Sometimes people with a poor credit history become almost desperate to obtain credit for what-ever reason and because they are unable to match the criteria demanded by reputable high street banks, building societies or any other well respected lenders, they’re often forced to approach less reputable credit brokers and/or other less respected lenders that might possibly approve them a loan or other credit on much less favourable terms. Unfortunately when people become desperate it also makes them more vulnerable to potential scams.

IN SHORT – DON’T PAY BROKERS FEES UPFRONT FOR A PROMISED LOAN OR CREDIT CARD:

In the case of a loan application, if a credit broker was certainly 100% sure that a client was really about to obtain a loan they’ve just offered, why not take the fee out of the loan itself? In the case of a credit card application, if a credit broker truly believed a client will obtain the credit card they promise, why not charge the broker fee onto the credit card itself as soon as it’s issued?

Well the biggest reason credit brokers demand upfront fees before the product is supplied is because they know many clients often won’t really receive what’s promised or they’ll be offered an absolutely abysmal alternative that they won’t be satisfied with. In fact it’s an extremely common mistake for people to pay a credit broker upfront for what they often claim is a guaranteed loan or credit card, or sometimes they say that it is “accepted in principle” which is definitely NOT a guarantee no matter what they often try to claim. Too many clients listen to the credit broker as when desperate to obtain credit, they tell the client exactly what they want to hear whether it’s likely to be true or not. The credit broker can always find plenty of excuses too for not coming up with the goods, like the information a client gave them wasn’t exactly correct to the finest of details. Even if a client does get offered a loan or credit card as promised, it’s usually at extremely uncompetitive rates from a lender that could have been easily approached directly without paying any expensive broker fees, E.g. Provident Personal Credit who offer doorstep loans at extortionately high rates of APR to people who usually can’t obtain credit from any reputable mainstream lenders like the high street banks and building societies.

If a client refuses to continue an application via a credit broker because the fee is mentioned (this is often only mentioned after spending quite sometime going through the main part of the application process), the credit broker is often very pushy and will sometimes keep calling the client back, but in the case of some of the worst credit brokers, they simply take their broker fees anyway from the clients bank account without the knowledge or consent of the customer – please see the “Scam Example 2″ in the section below for more details of this scam.

SCAM EXAMPLES:

I have always advised people never to risk paying any upfront fees to a credit broker or similar on the promise of obtaining credit as there really are too many ‘dodgy’ brokers out there in my opinion, but the 2nd scam below is more difficult to avoid.

Scam Example 1 – Product supplied not as described (UK):

A friend of mine paid an upfront fee for an apparently guaranteed gold credit card, but he was shocked to be later offered a freely obtainable IDT Prime prepaid Mastercard which ANYONE can obtain instantly over the counter at numerous high street newsagents and similar in the UK without any credit checks what-so-ever. This is because a prepaid Visa or Mastercard is definitely NOT a credit card at all since no money is ever actually ever lent to the card holder. One can only possibly spend up to the balance that’s been topped up onto a prepayment card beforehand and any transactions that would put the balance into debit simply won’t be authorised. Despite this fact, this particular card is advertised as a “Prepaid Credit Card”, although it is at least made clear on IDT’s website how the prepayment card works. The prepayment card happens to be gold in colour, but that’s where any similarity to a genuine gold credit card ends.

Scam Example 2 – Fee taken without knowledge or consent (UK):

Be warned that some credit brokers will try to confuse people to pay them an upfront fee without their knowledge or consent by asking for their bank details as part of a credit application process or so they can apparently pay the loan into that account, so PLEASE BEWARE AND DON’T BE RIPPED OFF!

UPDATE: We have renamed the company name to CompanyX in the detailed example below since the issue is being fully resolved with the organisation in question and we believe this was an isolated issue and it’s therefore not how the company normally works. It is not the intention at PJCNET to upset any company or organisation and we’d much rather resolve any issues instead. Readers can still use this example to watch out for this type of scam or similar from other organisations in future however.

My friend unfortunately has a low credit score and decided to give CompanyX a try as he wanted a loan for a brand new PC. On speaking to them over the phone he first asked them if there was any upfront fees and he was told that there wasn’t. The application process then took about 10 minutes and during the application they required his full bank details which is often expected on any loan application due to credit checks, but on this occasion it was apparently required so they could pay the loan directly into his bank account. At the end of the application he was congratulated that he’d been accepted for the loan. After querying whether the loan was really guaranteed, they told him that he’d in fact been accepted for the loan in principle, but that he’d definitely get the loan as long as he’d answered the questions in the application honestly (please remember that “accepted in principle” is far from a guaranteed acceptance no matter what is claimed). Then he was surprised and totally dismayed to be told that he’d have to pay almost £48 as an upfront fee before they could finish processing his loan application and then apparently arrange for the loan payment to go into his bank account within the week. He obviously queried the upfront fee since he was clearly told that there was no upfront fees before the application started. He decided NOT to go ahead as quite rightfully he didn’t trust the credit broker to come up with the goods, especially since he’d already been lied to about the fee to start with. The credit broker tried every persuasion on the phone to get him to change his mind, but after listening to my advice he was adamant he wouldn’t trust them with any upfront fee and after finishing the conversation he assumed that this was the end of the matter.

I warned my friend to keep an eye on his bank in case they tried to take any money using his card and/or bank details that he’d given, but at first it all seemed okay. My friend however checked his bank just over a week later and to his horror he found that a direct debit had been set-up without his knowledge or consent and CompanyX had already taken almost £48 out of his account without authorisation. My friend also has received no paperwork what-so-ever, no loan offer, nothing. I will say that this is scandalous and disgusting behaviour is in my opinion bordering on the serious criminal offence of fraud and deception as I was there when he spoke over a speaker phone, so I know he refused to progress the application as soon as the fee what mentioned and at no time was setting up any direct debit even mentioned or authorised.

We have visited ConpanyX’s website and they’ve obviously had numerous complaints since they’re offering refunds to people affected within around 4 working days, but this is most likely in an attempt to try and reduce the number of people filing fraudulent claims against this organisation. The thing is many people won’t notice the money has gone from their bank accounts or they won’t want to go through the hassle of attempting to get the money back, especially by approaching their bank / building society as being scammed is quite embarrassing to a lot of people. My friend has now complained to his bank who are claiming the money back using the Direct Debit guarantee, but by rights he should be filing a fraud claim and in my opinion the police should get involved, but filing a fraud claim takes much longer and one can be without the money for ages, I suspect that CompanyX rely on this too to stay in business. It’s been extremely inconvenient for my friend as he’s had to visit his branch who have told him he could still have to wait a few days for his money back while he’s out of pocket and what’s even more scandalous, luckily he visited the branch when he did as CompanyX were apparently about to take even more money out unauthorised for absolutely no service given in return what-so-ever.

I will be making a complaint and will report them to The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) on my friend’s behalf as in my opinion, no company should remain in business operating in this awful fraudulent manner. (Instead being fully resolved with the company itself at the time of writing!)

Since a direct debit was set-up without authorisation, knowledge or consent, and since bank details are required to be given for most loan applications, this is unfortunately a difficult scam to avoid, except to avoid all brokers that aren’t well known. Obviously repeatedly check there’s no upfront fees and make it clear you won’t pay any. If the credit broker does take money without your consent, complain to your bank or building society and either use the direct debit guaranteed to claim your money back or even better file a fraud claim (unfortunately it takes longer, but it’s the best way to help stop rogue organisations from trading).

Please watch this space for a link to an article I’m writing detailing better alternatives to bad credit loans and the credit options that are available…

Legal Disclaimer

This article and any comments are my own personal opinion and shouldn’t be taken as definite fact. It is without prejudice to any licensed credit brokers, Provident Personal Credit or any other organisation. We would welcome a response from any organisation mentioned so it can be printed here, giving an unbiased 2 sided debate. The examples given only show one person’s experience with an organisation and it doesn’t necessary mean this is the similar experience of many of their other customers. There is no official evidence that any organisation has certainly committed fraud and deception as no formal charges have been made. The author of this article is not a financial advisor and is not qualified in this field. Although PJCNET try to make our articles as accurate as possible, we cannot be held liable for any mistakes made. This article, any comments, any other articles or anything else on this website is covered by our full legal disclaimer.

At the time of writing on the 3rd September 2010, I’ve been using Virgin’s Media’s XXL fibre optic cable broadband service for almost 6 months, so it’s about time I wrote a full review.

