Rogue traders across Hampshire using recent bad weather events to con people into buying dodgy services
We're being warned about the various tactics used by scammers to convince people to let them carry out botched repairs on their homes across Hampshire
We're hearing cold callers across the region are using recent bad weather events as an excuse to carry out over-priced botched house repairs
Hampshire trading standards told us they saw a case last year which saw an elderly victim lose £60,000
Earlier this week a Hampshire rogue builder was jailed for five years and banned from carrying out building for a decade following an investigation by Hampshire County Council’s trading standards team.
Richard Strawson, who is head of Hampshire County Council’s trading standards team, says elderly residents across the county are a common target
"Unfortunately, this county is prone to having people that want to take advantage of rogue trading and focus their attention on perhaps the more vulnerable in our society."
Richard says a lot of the scammers use similar tactics
"They cold call, so they will go knocking door to door looking for work. They very often will introduce a sense of urgency in terms of pointing out guttering that's loose or roofing that needs doing and they will say, 'this really needs doing. If it doesn't get done now, tiles may fall off your house may leak'.
That's really difficult because it forces somebody into trying to make a decision on something that they don't know anything about."
Richard adds that these tactics can be particularly effective on the older population
"I think unfortunately we do find that older generations are very trusting and therefore they believe what people say.
Often family members are not living locally, so they can't come round and therefore they're easily persuaded into getting the work done by somebody who actually is a stranger."
Over the last few weeks, Hampshire and the whole of the south-east of England has seen flooding and other significant weather events, Richard told us rogue traders are also known to use these to their advantage
"What we find is it sometimes things are very cyclical. So as we go into the summer months, what we'll find is an increase in in rogues operating in landscaping, offering to cut down or trim trees as as the growth increases.
In the winter time, it's very much linked to adverse weather. So with a lot of rainfall, it points to roofing and people knocking door to door and coming round and saying, you know, your slates are are loose.
With the wet weather and things like that, and particularly severe weather events such as flooding and the like, what you'll find is that rogues will make linkages with activities that are perhaps legitimate to promote their illegitimate work.
With other events like severe storms and things like that, very much rogues play on the fact that with high winds and things like that, things get damaged, things may fall off, they may hurt people, and then they point towards the consumer being liable for that and having to do the work now.
It's very much about giving an impression that work needs to be done immediately and therefore not giving people the time to respond."