Cold-callers want my aunt, 95, to buy cover

Ms M.H. writes: I have been helping my 95-year-old aunt manage the little money she has. I have saved her about £1,500 a year, mostly by cancelling direct debits she has been paying after being cold-called to take out insurance on household appliances, and even on central heating which she does not have. The last caller was Premier Protect 365, which charged her £195 to insure her eight-yearold washing machine.

YOU cancelled the policy the day after your aunt was cold-called. This was well within the 14 days allowed for cancellation, but it was only thanks to your aunt’s bank, TSB, that the £195 was later snatched back and returned to her account. Premier Protect 365 simply ignored requests for a refund.

There are a number of companies with very similar names, so let me be clear that the proper title of the company that called your aunt is Premier Protect Holdings Limited.

It uses a maildrop address in London, but its real location is on the South Coast, a stretch of which is notoriously home to lots of scam domestic appliance insurance outfits. I invited its director Abdelhak Akayour to comment, but he did not reply.

Perhaps Akayour was too busy running his next company, Home Protect 365 Limited. It is in the same business, and its website is almost word for word identical to the Premier Protect 365 website.

Akayour does hop from company to company. His business Xmarketing Limited was compulsorily struck off in 2018. Protect Your Bubble Limited was compulsorily struck off in 2019. And Total Motor Aid Limited was ordered into liquidation by the High Court for nonpayment of taxes.

Premier Protect Holdings is scheduled to follow Akayour’s other companies into oblivion. He has failed to supply legally due details of its ownership and instead has asked Companies House to strike it off. And Home Protect 365 is in the same boat, failing to file ownership details due last April. Officials at Companies House have already started proceedings to shut it down.

The only question left is to wonder how Akayour is allowed to get away with it. Time to ban him from all company directorships, I think.