Virgin Media currently offer up to 50Mb/S download speeds which is still equally the fastest mainstream home broadband download speed in the UK along with Small World Cable who offer very similar cable services for people living in Northern England and Scotland. What’s more, a selection of UK households have been happily Beta testing a much faster 100Mb/S service for sometime now and Virgin Media are planning to officially start rolling out their new 100Mb/S service by the end of this year, although it may not be available to all fibre optic cable customers until some time in 2011. Once the 100Mb/S service is available to all Virgin Media customers, there’s imminent plans to double the maximum download speed yet again to a massive 200Mb/S which has already been trialled by a few very lucky households in Kent with a planned mainstream release as early as 2012. Virgin Media’s existing VMNG300 router which is currently used for their 50Mb/S XXL broadband service is already compatible with the new 100Mb/S service and it can even cope with the imminent 200Mb/S service since it’s currently being used in their 200Mb/S trials already, but Virgin Media are already working on a brand new router that’s capable of even faster speeds of up to 400Mb/S. This is a virtual proof that incredibly fast 400Mb/S download services are being planned for release after 2012 (I guess by 2014). The more distant future looks even better for Virgin Media as their existing fibre optic cables could eventually support speeds as fast as 1Gb/S (Roughly 1000Mb/S) or perhaps even more with later technology (I guess we’ll have 800Mb/S by 2016 and 1000Mb/S broadband by 2017 – It will be interesting to see as the future progresses).

It’s still uncertain whether Virgin Media will be automatically upgrading all their their existing 50Mb/S fibre optic cable broadband customers to 100Mb/S speeds, or whether it will be sold as an even faster premium service in addition to their existing 50Mb/S package. The price of the new faster service is also currently still uncertain, although since their premium 50Mb/S broadband package is already in my opinion quite expensive, I sincerely hope Virgin Media will be charging no more for their faster 100Mb/S service when it becomes available soon. I suspect Virgin Media will upgrade everyone to 100Mb/S automatically, especially since the existing VMNG300 router which currently used for 50Mb/S speeds definitely won’t need replacing, but they could instead use this golden opportunity to force existing customers to sign up to new 12 month contracts if they want their broadband service upgraded to 100Mb/S for free. Virgin Media are in my opinion unlikely to automatically increase the speed of their existing cheaper 10Mb/S and 20Mb/S services in line with their faster premium service since the router supplied for these services isn’t capable of speeds above 20Mb/S. As far as a potential price increase, I suspect Virgin Media will only increase the price slightly above inflation, but probably not straight away as they’ll want to promote the new faster service to get more customers signed up to 12 month contracts first.

Is the 50Mb/S service really as good as Virgin Media claim?

During the first 2 months of service I received actual speeds between 35Mb/S and 50Mb/S which I thought was very good, although over the last couple of months I’ve been delighted to get speeds of 50Mb/S consistently 24/7, 7 days a week. I really am getting 50Mb/S too as it can be seen when directly downloading files quicker than 6MB/S (over 48 Megabits/S). I suspect that Virgin Media have generally improved their network further to allow for enough bandwidth for their imminent 100Mb/S service release, hence why 50Mb/S download speeds are now reliably consistent.

Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) advertise their download speed, yet most don’t say much about their upload speed, well with Virgin Media I’ve been receiving consistent upload speeds of around 1.6Mb/S which doesn’t sound like much, but when compared with other ISPs it’s still quite fast, it’s also not too bad when Virgin Media only advertise potential upload speeds of 1.5Mb/S. Some customers however would like to see faster upload speeds even if it meant cutting their download speed down slightly and BT Infinity, a new rival cable service from BT is offering the fastest upload speeds available in the UK with up to a massive 10Mb/S speed on their top package, but their download speed suffers slightly at up to 40Mb/S with no imminent plans to increase this any time soon, unlike Virgin Media who will very soon be providing a 100Mb/S download service with a 200Mb/S download service planned in 2012. BT Infinity is currently only available to a small percentage of the UK population at the time of writing, but the service is being quickly rolled out across the UK. If you’re planning on running a small web server, then BT Infinity is currently the only real solution because of it’s fast upload speed, unless you want to shell out a fortune on a dedicated line. BT Infinity’s super fast 10Mb/S upload service is obviously also much better for uploading large files like video’s to YouTube Etc, but if you’re mainly browsing and downloading, then Virgin Media’s premium service is the best, especially in the near future. Incidentally, Virgin Media’s 100Mb/S download service is likely to have a better 3Mb/S upload speed and the 200Mb/S download service is likely to have an 6Mb/S upload speed which still doesn’t catch up to BT Infinity’s top service. In my opinion Virgin Media should release 2 premium packages giving the customer a choice, the first package should remain as it is with the maximum download speed and a relatively slow upload speed, while the other package should have a much larger upload speed at the expense of cutting this from the download speed.

Please remember that when downloading from the Internet, your actual download speed is only as quick as the slowest connection encountered during the data’s journey across the World Wide Web and it can’t be any quicker than the server you’re connected to or it’s actual connection speed which can be shared by many users. In other words, often websites are slow no matter how fast your broadband connection is. In fact whether you have a 15Mb/S, a 50Mb/S or even a 100Mb/S connection, it won’t make most websites noticeably load any quicker at the time of writing, but as time and technology moves on, more and more servers will connect at faster speeds, making it more of an advantage to connect using a super fast fibre optic broadband connection. You will find that you can download some files quicker with a super fast connection as long as the server you’re connected to isn’t overloaded with users and it has a fast connection Etc.

Whether Virgin Media’s premium service is really as good as it claims continues to be answered in the sections below…

Will the 100Mb/S and 200Mb/S service be as good as Virgin Media claim?

I can only speculate and make a calculated guess until the faster services become available to mainstream customers, so I could be totally wrong, but I suspect that 100Mb/S customers would only get the full 100Mb/S during off-peak times at first, but I would also still expect a minimum speed of around 70Mb/S during heavy usage times which would still be amazingly good. When the newer 200Mb/S service release draws closer, I would expect Virgin Media to further improve their network bandwidth allowing their 100Mb/S customers to always get 100Mb/S consistently 24/7, 7 days a week. The same will probably be true when the 200Mb/S service is released around 2011 where I’d expect customers to only get 200Mb/S at off-peak times and a minimum of around 140Mb/S during the heaviest usage times. I can only speculate even further, but I’d expect a 400Mb/S service to be imminent by then and when the release of this service draws closer I’d expect 200Mb/S customers to actually get 200Mb/S at all times and so on.

Customer Services and Technical Support:

Most broadband providers unfortunately have a much lower standard of customer service than expected. Virgin Media’s customer service could do with some improvements, although I’ve had mixed experiences, both good and bad, so I won’t put this under advantages or disadvantages.

Virgin Media’s customer services aren’t open 24/7 which can be very annoying, although at least their 1st line technical support is available 24/7, but if a fault proves to be more in depth, you’ll probably have to wait until the full team are available during office hours. For my worst Virgin Media customer service experience, please see the 3rd disadvantage below regarding low credit limits.

One good experience of Virgin Media’s customer service was when I called for technical support since various websites weren’t loading even though they were up and running on my friends PC, it was found to be a routing problem which was temporarily resolved by putting me through a proxy service until the fault was rectified within a couple of hours. The person I spoke to had a good technical knowledge and knew exactly how to go about diagnosing and ultimately rectifying the problem, he was friendly and fairly easy to understand with well spoken English. Even though Virgin Media’s technical support staff are probably still working from a call centre in India, it really doesn’t matter as long as they provide a good service and are easy to understand. I would like to compare my experience to BT Total Broadband’s technical support that’s provided by BT India. I’m certainly NOT racist in any way, but unfortunately as an English person I found many of the BT technical staff extremely difficult to understand over the phone and there was often a complete communication breakdown where it was made pretty obvious that English was the 2nd language of the person dealing with my query. I suspect that Virgin are more choosy when choosing their technical support staff, ensuring that they speak very good English and they probably train them better too. This doesn’t appear to be the case with BT India’s technical support staff that usually can’t be easily understood by an English speaking person and they are clearly reading their support information from fixed flow chart of questions, answers and resolutions that certainly don’t work for all technical problems. Most BT India technical support staff don’t appear to be able to diagnose a problem themselves when there’s a need and often don’t even understand when technical words are spoken by the customer. It’s in my opinion unfair on Indian staff to be forced to provide technical support to UK, English speaking people when English isn’t their first language for what’s most likely only a fraction of the wage paid to employees living in the UK. Unfortunately with BT Total Broadband, if one wants English technical support that is more understandable, you have to pay extra for their premium BT Home IT support.

The next example might not involve a broadband fault, but it still gives a good example of Virgin Media’s technical support service generally. I once had an intermittent TV problem where my programmes were briefly interrupted by what appeared to be a poor signal as the screen would become pixelated, technical support run various remote tests that reset my Virgin box while talking over the phone. This unfortunately didn’t resolve or show a problem and it was therefore passed to another technical team that resolved my problem within a day, they called me back to let me know the problem was rectified and to ask me to let them know immediately if there was any more problems, but it’s been perfect ever since.

Virgin Media’s phone queuing system can be busier than one would like, although I’ve rarely waited more than 5 minutes and one can choose the genre of music one listens to while waiting (a nice touch). Customer service staff are generally polite and easy to understand over the phone, but one can still often be passed from one department to the next when trying to resolve some queries.

