What a wicked way to get customers! (GM Card)

Member Name: SusanLesley

Product:	GM Card
Date:	20/03/01 (207 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Preying on older people

I have a dire warning to any of you out there who enjoy entering competitions – be VERY careful if you’re stopped in the street by a market researcher with a clipboard asking you to ‘enter a competition’.

I’ll share my story with you…..

My parents, both in their seventies, started to get junk mail regarding a GM card. What made warning bells sound was that the letters were addressed to my father but at the house two doors away. At least junk mail usually has the correct address on it.

Then a letter arrived enclosing my father’s credit card, which he had not requested, and giving him a credit limit of £500! My mother rang me and asked my advice. I told her not to worry and took the telephone number from her in order to ring the customer services helpline for GM cards.

The first girl I spoke to was not very helpful at all. She said that my father must have filled in a card request at the airport. I explained that he has no cause to go to an airport but this didn’t seem to make any difference to her. I asked her to cancel the card forthwith and she told me that my father would have to write and request the cancellation. I reminded her that he had not asked for the card in the first place and told her that, as he suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease, he would not be able to write to her company.

I have to admit I was getting pretty angry by this time and it must have showed in my voice as she asked me to hold. The next person who came to the telephone was her supervisor and she was much more helpful.

I explained the situation again and she asked if my father could have filled out a request for the card in an airport or filling station. I told her that he would not have visited either of these places.

She then asked if he might have filled in the request in the street thinking it was a competition. I thought that this was a strange question but said that, as
we are a family of competition addicts, this could be a possibility.

She went on to explain that they had asked an outside firm to take on the marketing for them and were paying them by the number of requests they could get. She said that they had received a lot of complaints like mine as the researchers were telling people that they were entering a competition in order to get their details. I was furious!

To be fair she agreed to cancel the card there and then and also put a stop on all correspondence to my parents. She asked me to check that the card had been completely destroyed as well, which I did.

What are these people thinking of? To subject a younger person to this sort of underhand trick is bad enough, but to target pensioners is absolutely disgusting. What about those who don’t have someone to help them with worrying mail?

Or, even worse, what if the card falls into the wrong hands in transit? No one would know to contact the company, as the card was unsolicited, so the first sign of the card being used would be the bill received by the unsuspecting ‘competition’ entrant.

If this sort of behaviour isn’t already illegal it certainly should be!

Summary: