Many people who have been involved in road traffic accidents (and some people who haven’t) find themselves bombarded with phone calls from often aggressive salespeople, trying to convince them to make a personal injury claim. Unsolicited calls of this kind are often illegal, though many claims management companies either ignore this fact, or find a way round it by using overseas call centres.
Sometimes, unethical claims management companies will have illegally paid hundreds of pounds to obtain a potential claimant’s personal information, and if they can convince the recipient of the call to make a claim, they will then attempt to sell the details on (again illegally), or farm it out to their subsidiary law firm in the expectation of charging exorbitantly for costs and expenses down the line.
Where Do Road Traffic Accident Cold Calls Come From?
Cold calls of this kind can show up as ‘number withheld’ or appear to come from a phone number local to the call recipient. Internet telephony can make a phone call appear to originate from any location in the world, so what appears to be a local call may in fact be coming from a foreign call centre. These kind of tactics make it almost impossible for authorities to regulate companies that engage in cold calling, and this is why people in some way connected with a road traffic accident will sometimes continue to receive unsolicited calls for years on end. Stopping these calls can be extremely difficult. It is possible to register with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) to block sales calls, but again, if a company is using overseas intermediaries to make the calls the TPS will not be able to block them.
How Do Cold Callers Obtain Personal Details?
While it is illegal to sell personal information under data protection laws, any individual or organisation with knowledge of the private details of someone connected to a road traffic accident has a strong financial incentive to do so. Vehicle repair and recovery companies, hire car providers, insurers, the police and the NHS may all have access to such information, and all it takes is one unscrupulous employee (or company) to take advantage of this fact, and sell the data to a claims management company. Sometimes personal details can also be harvested from social media. The recipient of subsequent cold calls will have no way of finding out how their personal data was obtained. Even if they ask the caller, they will often be falsely told that their details were acquired from the Ministry of Justice or some other official body.
How to Deal With Cold Callers?
How people choose to deal with cold calls related to personal injury claims for road traffic accidents is a matter of personal preference. While it is possible to sign up for the TIS service and have future cold calls reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), due to the tactics described above this may prove ineffective. One method is to state categorically that you are not interested, and threaten to report the callers to the police if they contact you again. Otherwise, people can simply not answer the phone if they do not recognise a caller’s number. Cold calling is effectively a black market, and a person’s private information may end up being sold many times over once it is in the ‘system’. Cold callers should therefore always be dismissed as the parasitic criminals that they usually are. It is worth remembering that road traffic accident claims can be complex affairs, and a reputable firm of solicitors with experience and expertise in such claims will always be the best option for potential claimants.
Solicitors Claiming Compensation for Road Traffic Accidents
Over the last 40 years Bartletts Solicitors has successfully claimed compensation for 1,000’s of road users injured due to reckless and negligent driving. Bartletts have a tradition of commitment, hard work, and the highest levels of expertise in advising people injured due to reckless driving on their legal rights. Client care is our highest priority. Our specialist solicitors ensure that you are always kept up to date with every aspect of your case, and we aim obtain the maximum amount of damages for our clients with the minimum of fuss.
