Beware the appointment card scam

When we received a call from someone offering us the opportunity to advertise on our local GP’s appointment cards, and for the bargain price of £200, we decided to hear more. Apart from some lost time, we had nothing to lose.

Steve from a company called medi-leisure arrived for the meeting and we sat down to look at his credentials and hear more. He began with a little tale of woe; the GP surgery has a practice manager and an assistant, much like us, and the PM was off sick when the deal was struck. When Steve had phoned to get the contract signed, there was much confusion, the PM new nothing of the deal, the assistant was not available and then there was much denial about the deal. However, he was able to assure us that the confusion had been sorted and showed us the signed contract.

Of course, as the meeting unfolded the £200 was for the smallest add, but it was still a good offer; 20,000 appointment cards printed over a 2 year period, and this would cost £600 for a mid size add. This fee was to be paid in 3 instalments, the first of which was a 3rd today, and two further payments would be made even before we saw the finished article.

At this point, Bridget excused herself and advised Steve that she would just need to ring the GP surgery to check for their involvement. Bridget was informed by the GP practice that they were only considering the proposal depending on how the card was going to look. We began to smell a rat and advised Steve as much, although in a more polite way.

He said he had this kind of problem before and could he sit in our lounge (upstairs) and make some calls to his head office to get it sorted and that he'd let our reception know when he was finished and ready to talk to us again. We had his business card, a sort of Paul Smith striped design, which strangely had no web address on it but I suddenly had a moment of inspiration, and decided to Google the company name. We were immediately confronted with pages of complaints about the company and the product which was, we now realised for sure, obviously a scam.

We returned to the lounge to despatch Steve, only to discover he was already gone! A quick look out of the window showed that he was sitting in his car on the phone. We went downstairs to warn the administrators about the strange events, when our receptionist, Linda, takes a call from him asking to speak to Bridget, as if he had not even visited our practice before and was not sitting in our car park outside!

Our local lab delivery driver arrived at this point, and just for good measure, we asked her to go and write down his car registration number.

For us, the ordeal was over, but what about the other local companies, many of which are patients of ours? Liskeard is quite a small community. We rang the ones we knew about and tried to warn them to be careful. Some had already handed over the deposit cheque and were surprised but thankful when we advised them to contact their bank to get the cheque stopped.

This will probably not be the last time we encounter these types of “deals” but spread the word...

Lesson Learned

Always question a deposit cheque with order - for anything in life!

Vicky Stanbrook
The Smile Centre
Liskeard
Cornwall