These nasty businesses that prey on the elderly

Mil recently received a letter containing a cheque for £10,000.

Well, that would certainly cover her care home fees for a few months.

She was very excited about it and couldn’t wait to pass the envelope over to me, her unofficial financial advisor, on one of our regular visits to see her.

I sensed everything was not what it seemed from the message on the front of the envelope – URGENT – Cheque enclosed.

As those of a more cynical nature may already have guessed, all was not what it seemed.

For the cheque, admittedly made out in her name and in the sum of £10,000, had a small-print legend underneath it – “Sample – this is what your winning cheque would look like”.

It took me quite some time to convince Mil that it wasn’t real and that it was just a method employed by some mail order companies to get customers to buy something.

The even smaller print, which any half decent retired journo ALWAYS reads, actually said she needed to place an order, that her name would then go into a draw for a top prize of £10,000 and that all orders placed up to December 31, 2016 (this was in about March) would be entered.

In essence it was just an expensive lottery.

Spotted locally - that's one vote  already cast.

What on earth do these businesses think they are doing? Well, I think they know perfectly well that elderly people are much more trusting and they prey on that.

It took some time to persuade Mil that she didn’t have to place an order for anything she did not need or want and that her chances of actually winning the £10,000 were pretty remote.

After a bit of discussion, we agreed that she found the sheer volume of catalogues received was overwhelming her.

They arrived with monotonous regularity and quickly built up into a six to seven inch deep pile on her coffee table. All with envelopes marked “URGENT”, or “Cheque Enclosed” or even “Payment Notice Enclosed” – usually in bold or even red ink.

Most remained unopened for lengthy periods and caused her great distress as she had not found the time to open them all but thought they were incredibly important.

Needless to say, I have written to most of the companies involved and asked that they stop sending the catalogues to Mil. To date, that seems to have worked.