Advantages of Virgin Media’s 50Mb/S Service (Soon to be 100Mb/S):

1….Cheap or Free Installation Including Phone line:

At the time of writing Virgin Media are offering free installation, but it normally costs £35 which includes a personal home visit from an engineer and all equipment except of course a telephone itself. BT were charging a massive £127.99 (was £125 before that) for new phone lines where an engineer visit was required and Virgin therefore used to offer a big advantage here, but this has recently been massively reduced to £29.99 or it’s free if you take their broadband, this is obviously due to fierce competition between BT and Virgin Media.

2….Super fast 50Mb/S Speeds That Are NOT Effected By Location (Soon to be 100Mb/S):

Because Virgin Media exclusively use fibre optic cables, the maximum download speed is barely effected by your location and download speeds really are 50Mb/S on their top package at the time of writing, unlike standard ADSL services over your standard phone like which are directly effected by the distance you happen to live from your local telephone exchange. Often standard ADSL services will advertise speeds up to 20Mb/S or even up to 24Mb/S speeds when barely anyone manages to actually get very close to the maximum, in fact a 16Mb/S speed is excellent and quite rare, while some customers could be unlucky enough to only get 4Mb/S or even less if their local telephone exchange is quite a few miles away from their home. At the time of writing, the only rival mainstream cable service to Virgin Media is BT Infinity which offer speeds up to 40Mb/S along with an optional super fast 10Mb/S upload speed (best in the UK), but the service is still in it’s infancy, meaning it’s only currently available to low percentage of customers throughout the UK even though BT are working very hard to roll out the network to most customers as quickly as possible, also there’s no plans to upgrade BT Infinity to super fast speeds that with rival Virgin’s Media’s brand new 100Mb/S service any time soon.

3….Truly No Download Limits on 50Mb/S XXL Package (hopefully the same on 100Mb/S services soon):

At the time of writing Virgin Media state that there’s no fair usage download limits on their premium 50Mb/S service when one reads their acceptable use policy (fair usage policy) and their traffic management policy in detail and the real limits are clearly advertised for their cheaper packages (10Mb/S and 20Mb/S download speeds) during peak times where customer’s will be throttled if these limits are exceeded. Despite this, Virgin Media unfortunately don’t go out of their way to directly advertise that their premium XXL broadband service is truly unlimited, so I’m still a little apprehensive about whether they’d actually ever warn someone for extreme excess downloading during peak times or whether they plan on changing this policy in future (I sincerely hope not). Sky however advertise their premium broadband 20Mb/S service (up to) as truly unlimited and some customers have been known to download 24/7 constantly without any problems what-so-ever as Sky clearly promise never to throttle or take action against any customer for excessive downloading.

4….No throttling what-so-ever on 50Mb/S package (hopefully the same on the 100Mb/S package coming soon):

Virgin Media currently DON’T throttle (slow down) any traffic what-so-ever on their premium 50Mb/S package no matter how much a customer downloads at the time of writing (also please see “Truly No Download Limits” above). Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) choose to throttle certain types of data, mainly peer to peer downloading (P2P – file-sharing networks including torrents Etc) during peak times, one of the worst culprits I’ve experienced is BT. I’m unsure if how much BT will choose to throttle customers on their brand new BT Infinity cable service, but when I was a BT Total Broadband customer, they drastically reduced the speed of peer to peer downloading during peak times. Over time this got even worse and I eventually found I was getting throttled to speeds as slow as 0.5Mb/S during peak times and BT even reserved the right to throttle speeds at other times. I believe throttling began at certain times outside official off-peak hours not long before I changed ISP about 18 months ago at the time of writing when I’d had enough, at the time I could only use peer to peer networks at a decent speeds at extreme off-peak times, E.g. 4am in the morning. BT argue that peer to peer downloading uses a large proportion of their total bandwidth and that by throttling, they can provide a faster broadband service for everyone, but when I was with Sky Broadband, they didn’t have any trouble providing a fast service without any throttling what-so-ever and with truly unlimited downloads when I consistently got speeds my line was capable of 24/7, 7 days a week which was far from true with BT, so in my opinion it comes down to a how good the service is from a particular ISP and how overloaded they are. I strongly suggest people read the terms and conditions of any ISP and Fair Usage Policy in detail before signing up, plus look for reviews like this one.

Virgin Cable clearly isn’t overloaded during peak times because there’s no significant slowdown 24/7 at the time of writing, in comparison my BT Total Broadband connection around 18 months ago continued to be overloaded in my area despite numerous complaints where BT kept denying the problem even though during peak times my general speed would dramatically reduce to between 0.5Mb/S and 2Mb/S. I could only get my full 6.5Mb/S speed during extreme off peak hours (E.g. during the middle of the night).

Disadvantages of Virgin Media’s 50Mb/S Service (Soon to be 100Mb/S):

1….Not available to all:

In February 2010 Virgin media’s fibre optic cable services was available to roughly 51% of the UK population which is around 12.6 million homes, so you still have to be lucky to get it. It wouldn’t be great if you decided to move home during your 12 month contract to somewhere where Virgin cable wasn’t available as you’d be liable for breach of contract charges. Also just living in a major city doesn’t necessary mean you’ll be-able to get Virgin cable as various homes were excluded during the main cable installation in the area, especially many flat complexes because it was sometimes considered not financially viable against the high cost of installation due to a low estimated sign up of residents at the time. For instance, I used to live in low rise flat complex near Birmingham City Centre and most people in the area had access to Virgin cable, in fact there was even a Virgin cable box just over the road, yet I couldn’t get access to their fibre optic cable services even though many residents really wanted it. I asked Virgin Media on numerous occasions how long I’d have to wait, explaining that numerous residents wanted to sign up, but Virgin still couldn’t even give me any sort of estimate, except that it could be a number of years. Also even if you’re given an estimated date for Virgin Media to become available in your area, don’t expect them to keep to it! I’ve known people be given estimated installation dates of say 1-2 years that have been and long passed, but when they ask Virgin Media what’s going on, they’re told they’ve got another 1-2 years to wait. Now I’ve moved to a larger flat nearby and I’m lucky to have Virgin cable available.

Unfortunately if you desperately want Virgin Media fibre optic cable services when it’s still not available in your area, the only way one might speed up installation is to get as many residents in your area to write a letter to Virgin Media requesting a service, or at least phone them and ask. If enough people ask, Virgin Media will eventually see the area as financially viable for an installation and they have then been known to install services quicker, although even this isn’t guaranteed.

If Virgin Media’s fibre optic cable service isn’t available they do offer a far inferior and much slower broadband service via a standard phone line (a slow speed of up to 8Mb/S) and TV wouldn’t be possible. I wouldn’t usually recommend this service as there’s normally better deals available from other standard phone line ADSL providers who use ADSL2+ technology to offer speeds up to 20Mb/S (or 24Mb/S) like Sky. Also check as BT Infinity (a new cable service from BT offering up to 40Mb/S) could be available in your area before Virgin Media.

2….It’s more expensive:

Virgin Media’s 50Mb/S is excellent and similar will be expected from their 100Mb/S service which will be available very soon at the time of writing, but it’s also rather expensive when compared to other broadband providers. I have a phone (XL – free calls 24/7), broadband (XXL – 50Mb/S) and TV (XL including HD) + premium movies (non HD) and I’m paying a total of £85.50 just in services charge a month (they currently offer the first 2 months free or at minimal cost depending on the services ordered). At the time of writing this is increasing slightly more in line with Sky’s slight price increase. When compared to a very similar Sky TV, broadband and phone service, Virgin Media is a fair bit more expensive. Although Sky’s up to 20Mb/S broadband was also excellent, it’s still using a standard phone line via ADSL which is much slower, plus the maximum speed is directly effected by the distance you happen to live from your local telephone exchange. Sky’s TV service has more channels than Virgin Media, although Virgin Media has on demand services direct from your Virgin box connected to your TV, especially if you go for a Virgin HD box.

3….Beware of a Low Credit Limit or Be Cut Off Suddenly:

When you join Virgin Media they do a basic credit check and often your credit limit is set very low indeed if you have a low credit score, although this isn’t even mentioned at the time of sale. For instance, I found that I could only spend up to £40 over my monthly service charge on both phone calls or premium on demand services before automatically being cut off where I’d have no TV, broadband or phone (well incoming calls only with outgoing calls to Virgin 150). After being with Virgin over 3 months, they increased my limit by just £25 after paying every bill perfectly by direct debit each month. Since this limit isn’t made clear when joining, many very annoyed customer’s are cut off suddenly even though their bill isn’t even due for payment and usually it’s automatically paid by direct debit. On calling Virgin Media for help, customers are often treated as badly as if they haven’t paid their bill at all and they have to pay straight away to get their services restored so the total owed is below the credit limit. It’s obviously money that isn’t due and not budgeted for at the time, but if Virgin Media customers don’t happen to have the money readily available at the time, it’s hard cheese, they won’t have any services what-so-ever until they do pay and complaining doesn’t help either. If someone is unlucky enough to notice they’re cut off out of Virgin Media’s normal office hours, they’ll have to wait until Virgin Media’s customer services are open again to sort the problem out and it can be a number of hours (they say up to 24 hours) before they’re turned back on even after this unexpected payment has been made.

