued the same warning about Sky Protect Limited.
But what has happened since then? It looks as though the only action taken has been by the real Sky TV company. It won a legal order to change the name of the bogus Sky Protect Limited to the rather less catchy 09984293 Limited. In May, that company was compulsorily struck off by officials at Companies House.
That left UK TV Care Limited. It was run by two directors, Belalia Taha Ali Cherif and Anita Kimbell, both resident in Spain. Last January, the pair told Companies House they had quit, leaving nobody in charge. Proceedings are now in hand to strike off the British company, but it looks as though the name has been registered in Spain to allow it to carry on scamming under the same title.
I invited UK TV Care to comment. It did not reply. I also invited the Financial Conduct Authority to say what action it had taken since it put a warning on its website over a year ago. UK TV Care has been using an address in London, and City telephone numbers, so surely the regulator could have done more than just put a page on its website? An injunction perhaps, or court action to have the company liquidated?
But the watchdog refused to say anything except to fall back on its usual mantra that it cannot comment on individual firms – a neat way of concealing the likely explanation that it cannot discuss its action because it has failed to take any.