On Friday I received a text which I’m sure many of you will also have received:

“Due to a new legislation, those struggling with debt can apply to have it written off. For free information reply INFO or to opt out text STOP. Free Text!”.

Now the obvious grammar and syntax errors, along with the fact that it came from a private mobile number, should immediately alert any intelligent person to the fact that there is a potential scam at work.

More to the point, can someone please define ‘struggling?’.

Like many, I have an existing bank loan and overdraft that I would rather not be burdened with. I ‘struggle’ with them in the sense that they reduce my day-to-day material quality of life. However, the payments are not unaffordable and as I borrowed the money in the first instance, so the repayment of that amount plus interest is entirely my responsibility.

I appreciate that there are instances where a person’s circumstances will change suddenly, and the means that they had when taking out a loan or overdraft in good faith no longer exist – through no fault of their own. But, are there not already mechanisms in place whereby such debt can already be restructured, frozen or written off,  even if an IVA or bankruptcy bring certain problems with them?

I had enormous difficulty understanding exactly what this text advertisement was suggesting – maybe if you just don’t feel like repaying the bank, building society or loans company you can have it written off, no questions asked and no strings attached?

I’ve also been bombarded with texts containing an invitation to collect the £300,000 I’ve won, or to cash in on a personal injury:

“you still haven’t claimed for the accident you had”.

Of course I haven’t, probably because no such accident took place, certainly not one that left me with a serious injury.

A few years ago, a mate of mine asked over a beer if I’d like to take part as a passenger in what is widely known as a ‘Crash for Cash‘. That is a staged ‘accident’, engineered to extract as much money as possible from the insurance of another driver.

Apparently, he knew a “well dodgy lawyer” who specialised in this sort of thing, and could work the system in such a way that would deliver the best payout; I don’t need money that badly.

Panorama made a programme on the subject, which is one of Auntie’s better efforts, getting to the centre of a criminal gang involved in the scam, while showing the knock-on effect on the premiums of law-abiding motorists.

I never discussed with my friend was whether this ‘accident’ involved setting up an innocent motorist for a fall, or would simply be an outright fraud based on an invented incident.

Genuine accidents happen every day on the roads and in people’s places of work. Most people are able to make a distinction between an accident that was ‘one of those things’ and an honest mistake or act of carelessness on the part of a motorist, employer or employee that may still require certain costs to be covered.

The ‘compensation culture’ that has crept into British society in the last decade (thanks very much to our friends across the pond) has now become rampant. The notion of a genuine accident for which there was no blame and no resultant claim (on a no-win, no-fee basis it should be added) does not seem any longer to compute with a large section of the population.

Why?

We’ve all got ourselves into a rush, fed by perfectly rational drives for more money and everything to be bigger and faster. Moreover, we want it all now, and this seems to have broken important pieces of the chain that defined exactly what money is and how it is made.

In theory, money is the by-product of having goods or services for which people are prepared to pay a real value in the marketplace. This tends to involve patience and hard work; the first of these appears to be in very short supply these days.  Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that many have succumbed to the offers of money for nothing from claims specialists and ambulance-chasing lawyers.

Genuine costs incurred in real accidents where one party was clearly to blame should of course be met. Unlike some Libertarians, I don’t go in for removing all health and safety laws at work, just most of them; people who employ others are responsible for their actions, and should not be allowed to set death-traps with impunity.

However, just as trashy ‘reality television’ has broken the link between fame and actually being quite good at something, the compensation culture,  and its promised of ‘no win, no fee’, has offered a means by which the unscrupulous and greedy can make a fast buck while not producing anything of real market value. One of the side effects of this is the growth of scams that deliberately play on those chasing a slice of the action.

I’ve never had the famous phone call from Nigeria offering to make me a billionaire in exchange for handing over my bank account number, card details and an ‘interim payment’ to facilitate the transaction. The natural response of any sane person who receives such a call or text is of course to laugh, then hang up or delete the message, so I struggle to find any sympathy at all for those who fall victim to such swindles. After all, the calls only exploit a cocktail of greed and idleness that clearly exists in anyone who answers the text or take the call seriously.

Hopefully the proposal currently on the table of taking the ‘zero risk, high reward’ element out of accident claims will lead to a reduction in the quantity of nonsense of fraudulent cases making their way into the courtroom. Until then I should probably expect a further string of messages inviting this bunny to cash in on an ‘accident’ that never actually happened or collect his winnings from one lottery or another.

Then again, the fact that I don’t play the ‘poor man’s tax‘ in the UK, or elsewhere, should probably be a clue that something isn’t quite right.

http://outspokenrabbit.blogspot.com/

Joe Public August 1, 2011 at 20:15

@ Dave H

“…….Many people pay the little extra to protect their no-claims discount
…….”

But few realise that after a claim, whilst their ‘discount %’ remains the
same, their base-premium has rocketed, so they now pay substantially more!

macheath August
1, 2011 at 21:42

Insurance has become a lottery in itself; your inflated premiums buy your
entry ticket and, if you’re lucky, your number will come up – someone will
run into you and admit liability.

Three months after an ‘accident’ – someone reversed at snail’s pace into
my parked car – I’m still fending off calls from speculative claims
management companies who stop just short of inviting me to invent fictitious
medical symptoms for a ‘guaranteed compensation of at least £1,500′.

Dave H August 1, 2011 at 19:25

There’s a sting in the tail for the no-win no-fee racket. My father
discovered this, having been in an accident and had his details passed onto
the pond life by someone without his consent. If you take them up on the
offer, you are recommended to take out an insurance policy to cover you if you
lose the case, so it’s not free. It made me wonder who gets commission on that
policy, seeing as someone invariably does. The pond life in this instance was
politely told ‘no thanks’ and the impression was gained that quite a lot of
people do indeed refuse their wonderful offer, so perhaps all is not yet
lost.

For Blue Eyes – doesn’t comprehensive insurance already cover you if the
other driver is uninsured? Many people pay the little extra to protect their
no-claims discount already, which is effectively the same thing if you can’t
recover from the other party.

Joe Public August 1, 2011 at 19:20

“Due to a new legislation, those struggling with debt can apply to have it
written off. For free information reply INFO or to opt out text STOP. Free
Text!”.

The Finance Ministers of Portugal, Ireland, Greece & Spain request you
send them the Brussels number.

Gallovidian August 1, 2011 at 18:39

And why should one have to text anything to opt out? Oh wait, that’s just
like automatic renewal used by insurance companies, which is quite legal.

Zulfiqar August 1, 2011 at 17:58

I can see the depressing logic but how can this be the way of the world
in a supposed rule-of-law country?

Easy. Just add 30-40 years of welfare state, season with assorted
ne’er-do-wells from countries where there is de facto no rule of law or
respect for its non-existence, bring to the boil and…voila!

Blue
Eyes August 1, 2011 at 17:42

I saw on a TV advert over the weekend that one can now take insurance out
against the “other driver” being uninsured. I can see the depressing logic but
how can this be the way of the world in a supposed rule-of-law country? Surely
if the other person is uninsured they are personally liable? And if not, why
not?

And surely if one cannot pay one’s debts, one’s assets are liquidated
first? I.e. bankruptcy? Or does this not happen any more?

Jeez, sometimes I wonder why I bother being a law-abiding hard-working
citizen, I really do.