Virgin Media went one stage worse and completely messed up my credit limit since they only initially gave me up to 20Mb/S broadband when I asked for 50Mb/S, the engineer came back a week of so later to install my 50Mb/S broadband, but within literally 15 minutes after the engineer left, all my services where suddenly cut off since the credit limit was wrongfully still set for the less costly 20Mb/S even though I was now using the 50Mb/S service. The way I was treated was absolutely disgusting and I ended up being forced to make 2 unexpected payments that weren’t even due and Virgin Media still didn’t restore my services after paying the 1st agreed amount when they then later demanded even more, please read my article titled Virgin Media Scandal – Suspended Account – Over Credit Limit! for full details.

Illegal File Sharers Beware of Virgin’s Anti-Piracy Policy:

I have given this issue a separate heading as I didn’t see it fair on Virgin Media to put this down as a disadvantage as people who illegally file share copyrighted material are breaking the law and are severely damaging the music, movie and gaming industries, yet often the worst pirates are the first people to complain about the shortage of quality new releases.

Music and movie piracy is so common that most people don’t even think of it as illegal these days and virtually any music track or movie is available on-line as a free download, plus many movies are even available instantly to watch on-line without paying a penny in royalties. With most people owning at least one digital MP3 player, E.g an Ipod and with many more PCs, especially portable PCs Etc, more people need music tracks in digital MP3 format and this encourages illegal music downloads even more as it’s much easier to download a music track rather than ripping it from an original CD, but obviously most people don’t possess the original CDs to start with. In fact music CD sales are down even though an average person possesses more music tracks than ever before, often mainly pirated. Illegal music downloading is now totally and utterly out of control and illegal movie downloading is gradually catching up, the UK government is therefore currently receiving the most pressure to help dramatically prevent this piracy from the music industry and eventually will be forced to take unpopular action.

People might wonder why there’s not as many PC games on the market as console games, well it’s partly because it’s harder to makes games run well on so many different PCs with numerous different specifications, but it’s also largely because a higher proportion of people pirate PC games than consoles games, even though console game piracy is still a big problem and it’s still greatly reducing both the quantity and quality of games produced on these formats. The problem with PC piracy is it’s now totally out of control and something will need to change soon. In fact there’s usually many times as many pirated top PC game titles around as original copies at any given time and many hardcore gamers rarely part with their money to purchase an original title these days, if ever. As quick as a new protection system is implemented to prevent the piracy of new game releases, the new protection system gets cracked and most mainstream PC games become available to download free within a few days of release. Often new releases are even available on the very day of release and sometimes even earlier than that. Most retail and wholesale outlets take delivery of new game releases before they’re due for public release and it only takes one dodgy outlet to leak a game out before it’s general release to mainstream crackers (if they’re not a cracker themselves). Crackers often compete amongst themselves to be the first to crack new titles, making them quickly and readily available to all as freely downloadable torrents, complete with full instructions about how to easily bypass the game’s anti-piracy protection. It’s no wander many software companies are now choosing to avoid the PC format altogether, while some are instead releasing on-line only games, some of which are even subscription based to ensure they get a reasonable revenue out of their hard work. On-line games are much harder if not impossible to crack since they need to connect to private servers using a unique security key for each original game sold. Many major new games today take a few years to produce with the hard work of a large team of professionals, but software libraries and engines have often been constantly developed and improved over an even longer period, it must be horrible for these people to see all their hard work wasted when many people have already played out and completed their game before it’s even officially released, losing them massive amounts of revenue.

Virgin Media are leading the way among UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) towards enforcing copyright laws against illegal file-sharing and are already testing new anti-piracy detection and monitoring technology at time of writing. They are being quite secretive about exactly what they’re monitoring and how, but the rumours are that they’re at first monitoring The Pirate Bay and probably a few more popular public trackers, although once tested they could implement the system to monitor a much wider range of file-sharing activities.

Under pressure from privacy campaigners, Virgin Media still claim that no individual person is currently being monitored and at this time it’s only used for statistical purposes across the board, but this is probably just the start of a journey for them to be the very first UK ISP to actively enforce harsh penalties against illegal fire-sharers on a regular basis. Already when a copyright holder complains to Virgin Media about an offending IP address (every PC has one when connected to the Internet), they are likely to send out an official warning letter to the relevant customer concerned threatening further action if they don’t stop their illegal activities in future. Virgin Media will probably be much more co-operative and helpful to a copyright holder complaining about illegal file sharing than many rival ISPs who still refuse to take any action against their customers, only releasing their personal details to the copyright holder when a court order is received. Eventually Virgin Media are likely to pioneer a 3 strikes and your out system in th UK where on the 1st strike an offending customer will receive a formal written warning, on the 2nd strike an Internet suspension and an outright ban on the 3rd strike. Music file sharing is likely to be the first type of media to be officially enforced using the 3 strikes system after intense pressure from the music industry, but I’d expect movies, games and other software anti-piracy enforcement to follow shortly afterwards.

Hiding under the protective cover of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that’s less likely to enforce anti-piracy penalties will probably only delay detection and it’s potential penalties. Due to continued pressure on the UK government to dramatically reduce piracy that’s now totally out of control, in the next few years I expect to see the introduction of new mandatory UK anti-piracy laws that will force all ISPs to actively monitor and penalise customers for illegal file sharing, probably using the 3 strikes system as mentioned in the paragraph above. Adverse action taken on the 3 strikes system will most likely be shared nationally across all ISPs, meaning that if you’re banned from one, you’re banned from them all. The new anti-piracy law will fall in line with other countries around the world who have already implemented such laws, like New Zealand for-instance. There are various measures one can currently use to protect oneself against being caught illegal file sharing which I won’t explain here, but no precautions provide full protection no matter what is claimed and if (and when) new mandatory enforcements do become law in the UK, new ISP detection technologies are likely to make avoiding detection virtually impossible.

I expect to see even more low cost legal alternatives to pirating music, movies and games, so they’re wont be any excuses if and when the 3 strikes system becomes law in the UK. One can already download individual music tracks legally and very cheaply on iTunes and there’s many other similar services available. LoveFilm allow customers to rent an unlimited number of movies for a small monthly subscription charge (you can only rent so many movies at once depending on your level of subscription), plus some movies can be watched instantly on-line. Virgin Media have a movie on-demand service available for cable TV customers with a V+ Box where one can rent numerous titles including the latest releases instantly. There’s already a legal way of playing hundreds of recent PC games for a relatively small monthly subscription fee via a service named Metaboli. With Metaboli you’re effectively only renting the game titles and can only play them as long as you subscribe to the service even after you’ve downloaded them to your hard disk. Metaboli’s security and file encryption system is extremely powerful and as far as I know, no-one has managed to crack it allowing them to illegally play all the games for free.

Legal Disclaimer

This article and any comments are without prejudice to Virgin Media, BT, BT India, Sky or any other organisation. This article includes the opinion of the author and shouldn’t be treated as definite fact. The author of this website is NOT racist in any way or form and the article refers to BT India with absolutely no offence intended and absolutely no prejudice what-so-ever, in fact the author also praises support given by Virgin Media technical support staff that are probably based in India and therefore remains unbiased. Although we try to keep our articles as accurate as possible, we cannot be held liable for any mistake made. This article, any comments and all other articles or information on this website are covered by our full legal disclaimer.

Computer Exchange or CEX for short is a well established chain of computer stores that are based throughout the UK. Some stores are run by CEX themselves, while other stores are operating under a franchise agreement which means the shop trades using the CEX name and sells CEX products like the rest of the stores, the big difference is the business is privately and independently owned by another person, persons or business. By offering franchise opportunities, CEX have been able to expand the number of retail outlets throughout the UK quicker than they would have otherwise.

CEX are mainly geared towards PC and console gaming although they also sell computer hardware (especially graphics cards), DVDs and mobile phones. What’s different about Computer Exchange is the fact that they allow customers to bring in used games, computer hardware and mobile phones for either an exchange or for the cash value, although your property will be worth considerably less if you decide to walk away with the cash value instead of the exchange value.

The Name CEX (Pronounced as SEX!)

Firstly Computer Exchange is shortened to CEX. This is all very well, but when phoning their head office, the answer service answers, “welcome to CEX”, except “CEX” is pronounced clearly as “SEX”. I can’t understand why they do this instead of simply saying the 3 letters individually as “C.E.X.”, especially since many of their customers are in fact children and young teenagers, for this reason they shouldn’t do this in my opinion.

Prices of Their Goods:

Many products are competitively priced at CEX , while other products can be very expensive, so please look around and compare prices elsewhere. Many classic used games and DVDs are very cheap and are well worth the money. Some computer hardware is reasonably priced, while other hardware costs more 2nd hand than one can buy it brand now on-line. The 2nd hand mobile phone prices are generally extortionately priced to the extent where I’ve seen old models sell in CEX for more than one can buy a newer model brand new. I can’t understand how they manage to sell 2nd hand phones at these prices, although they must do as in Birmingham, UK there’s 2 branches and one is purely for the purchase and exchange of mobile phones. Both stores have been successfully for a number a years now.

