Police issue advice over county fraud - Local

Sponsored by

Police issue advice over county fraud

Police tape

Published on 02/03/2013 09:30

Lincolnshire Police are urging people to take extra care to help prevent doorstep crime and rogue trader activity in the county.

A police spokesperson said: “Throughout Lincolnshire, we have a large elderly population that is growing and this makes our county a target for these types of crime.

“You can help us in reducing the incidences by reporting suspicious occurrences so that we can obtain vehicle registrations numbers and check the validation of the traders.

“If you see a neighbour being visited by persons unknown, or having large vehicles on their driveway such as tarmacing lorries, why not pop over and ask if they are ok, or have asked for the work to be carried out.

“Sometimes, just by asking the question, can give them the confidence to ask for your help in refusing the services being offered.”

If you or a neighbour need work carrying out, contact the approved trader scheme on this link or ring 0845 450 9115.

Advice from Action Fraud on Rogue Traders:

• Be suspicious when a trader has approached your doorstep suggesting that faults have been identified on your property and they will require urgent attention.

• Be cautious when you are quoted a low price for a seemingly small piece of work. This approach may be used as a means of identifying other unnecessary jobs, and pressure applied to get them done.

• The trader may use a fictitious approach, and suggest that a neighbour recommended they should attend your home.

• The trader may say that they have materials left over from a nearby job and can use these at a reduced cost to complete unnecessary work.

• Don’t feel pressured to agree or sign on the spot and ask them to come back once you have had time to consider their offer of work and gained a second opinion.

• Before signing any documents always read them carefully and make sure you fully appreciate the content of the document.

• Consider checking what other local traders in the same area can offer you and compare costs.

• As a general guide a reliable legitimate tradesman will be busy and have work booked in advance, so be wary if they state that they can start immediately or in the next few days.

• Make sure you fully understand what total cost is involved and what this figure includes, such as guarantees.

• Try to avoid handing over any money before the work has started. Normally a reliable trader will never ask you to do this, and never feel pressurised to go with a trader to your bank to take any money out.

• If you feel uncomfortable with the person, ask them to leave. If it sounds too good to be true, it normally is. If they refuse to leave ring 999, as this is an offence.

News

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Sponsored by
Police issue advice over county fraud

Top stories

News