Millions of Britons plagued by PPI calls
Two thirds of British adults have received unwanted messages about making a claim for missold payment protection insurance.
Some 32 million people say they have received a telephone call, text, email or letter about PPI, according to the figures from Citizens Advice.
Of these, 98 per cent did not feel that they had given their permission to be contacted in this way, and more than half (55 per cent) estimate that they were contacted more than 10 times in the past 12 months.
Telephone calls (91 per cent), automated messages to landlines (39 per cent) and texts to mobiles (35 per cent) are the most common ways in which people have been contacted about PPI claims.
One in four people (27 per cent) received their most recent call during a family meal, while around one in seven (14 per cent) were contacted at work.
The new figures are from a national survey of 5,682 people aged 18 and over in Britain, carried out by Ipsos Mori between June and July.
Cold calls
Citizens Advice research found 56 per cent of complaints about PPI claims management stemmed from cold calls.
Half of 30,000 complaints about cold calling, dealt with by the Citizens Advice consumer service between April 2012 and March 2013, related to professional and financial services, including PPI and offers of loans.
How do I combat the cold callers?
Citizens Advice says you should ignore spam text messages, hang up on direct marketing calls, forward spam texts to your mobile provider, and report scams to Action Fraud.There is more advice from Citizens Advice here.
People who want to block unwanted direct marketing calls can also contact the Telephone Preference Service and register their landline and mobile phone numbers with the agency.
This should help to reduce the number of calls of this nature, but will not stop the receipt of scam calls, recorded messages or texts. If you are receiving recorded messages or texts and want them to stop, contact the Information Commissioner's Office.
Gillian Guy, chief executive at Citizens Advice, is calling on financial services firms to be banned from cold calling and said it is “completely unacceptable” for PPI cold calls to disrupt family time and work meetings.
She said: “Nuisance calls aren’t just irritating, they’re often a sign that the service on offer isn’t very good or is actually a scam.
“Over a third of the complaints Citizens Advice handles about financial services stem from a cold call.
“There is a particular problem with claims management companies. People are finding that sometimes the promises made over an unexpected phone call aren’t delivered.
“This means people who have been missold PPI lose out twice – first at the hands of the bank and secondly from the claims firms because they don’t get the full compensation they deserve.