Prices Paid for Your Used Items:

CEX buy and exchange used DVDs, computer games, some computer hardware and mobile phones. As I’ve mentioned earlier, you are offered 2 prices on your used items where the exchange value is usually considerably greater than the cash value. Even though the cash prices offered are usually less than you’d probably get via a private sale in the Bargain Pages Etc, they’re still usually the best prices paid in the high street, especially if you compare the prices paid at places like Cash Converters. If you’re planning on exchanging an item or items for other goods, the prices offered are often closer to what you’d expect to get privately. The prices paid for mobile phones can be unexpectedly high as they appear to be living in the past at the time of writing where they’re overcharging for used phones as if they’re newer models than they really are, this reflects in their value and resale value at CEX. Before they agree to buy any used item for exchange or cash, they will obviously want to test the product, this can take from a few minutes to a few hours for some computer hardware, especially when they’re busy.

Customer Service – My Experience:

What’s awful about CEX is there’s absolutely no way you can phone your local store as the phone number is purposely kept secret and is even ex-directory. In the past I’ve explained in store why I need to call them and I’ve asked for the local number in the Birmingham branch, but have been refused point blank by the manager who explained that it’s not company policy to give out their phone number. This can be absolutely infuriating, especially if you’re having problems with an item you’ve just purchased or if you for-instance want to check on an item you’ve ordered from another store when they don’t call you back as promised. The only way one can talk to any branch directly is by visiting in person no matter how inconvenient that is. One can search and might come across their head office number, but you’re lucky to speak to someone and they’re unhelpful and won’t put you through to your local store either, also it’s an 0845 number which isn’t included in many free call phone plans.

The staff in store are generally helpful most of the time, but recently I’ve had a much less than a good service from their main Birmingham branch as I’ll explain further. I visited the store and wanted to purchase a graphics card that wasn’t available in the Birmingham branch. I was told that they had it in stock in other branches in the UK and that they could order the item for me without a problem where it would take up to a week for delivery. I had no option but to do this instead of ordering via mail order as I wanted to exchange my older graphics card which can only be done in store. They clearly said they’d order from a non-franchise store as they’ve had problems with franchise stores not sending ordered items in the past. My details were taken down and I expected to receive a phone call within so many days when the item arrived as promised. After over a week I’d heard absolutely nothing and since it was impossible to call my local branch due to them being ex-directory, I had to make a special visit to the Birmingham branch at my inconvenience to find out what was going on. I asked about my order and just got blank faces from the sales staff, then the manager stated that he’d just had the graphics card I’d ordered in stock, but had just sold it over the counter before I arrived. I asked where my graphics card was since my order was overdue, but I was told by the manager that it hadn’t arrived. I then asked why the graphics card that was sold wasn’t reserved for me since I’d ordered one beforehand, but the manager gave me what was in my opinion a dire excuse, explaining that the graphics card sold wasn’t the one with my name on, even though it was identical and that my graphics card just hadn’t arrived. I then got told that it’s not guaranteed that other CEX stores will send what is ordered anyway and that they rarely do, which was totally different to what I was told over a week before. I asked what I can do to get the graphics card that I’d ordered, but I was told that they could only attempt to order another one since it hadn’t arrived, although delivery wouldn’t be guaranteed. The only other alternative was to travel to another part of the UK to collect, but even then it would be a massive gamble as reserving was impossible and they could sell out before I arrive. I was obviously very annoyed at wasting over a week when I could have shopped elsewhere, but ordered another anyway on the off-chance since the graphics card was considerably cheaper at CEX than anywhere else since it was used, plus I wanted to exchange my old graphics card which meant that every time I visited, I had the further inconvenience of removing it from my PC in case they had the graphics card I’d ordered.

The next day I checked the CEX website and saw they’d got the graphics card I’d ordered in stock in the Birmingham branch, yet they still hadn’t called me despite all that was said and done the day before. I again couldn’t even call them to reserve it as they’re ex-directory, so I rushed in a taxi to the Birmingham store at my expense, gambling that they’d still have it in stock this time on my arrival. I was at last lucky this time as they actually had 2 in stock, although the manager said that I was very lucky as he was considering buying them both for himself, what sort of dire service would this have been when I’d ordered it? Anyway I advised I wanted to exchange the item as previously agreed with my older graphics card, but they said that because it was so late in the day that they didn’t have time to test my old graphics card properly until the next morning. I therefore asked them for the exchange value the following day after they’d tested it, explaining that I’d pay the full price for the newer graphics card first as I needed my PC up and running that evening and I didn’t want to be without a graphics card at all. The manager then gave me the pathetic excuse that the following day I’d only get cash value for my old graphics card even though I’d brought it in at the exact time I brought the new graphics card since their computer system only works this way. This was extremely unfair, especially after being messed around so much by CEX and I was in my opinion ripped off over £10 because of their terrible service and unfair system, but this was the only way I could guarantee getting the newer graphics card I’d ordered with my PC up and running that evening as otherwise CEX would have been holding both graphics cards until the next day, plus I simply couldn’t trust them not to sell the new graphics card I’d ordered again based on past experiences, so I wanted to ensure I walked out with it this time.

An old friend of mine visited CEX and had stripped a couple of his old PCs of parts to sell for cash as he suddenly had an urgent unexpected cash flow problem. On going well out of his way to CEX Birmingham, the manager stated that most days they’d take these items perfectly fine for cash, except today they’d decided not to give out cash to anyone, asking him to return tomorrow or another day. He demanded a reason since he’d gone way out of his way to visit the store and again he couldn’t phone beforehand to check since they’re ex-directory, but he didn’t get valid reason except that they choose to do this occasionally. He pleaded with the manager to be reasonable to no avail. In conclusion, don’t rely on CEX to produce the cash for your used goods as they can refuse with the most stupidest of reasons at any time, potentially causing extreme inconvenience.

Return of Goods:

CEX are generally fairly reasonable when returning faulty goods within a short time, although sometimes they will test the product themselves and if they decide the product isn’t faulty they will usually only offer an exchange or a credit note. Sometimes arguments can erupt however as sometimes certain computer hardware for-instance won’t work on certain PCs that it’s supposed to and isn’t fit for the purpose, but it will on their test system. If the item is found to be faulty, then they will change the product or will issue a refund in full without a problem. I haven’t had any experience of returning any faulty items that have failed after over a month under guarantee or warranty, so I can’t comment. All second hand goods have at least 3 months warranty, although some items have longer, used hard drives have a 1 year warranty for-instance. New products generally have 12 months warranty as most stores.

Risk of Buying Stolen Goods:

As someone who once knew a lot of people throughout Birmingham and the City Centre (UK), I have known of past acquaintances selling stolen goods to CEX on a regular basis. They boasted that they took bags of stolen computer games and DVDs for a number of consecutive days over a period of quite a few weeks to CEX where the cash value of the games and DVDs was around £200 a time, CEX finally banned the hardened shoplifters, but this was after them accepting often 2 or even 3 copies of the same game or DVD without even challenging them and after shelling out what must be quite a few thousand pounds for hundreds of stolen titles. I know this since these shoplifters were then going around town asking other people to go into CEX for them with the stolen games, offering them a small cut for their trouble. They found it comical that they were able to do this and even checked the top paid titles in CEX regularly so they knew what the best titles were to steal. Sometimes they’d even travel to different CEX stores where each one had separate membership, allowing them to sell again and again. So when you buy a used item from CEX, it’s well possible it could be stolen property and unfortunately there’s no way to know either way. I sincerely hope that CEX have tightened up their security successfully to help prevent this, at least they’re more strict now about potential members producing the relevant ID to allow them to sell items. It’s also less likely that any of their mobile phones are stolen as they insist on the person producing the original charger if they wish to sell it (not a replacement charger).

CEX Website:

The CEX website is one of the better parts of CEX, it’s well designed and it’s kept up to date. One can check the products available throughout the UK or at an individual local store, for each product one is told the sale price, the price they buy the item in for cash at and the exchange value. Each item has a reasonable description and usually a photo, but this could be improved however. Unfortunately there’s no decent technical support pages or live support. The worst thing missing is the inability to reserve items for store collection and without a local store telephone number being made available, it makes doing this impossible. Overall however the website is still good.

Please click here to visit the CEX website.

Mail Order:

Any item sold in store anywhere around the country can be brought via mail order using their official website, but since I haven’t used their mail order service, I cannot comment on how good the service is or isn’t at the time of writing. The disadvantage of mail order is that you can’t see used items to inspect the condition before ordering and you can’t exchange used items.

The CEX Store Itself:

CEX branches are usually busy places and the main Birmingham branch is no exception, especially in the evenings and weekends. The stores however are well laid out and packed with items for sale, especially used games and DVD where one can often pick up a bargain. Expect to have to queue up however, especially at the PC / phone counter for assistance as this is also where people sell and exchange items.

