Scams and Very Honourable Companies Indeed

Gosh! We won £23,500 today!  Brill!  We can get the central heating fixed, repair the leaky roof in the sun-room, and pay someone to sort out the noisy valve in the cistern that wakes everybody in the street up at 5am and because of which we are now permanently constipated.


And it's all thanks to a nice man called Friedrich Müller, who runs his philanthropic enterprise from an accommodation address in Belgium, at the premises of AMA, an advertising company who specialise in the gentle art of giving away shed-loads of money. N't.


But if you too have received this wonderful promise-of-a-guaranteed-prize, don't phone the plumber just yet.  Fill in the claim form by all means, to be sure of your £23,500, but don't be surprised when you receive a discount voucher for £1.50 which you can trade in with a company called Vital Beauty against a £32 bottle of cod-liver oil.  Just write them a letter pointing out their mistake.


Scammers are parasites.  They operate just within the law so that they can carry on conning people - usually elderly and vulnerable people - but we can't call successful scammers devious, cheating, rapacious crooks when they do operate within the law.  Just.  It would be libellous. And to call them evil, scheming scum who want to cheat your grannie out of her life savings would be very wrong indeed- because many of the companies that use game-show techniques to sell goods from little catalogues operate wholly and entirely within the law.  Just.  So I am sure that Vital Beauty is a bona-fide trading company, just the same as Swiss Home Shopping (a sister company) is, and the Office of Fair Trading is of like mind. They drew attention to some trivial little matter about the size of the wording in the bit about the promise-of-a-guaranteed-prize, and Vital Beauty responded immediately (Google Vital Beauty and see that it is indeed a company with a considerable reputation.)


So I am convinced.  I shall return the forms and book that plumber. The cheque should be with me in a few days.


Less honourable companies may deserve to be made to run their businesses from a small room in Strangeways, but if the OFT say that Mr Mueller's empire is entirely above board, who am I, a mere OAP, to doubt it?


Cough up, Herr Mueller.  I am sure your £32 bottle of cod-liver oil is worth every penny. And with your kind promise of £23,500 I can now afford it.