Actually North_londoner your post is almost a carbon copy of what brought me to this board in the first place.
I don't know where the spammers got our number and in some cases our details from, but they can be plausable if you are not paying attention.
This is much worse if you have a vulnerable person who may answer the phone and might confirm (or provide) valuable information to the spammers, even if they stop short of handing bank details.
Action Fraud and the like have many warnings about this, saying you shouldn't confirm anything and insist on calling back the organisation on their official number etc.
Therefore you probably can tell my opinion of companies phoning you out of the blue and insisting to hand over security details and questions before they will talk to you.
I have had a difficult time trying to give a consistent message to the vulnerable person I am trying to look after.
At the time Plusnet chose to call out of the blue, we had been dealing with a particularly agressive bunch that would phone multiple times each day and switch numbers constantly when I blocked them.
It got to the point where for a time I had to block any number that began 02.
These people by the way all pretended to be telecoms companies, offering to save on your line rental. Most said "BT" but occassionally "Talk Talk" or "Virgin" was offered.
As the person involved really did not like not answering the phone, nor being "rude" to anyone calling, I actually told them that these people were scammers and that our phone company would not call us like that.
Imagine my amazement when a 0114 number turned up supposedly Plusnet. Checking on the very useful whocallsme verified this as well on top of this very forum thread turning up on my Google search.
To say I was annoyed and embarrassed to actually have to say our own telephone provider was now calling when they shouldn't be was difficult to get across.
I blocked this number anyway and said that the phone should be put down regardless. It is likely any issues would either be emailed or in the customer portal anyway. Things like service going down aren't told individually anyway, often just appearing on the status pages.
This is the angle I think Plusnet hasn't thought through very well. They seem to think most people would appreciate the offers or just politely say no thank-you, if they didn't want it, as the poster speaking for the silent majority felt they had to say.
The reality is that the call had all the hallmarks of a scam, especially when you believed the company would not call you in this way.
My first thought was that Plusnet had its database stolen, like what happened to Talk-Talk the year before. In that case a number of people reported false "Talk Talk" contact and had been conned before Talk Talk finally owned up and warned their customers.
I want to thank the OP and the other posters reporting this here and on whocallsme, which allowed me to find it was Plusnet doing this and not an outside scammer, as this would caused much more stress and time to investigate.
Even if Plusnets intentions are sincere to help customers find better offers, there are ways to do this without alarming some of your vulnerable customers, no matter how much of a minority they are.
Some good suggestions have been put forward by other posters, such as emails or customer portal notifications that would get the same result.
Maybe they could consider using these methods instead.
Cleandishee