Conclusion:

I’ve had a good old moan about CEX, they might not be perfect, but in truth I’d really miss them if they ever went out of business. Over the years I’ve had good and bad experiences with them, but I’ve also used them to sell unwanted items for reasonable prices and I’ve picked up a few bargains along the way. If they only had a local store phone number, it would greatly improve their customer service.

Legal Disclaimer

This article and any future comments are my own personal opinion and shouldn’t be taken as definite fact. We cannot be held liable for any mistakes made. It is without prejudice to CEX (Computer Exchange) or any other person, persons or organisation. If CEX would like to reply to this article, we will be happy to print it. This article, any comments and all articles Etc on this website are covered by the full legal disclaimer.

There are various people making money out of selling a lottery winning secret formula or very similar, in fact there’s even books and various Ebooks written about the subject.

Do any of these so called amazing winning formulas really work? Are you really going to get rich from using them?

The answer is normally NO to both, well not unless you happen to be very lucky anyway! As a person who knows basic probability, mathematics and statistics, there’s no effective formula to winning the lottery jackpot, although you can modify the odds slightly and you can increase your chances of winning more money if you did win as I’ll explain later.

It’s a FACT that the lottery numbers drawn are totally and utterly random, they cannot be predicted and there’s no sequence or run of numbers to watch out for from week to week because THE LOTTERY BALLS HAVE NO PREVIOUS MEMORY. Each number has exactly the same chance of being drawn out each week and the results from previous draws have absolutely no effect on the current weeks numbers drawn. Even though this is an absolute fact, various individuals still continue to successfully convince people that they can reliably predict future lottery results based on previous statistics taken over a long period of time, often promising big wins within weeks which is most certainly a scam. Trying to Predict totally random lottery balls is very similar to repeatedly throwing a standard 6 sided dice, trying to predict the next number based on previous numbers rolled even though it’s also totally random. Each number on a dice has exactly a 1 in 6 chance of being rolled each time no matter what has already been rolled in the past, assuming that the dice is perfectly formed and it’s thrown correctly as talented people can sometimes cheat throwing dice with lots of practice. There’s no other mathematical probability to be taken into account when throwing a standard dice properly other than this simple 1 in 6 chance and no complex formulae can be used to predict future rolls. You could have rolled the dice 10 times and every single roll could be the number 6 (this is a 1 in 60466176 chance which is 6 to the power of 10), yet on the 11th throw you still have an equal 1 in 6 chance of throwing yet another 6 or any other number as THE DICE HAS NO PREVIOUS MEMORY. Similarly in the Lottery, the chances of drawing exactly the same numbers as the previous week’s draw is exactly the same as the chance of any other combination of numbers being drawn. In the main UK National Lottery 6 numbers are drawn between 1 and 49. You might also say that 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 will never even be drawn in the UK, well yes, it’s extremely unlikely, but the chances of 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 being drawn are exactly the same as any other set of numbers, although these numbers are surprisingly very popular and if you did choose these numbers and won the jackpot, you’d be forced to share your winnings with around 10,000 people, so I don’t recommend choosing them. These facts might make people realise just how unlikely it really is to win the lottery jackpot. The odds are heavily stacked up against you and therefore no-one should see the chance of winning the jackpot as a serious likelihood as it’s almost certainly going to leave them bitterly disappointed. If you do play the lottery anywhere in the World, do it for a bit of fun and if you do happen to win something, see it as a bonus, but don’t expect to win anything.

How To Identify When Gambling Becomes A Problem?

If the money you spend on lottery tickets is enough to cause a change of plan due to the losing the money wagered, then you’re spending too much as the bet is controlling your life, this could be said of any gambling. For instance, if you plan to go out for a meal, but have to cancel due to losing money gambling, then gambling has become a problem in your life and it’s very important that you spot and admit this to yourself before it becomes too much of a problem as gambling can quickly ruin and start controlling your entire life very easily. Gambling is very addictive and can become like a narcotic drug.

For further help and advice on gambling addiction, please visit:

Gamblers Anonymous (USA – Numerous local meet-up groups & advice)

The National Council on Problem Gambling (USA – Includes 24HR helpline & advice)

Gamblers Anonymous (UK – Numerous local meet-up groups & advice)

GamCare (UK – Includes 8am-2am helpline and live on-line counselling)

…or search for “gambling help” in your Country.

How Can I Influence The Odds Playing The National Lottery?

I will use the UK National Lottery as an example where 6 numbers are drawn between 1 and 49 along with a bonus ball which increases your winnings significantly if you match 5 numbers and the bonus ball. Similar methods can be modified slightly and applied to most lotteries.

If you buy just 1 lottery ticket, then you cannot increase your chances of winning the lottery no matter what numbers you choose as each number drawn is totally random as I’ve already explained, but you can increase the amount you’ll win if your numbers are drawn. When you match 3 numbers in the UK, you are given £10, you cannot influence this, but if you match 4 numbers or more, the amount you’re awarded varies depending on how many other winners there are out of the number of tickets sold. If you pick a set of numbers that less other people have chosen, then you’ll win more if your numbers do come up. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to choose unpopular numbers as there’s numerous other people around attempting to do just that and you’ll be constantly trying to 2nd guess them from week to week. Saying this I understand that choosing numbers on the edge of the game card are slightly less popular and 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 are chosen by around 10,000 people each week, so avoid them and other similar runs. 46 was the least popular number while 7 was the most popular about 10+ years ago, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42 are also said to be popular, but all this might have changed.

If you only buy a lottery ticket on roll overs, you are getting better value for money as many people will have already paid towards the jackpot during the previous week and you won’t have to, even though you’ll have exactly the same chance of winning a larger jackpot during the roll over week. During a roll over, you could try choosing exactly the same numbers as the previous week as these numbers have exactly the same chance of appearing again as any other set of numbers and no-one had all 6 of these numbers the previous week. It’s possible that most people won’t see the numbers repeating as a possible chance, but it’s also very possible that lots of people could have also thought of the same idea, especially if masses of people read this article. This is just one example of how it’s extremely difficult to 2nd guess other players.

If you buy more than one ticket, then you can effectively change the odds of winning by varying the likely prize based on your stake:

Example 1) If you for instance buy 4 lottery tickets where each ticket has completely different numbers, you have 4 times as much chance of winning the jackpot as buying 1 ticket. You’ll have the best chance of winning something, but if you win something on one ticket, you won’t win on another unless you get 2 tickets with 3 numbers on them where you’d win £20. In summary, you are betting £4 to increase your chances of winning by 4 times.

Example 2) If you buy 4 lottery tickets and you choose exactly the same numbers on each, you’ve got exactly the same chance of winning as buying just 1 lottery ticket, but if you do win, you’ll win up to 4 times as much. If you won the jackpot however, you’ll take away 4 shares of the winnings, but if you’re the only winner, you’ll still take away the same prize (all of the jackpot), so in a way having identical tickets is slightly poorer value for money.

Example 3) If instead you buy 4 lottery tickets and you keep say 4 “banking” numbers the same on each ticket in different permutations along with 2 random numbers, then you’re effectively modifying the odds to something in between example 1 and 2. If 3 or 4 of your main banking numbers came up, then you’ll win on every ticket and you’d have a chance of winning even more with the 2 random numbers on each. If all 6 numbers came up on one ticket, then you’d win the jackpot on 1 ticket and you’d have 4 numbers on 3 tickets. Many people use permutations of different amounts of “banking” numbers (E.g. 1, 2, 3, 4 or even 5) across a number of tickets to increase the chance of winning a substantial amount when they do win, but also increasing the chance of winning nothing at all.

The above are all examples of bending your stake, the odds of winning and the amount you’re more likely to win if your numbers do come up.

Joining a syndicate is another way of changing your stake and betting odds. You could for instance spend £1 for one of 10 tickets in a syndicate and you’d have a 10 times higher chance of winning something if the numbers chosen were always random, but any winnings would also be split between 10 people. If the syndicate won £10 for instance, you’d only get £1 back and break even. If you join a massive syndicate, then you have a much higher chance of winning the jackpot, the problem is, you’ll only receive a small cut of the winnings, this is pretty obvious, but it doesn’t stop people trying to sell this advice too. Often syndicates also modify odds by keeps so many “banking” numbers that stay the same in different permutations as in example 3 above, so if the syndicate does win, they’re a greater chance of winning a significant amount, while reducing the chances of winning anything at all.

Even though there’s many ways of changing stakes and odds, they’re not really a system for winning the lottery jackpot, but is there really a workable method for winning the jackpot? (See below)

To Increase Your Chances of Winning The National Lottery Jackpot (UK):

Despite many people trying to tell you otherwise, there is no miracle formula for winning the National Lottery Jackpot and even though you can increase your chances of winning by following these simple instructions, you still have a very slim chance and by aiming entirely to win the jackpot reduces your chances of winning on more than one ticket at once. This system might not be amazing, but this is true reality and not just a scam artist’s pipe dream! The system mathematically and statistically does as it states and it’s given away totally free, unlike like many scam sites out there.

