The retro scams that are making a comeback

Some old scams are coming back into fashion.

There's nothing new under the scam sun – just novel twists and fresh ways to deliver the message. Email delivers hundreds of thousands of phoney messages for the cost of a packet of envelopes, let alone stamps. However frauds – non-existent lotteries, impossible investments, and charitable appeals where the only beneficiaries are the senders – remain the same.

So this week is back to basics – swindles and downright extortions with little connection to new technology.

A knock at the door

Last week, two men knocked at my door. “We're in the area and we could tarmac your drive,” one said. Well, I don't have a drive, although I do have a path through a tiny garden to my front door. It's made from broken paving stones (courtesy of the local council) and despite a few weeds, it works.

Nevertheless, I asked what it would cost. I was quoted £450 – in cash to “avoid VAT problems” - and, needless to say, they wanted the money upfront to “buy materials”. That would have been the last I saw of my money. They had a badly printed leaflet with a mobile phone number and an email address. Neither, of course, is proof of anything and certainly no way of tracing them.

Now had I paid, they would either have disappeared or returned for more with additional home maintenance “discovered”. They may suggest that I need to get my house painted or my roof repointed. And these suggestions would have brought demands for thousands of pounds. And if, as likely, I did not have cash, they would have taken me to the nearest bank where I could have withdrawn the money.

Bank staff have been alerted to older people suddenly taking out large sums - £8,000 to £12,000 is common – especially if accompanied by non-family members. But they don't always spot the problem. Besides, there is nothing much they can legally do.

This “tarmac” scam is on the increase – as with burglary, boosted by hard economic times.

The designer watch swindle

But another revived scam is the “designer watch” swindle. Once confined to mail order pages in weekend newspapers and magazines, this has now spread to door-to-door criminality, according to the Trading Standards Institute.

What both the doorstep sellers and adverts do is to offer a “top brand designer watch", supposedly worth £599 for just £99. The trouble is that neither you – nor anyone in the legitimate timepiece market – has ever heard of the brand. Instead of the “in the area today” line, they come up with “this is surplus” or “this watch is well known in Europe and I have just a few left before I leave for home” or whatever.

You can probably buy something similar for a fiver in a street market. Only you wouldn't because you think that the watch is appalling ugly and that it won't last more than a week or two.

Like computers, all watches do much the same – they tell the time (and sometimes the date). But while you may know the difference between a £1,000 laptop and one costing £500 because the more expensive will have greater capacity, faster processors, and a better screen, it's harder with watches.

You can spend £9.99 on a perfectly good Casio watch at Argos. I have one and it will last me years. Or you could pay £50,000 for one of those timepieces advertised in luxury magazines. It should last longer (if not stolen). I don't have one but I doubt whether it would really be 5,000 times better than my Casio.

But I once had a £25 fake “Rolex” from Thailand. It lasted a month – the forgers tried to replicate the genuine Rolex machinery which is impossible for that price, although had they put in a cheap quartz movement it might still be working.

Designer watch and jewellery scamsters back up their claims with adverts or page grabs from internet sites. Any reasonably computer savvy teenager could do this.

The legal position

In current consumer law, anyone selling an item for more than £35 during an unannounced visit to the door must give full written instructions of cancellation rights, such as notice of a seven-day cooling off period. The Trading Standards Institute says that anyone selling door to door without offering these rights would be committing a criminal offence and should be treated with scepticism.

But if you are going to scam people, the rules are just a minor impediment at best. Have you ever heard of a housebreaker who is put off by the illegality of burglary? Or of victims who get their cash back?

More on scams

Tragic phishing scam victims who didn't even own a computer

12 surefire signs you're being scammed

The pensioner who lost thousands to cold-calling scammers

How scammers make thousands from the desperate unemployed

The scammer who promised I could make money from dog faeces

The retiree waging war on the eBay tractor scammers

The worst scammers I've ever encountered!