Couple scammed by door-to-door fish-sellers bought new freezer
Would you buy fish from a door-to-door salesman? To Lancashire, where Marion and Alan Johnson, aged 85 and 88, agreed to buy £24 of fish from a man on their doorstep.
Marion explains what occurred:
“We had just been to the doctor’s and I wasn’t very well. When the men called, we just wanted £24 worth of fish and I asked him to put it in the kitchen as I sat in the living room. I paid on card but when they left and we walked in the kitchen I’d never seen as much fish in my life. I checked the receipt and we’d been scammed, paying £204. The fish wasn’t even labelled so we didn’t know what type it was.
“We didn’t have anywhere to store it so we had to go out and buy another freezer to store it. We ate some of it but then saw on Facebook people were saying it wasn’t safe to eat. There’s now just have loads of fish we don’t know what to do with and we feel really dumb because we fell for it.”
The scammers are swine. But the pat about the couple going out and buying a new freezer to store their unwanted fish in puts the tin lid on the story.
Paul Noone, head of Trading Standards for Lancashire County Council, advises: “The best place to buy fish is from a local fishmonger at an established shop or stall or from a regular local roundsman. You are taking a risk by buying on the doorstep from an unknown trader as this fish may be of poor quality, misdescribed, or overcharged. We are currently investigating cheap fish sold as sea bass, farmed salmon sold as wild, short-weight sales, and Preston cases where a vulnerable lady paid £404 for seven packs of fish, and a retired couple paid £360 for a bag of unlabelled fish.”
Beware of frozen cold callers.
Posted: 30th, October 2015 | In: Reviews, Strange But True, The Consumer Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