To increase your chance of winning the jackpot, you must play entirely for the jackpot and you must buy multiple tickets as I’ll explain (a minimum of 2 tickets to effect the odds). Basically you need to stop the numbers on each ticket repeating themselves on other tickets as much as possible as this covers a larger scope of combinations for all 6 numbers to come up. If you have every number from 1 to 49 on at least one ticket, you’re covering every possible number that can be drawn (You need 9 tickets which is 54 numbers in total, so a few will be used twice), the hard bit is getting the numbers drawn on the same ticket which only good luck can achieve.

Write on small pieces of paper all 49 numbers, then fold them, putting them into a hat or box. Shuffle the hat and start drawing the numbers randomly one by one in sets of 6 until you’ve brought the number of tickets you require or until you’ve drawn 8 tickets. For example:

26, 43, 47, 15, 25, 39
09, 22, 36, 19, 28, 42
35, 40, 04, 10, 20, 01
34, 13, 03, 48, 07, 11
02, 21, 08, 30, 05, 44
46, 18, 16, 38, 32, 17
27, 31, 14, 06, 49, 24
45, 23, 33, 37, 12, 29

Each number above is unique as it’s only used once. Since there are 8 tickets and 6×8=48, there is 1 remaining number that hasn’t yet been used. The remaining unique number that’s unused is 41 which can be used to start the 9th ticket if you want to buy even more tickets. Now choose the next numbers by working down the columns as this will ensure that the next tickets only repeat 1 number from each of the previous tickets, so the 9th ticket would be 41 (last number left), 26, 09, 35, 34, 02, followed by 46, 27, 45, 43, 22, 40 and then 13, 21, 18, 31, 23, 47 and so on. If these numbers run out and you still want to buy more tickets then I suggest you start the entire process again from scratch by putting all the numbers back into the hat and redrawing them. If you’re buying a lot of tickets, then there are more complex ways of increasing your odds very slightly higher rather than reshuffling at this time, but this keeps it quite simple.

You now have a higher chance of winning the lottery jackpot, at the expense of reducing your chances of winning on more than one ticket if you don’t win the jackpot. Don’t expect miracles though as the odds of winning the jackpot are still extremely low, but good luck anyway.

The Lotto Black Book – Why It’s A Scam:

Remember that if someone really did know a winning formula to winning the lottery jackpot, then they would surely simply continue using it themselves secretly instead of desperately trying to hard sell the system to other people for what would be small change to them if they were really were that rich. In theory, if a genuine system did exist that could virtually guarantee a significant lottery win as many systems claim, then sharing the system with others would completely jeopardise the very system they’re selling as one would soon expect there to be hundreds or even thousands of jackpot winners every week. Unfortunately so many jackpot winners would only win a small amount when the winnings get split between them. Also one would expect see masses of people getting nearly all the numbers, but instead of winning a considerable amount of money as usual, they’d receive tiny payouts as they’d be so many sharing the allocated money. In fact with so many “winning” systems leaked to the public, by now the lottery would be dying as it wouldn’t be worth playing with such low payouts to each winner! Well, none of this is happening since the release of any of these so called “winning” systems and formulae while there’s just as many roll over weeks when no-one wins the jackpot as there always has been. This also proves that such “winning” systems and formulae most definitely don’t work as promised!

The Lotto Black Book is an example of someone trying to sell a lottery winning system using hard sell techniques and like all these systems that promise high winnings in a short amount of time, it’s a blatant scam. According to this site, an Oklahoma Professor got shot in the foot while escaping after winning the big lotto prize 3 times in a row when people allegedly threatened to kill him if he didn’t tell them his secret formula. Now what a surprise, even though he apparently risked being killed keeping his lottery formula a secret, he’s later all of a sudden deciding to share the secret formula with anyone who’s willing to pay him $96.83 (around £68.73 in the UK). This story would be laughable if so many people didn’t fall for the scam, unfortunately the fantasy and hope of receiving a changing amount of money takes over some people who don’t think logically when offered something that is simply too good to be true.

For $93.83 you get to download a worthless Ebook that costs the owner nothing to give away to as many people as he likes. Remember that it’s mathematically impossible to see a pattern out of completely random numbers and since this system has been sold, there’s no substantial increase in the amount of people winning lottery jackpots, so it’s definitely a scam. If this person did happen to win the lottery as the story claims, then it’s by chance and he’s probably brought a massive amount of lottery tickets from his first winnings to increase his chances of winning again dramatically.

The Convincers:

There’s nothing to lose and all to gain: The system claims to refund $200 within 60 days, giving you a profit of $103.17 if you don’t see at least 1 big fat cheque by then. You apparently have to prove you’ve used the system first and failed to win a large amount, but it’s easy for him to proclaim that you haven’t followed the instructions correctly when you don’t win and how much is a large amount? Would a £10 win be considered a big win as if you brought 100 UK lottery tickets for-instance, you’re likely to win at least £10? Anyway, I’d be absolutely amazed if anyone really got their $200 back after paying just $96.83 for the Ebook, especially when the terms and conditions state, “You may return most new, unopened items sold and fulfilled by thelottoblackbook.com within 56 days of delivery for a full refund.”, which is 4 days short of 60 days and it’s impossible to for-fill this return policy with an Ebook as it’s opened as soon as you read it. The terms and conditions then asks you to refer to the FAQs for returns regarding Ebooks, but this mentions nothing about this specific guarantee either as it simply links to Clickbank and their standard returns policy which isn’t relevant to this offer.

People are amazed by the system: The site displays numerous amazing testimonials from apparently delighted customers who have all won large amounts entirely thanks to this system, but remember that it’s very easy to make up testimonials and no lottery winning system like this can possibly deliver what is claimed, this is a mathematical and statistical fact! Ask any genuine and independent mathematician if you don’t believe me! Also if the system continues to be sold to a large number of people who all buy quite a few tickets, then there’s an ever increasing statistical probability that someone will eventually win a considerable amount anyway, but it won’t have anything to do with the system working, although that particularly lucky person might wrongfully believe it has worked. The thing is thousands of people to this 1 winner will have all most certainly lost, but the masses of losers won’t be printed on the testimonials page.

Very high success rate: He states that there’s a 48.7% chance of winning every single time you play. Unfortunately in reality the only way this is possible is if you spend a massive amount on tickets, E.g. You spend £40 on tickets and have a 47.7% chance of winning £10, but you won’t really have won as you’ll be £30 out of pocket.

A high profile respected person you can trust: The person who pioneered the winning system is allegedly a doctor and he builds up further trust by talking about all the winnings that he’s donated to charity. Unfortunately there’s no hard proof of either claim anywhere, but even if he did happen to win the lottery by chance and he is really a doctor who gave money to charity, he’s still now selling a system that simply cannot achieve what is promised.

Anyone can do it easily: The instructions are laid out very simply so people believe that anyone can do it very easily. Only one critical stage cannot be completed without referring to the $96.83 Ebook (surprise surprise).

Creating urgency: The site states that only 1000 copies will be sold and then the Ebook will be destroyed so the system doesn’t saturate the lottery system with winners, this makes people believe that they must act quickly or lose out on the opportunity of a lifetime. Unfortunately the system wouldn’t saturate the lottery with winnings as it won’t work and how do people really know when they have sold 1000 copies? The owner of the site is more likely to disappear when too many people are pressing for their $200 refund and not when he’s sold to 1000 satisfied customers. Anyway, if the system really did work, then even selling 1000 copies would be enough to dramatically increase the number of substantial lottery winners each week if the system really did work (it clearly doesn’t).

Good reviews: Often the seller will plaster good reviews and comments across the Internet so people read this while searching for more information while considering paying for the particular formula. Sometimes people will even be selling the system for affiliate commissions who are bound to excellent, but unfortunately very biased reviews. I’ve also know some sellers try to target search engine keywords like “scam” especially to lead people to biased reviews that conclude that the system is brilliant and not a scam even when it most certainly is.

I strongly DON’T recommend it, but for The Lotto Black Book, please see:

http://www.thelottoblackbook.com/ (Ebook $96.83)

This is just one of numerous very similar scams, all promising wealth and riches from playing the lottery, here are some more, but DON’T FALL FOR ANY OF THEM:

http://www.lotteryriches.com/ (Ebook £10)
http://www.dailypick3wins.com/ (Ebook $17.99)
http://www.smartluck.com/ (Various expensive Ebooks & software)
http://howtohitthelottery.com/ (Ebook $25)

(Some of the above sites might be here today, gone tomorrow, so sorry if any of the links become dead in future!)

Legal Disclaimer:

It is NOT the intention of this article to teach people to win the lottery. This article is without prejudice to The Lotto Black Book or any other organisation that offers lottery winning tips or formulae. It’s indeed without prejudice to any persons or organisation. This article includes my personal opinion and shouldn’t be taken as definite fact. Although PJCNET try to be as accurate as possible, we cannot be held responsible for any mistakes made. Even though I see myself as having a basic knowledge of mathematics, probability and statistics, I do not claim to be an expert in this field. The article briefly discusses gambling addiction, if you feel you’re effected, PJCNET strongly recommends that you seek professional advice, PJCNET do not claim to the councillors or experts in this field. This article, any comments and all other articles and comments on this website are covered by our full legal disclaimer.

Geostring is different to most pyramid schemes or pyramid like schemes as it costs absolutely nothing to join and they even put a free $10 into your account to get you started. Even though the system works in a similar way to a pyramid scheme as there’s is no real product apart from the system itself, the entire income coming into the system is from advertising revenue (sponsors) instead of from membership fees. In fact if you really must try a pyramid like scheme against my better advice, then try Geostring as there’s potentially nothing to lose except a lot of time and effort as long as you stick to only using free advertising to obtain your referrals. With $10 totally free and a system that’s free to join, it all sounds pretty reasonable, especially after you read all about Geostring on their official homepage. Unfortunately the chances of actually receiving a payment from Geostring are very slim indeed, in fact it’s much MUCH slimmer than most people will initially realise if not impossible.

Review & The Low-Down:

Geostring’s official website states that the only catch is that you’ll receive an Email every Tuesday which includes your stats and messages from their sponsors where you must click on the link to confirm you’ve received and opened the Email, well unfortunately this is far from the only catch as I’ll explain in detail:

Geostring’s official website also states the following, “You’ll be simply amazed how fast your free paycheck accumulates with this program”. Unfortunately Like any pyramid like scheme, most people will be at the bottom of the pyramid at any given time and eventually the system will become saturated leaving most people without a single referral and no income what-so-ever. Even members who aren’t at the bottom of the pyramid with referrals won’t normally ever obtain enough income to actually get paid because of a rather high minimum payout threshold of $100. In fact to earn the $100 payment threshold, a member needs 9,000 direct or indirect referrals which pay 1 Cent each (you get a $10 starting bonus plus 9000 x 1 Cent = $100). In fact around 89% of members will always be at the bottom of the pyramid with no referrals what-so-ever, while nearly all or perhaps even 100% of the remaining 11% won’t ever make it past the minimum payout threshold. The $100 minimum payment threshold is the therefore a massive catch for Geostring members and for the free $10 sign-up bonus as hardly anyone will actually receive the $10 as they won’t ever receive a payment at all. It also states clearly in their user agreement, “The $10.00 signup bonus carries NO CASH VALUE and may not be withdrawn”.

A very small percentage of members who are very high up on the pyramid could potentially make some sort of income if the system becomes popular enough for anyone to obtain 9000 or more direct or indirect referrals, but these members (if they even exist) will have introduced 9000 or more members who will have even less chance of reaching the minimum payment threshold as they’ll be lower on the pyramid. Also, any member who did manage to get 9000+ referrals is unlikely to obtain this without paying for advertising, although obtaining this with free advertising is technically possible with a lot of work.

Now here is a potentially huge stinger! At the time of writing it’s very questionable whether anyone has ever actually been paid by Geostring at all as there’s no payment proof on-line! If they never ever pay in future, then Geostring is simply a scam although this isn’t proven as yet, please see the section below titled, “Do Geostring Pay At All?” for more details.

Another worrying catch is the following line in Geostring’s user agreement, “You agree that GeoString may transfer and disclose to third parties personally identifiable information about you for the purpose of marketing or statistics gathering, including to third parties that reside in jurisdictions with less restrictive data laws than your own.” When joining you must disclose your correct name, address, Email address and phone number or you are breaching their user agreement as it states, “You agree to and must use your own name and email address in the registration process and may not assume a false identity”. More worrying information about how Geostring share your personal and private information with 3rd parties can be found in their Privacy Policy. The problem is Geostring are therefore very likely to sell your private information to as many 3rd party companies as they can to make the owner as much revenue as possible. If you join, be prepared for unwanted sales calls, spam and junk mail, so much for just one Email every Tuesday!

Since Geostring is only financed from advertising revenue it can’t possibly give away much for every referral you make, in fact you only get 1p for each direct referral or indirect referral up to a maximum of 10 levels. On the home page there’s a completely unobtainable potential income calculator that assumes that every member you refer will refer a fixed number of members beneath them to 10 levels. In reality most people won’t manage a single referral. 2nd level referrals are rare and 3rd level referrals are extremely rare while 4th level referrals will be virtually unheard of. Actually getting a 10th level referral is virtually impossible, but the income calculator will predict that you’ll have hundreds or more just from referring a small number of people to the system. For instance, if you refer 5 people and they all refer 5 people, the income calculator states that you could earn $122,080.30. Well you’re just as likely to win the national lottery jackpot 5 times in a row with exactly the same numbers each time than to really earn this sort of money from 5 direct referrals. It maybe a bit easier to get referrals to a free system until the system becomes saturated, but it also means that many members won’t be serious about the system either and they often won’t bother with it shortly after joining, making it harder to get 2nd level referrals or beyond.

After you join and login for the first time to Geostring, you are taken to a basic front end. You’re given 2 ways of obtaining referrals to the system. Firstly there’s a standard Email system to invite friends Etc, although I’d be much more inclined to send invites to my enemies instead. Secondly you’re given an affiliate link along with an optional advertising banner that states, “Geostring, claim free money”, which in my opinion is extremely misleading since barely anyone really receives a single Cent from the system if anyone at all.

Don’t be fooled by a number of good reviews of Geostring when are linked to a member’s affiliate link as they’re likely to be biased. It’s the very nature of pyramid schemes, affiliate marketing schemes and other multi-level marketing schemes for the system itself to be hard sold by it’s members who are all desperately trying to get referrals in the hope that they become part of the small minority who actually make any money (if anyone does with Geostring).

Do Geostring Pay At All?

This is the golden question and at the time of writing I can only speculate, but please watch out for comments for future updates!

I’ve already spoken about how difficult it is to reach the minimum payout threshold with Geostring, although at the time of writing it’s very questionable whether Geostring pay at all. In fact I can’t find a single payment proof published on-line from anyone who’s reached the $100 minimum payout threshold. Even if in future a few members actually reach $100 (they need to refer 9000+ members directly or indirectly), will they actually payout then? Well this is very uncertain, but it’s rather suspicious that they only promise to payout by cheque. It’s easy and much more convenient these days pay out electronically and most reasonable companies will have the option to pay out by Paypal, Alertpay or similar.

What’s a little worrying is in the small print in Geostring’s User Agreement under the “Payments” section that states the following, “GeoString will announce start and end dates for any affiliate promotions offered either by email notification or notification posted on the GeoString website” and later states, “GeoString reserves the right to end any and all affiliate promotions at any time without prior notice”. The question is what are affiliate promotions as it’s certainly not made clear anywhere? Could they decide that the existing 1 Cent per referral is just a promotion if members start coming close to the $100 payment threshold?

In fact Geostring could change anything they like in their User Agreement at any time! The user agreement states the following, “GeoString may, at any time, choose to edit, add and/or delete portions of this agreement and impose changes without prior notification of its members. Members will be informed of any and all changes to this policy via an email to their primary contact email address provided upon signing up with GeoString and/or notification posted on the website. If any modification is unacceptable to you, your only recourse is to terminate your GeoString account.”. So basically the User Agreement is completely worthless as they can change anything they like when they like and if you don’t like it, the only option is to terminate your account which would of-course forfeit your earnings. So they could for-instance suddenly decide to increase the minimum payment threshold to $200 if members start coming close to $100.

Another common scam of “get paid to” schemes is to accuse members of fraudulent practice when their account balance reaches the minimum payment threshold even when no fraud has really taken place. I’m can’t say that this will happen with Geostring members, but if they did refuse payment on this basis, there would be little or nothing anyone could do about it as their User Agreement states that these decisions are the “sole discretion of Geostring”.

What’s certain is if Geostring never pay anyone now or in the future, the system is another complete scam where the owner makes money from their sponsors while paying out absolutely nothing in return to it’s members who have all joined for the sole purpose of making money.

If anyone has been paid by Geostring or has managed to reach the $100 minimum payout threshold without being paid, please leave a comment either by registering below or in the public shoutbox to the right. I will also keep an eye out for any future proof of payment on-line or anyone who has managed to even get to a balance of $100 whether paid or not, please see any comments below for future updates.

Conclusion:

Even if Geostring do payout as they promise when an account reaches the minimum payment threshold of $100, it’s still virtually impossible to reach this goal by gaining 9000 direct or indirect referrals and most if not everyone is doomed to fail miserably as the system operates like a pyramid scheme! For this reason the free $10 as advertised is totally worthless as you’ll never really receive it. If you must try a pyramid scheme or pyramid like scheme, then at least you don’t have to pay to join Geostring, but you’re likely to waste a lot of your precious time for absolutely nothing while receiving sales Emails and probably other unwanted marketing from 3rd party companies who they sell your private details to. I most certainly don’t recommend that anyone risks paying to advertise Geostring as you’re very likely to lose it all for absolutely nothing.

I DON’T RECOMMEND IT, but here is the official website for Geostring anyway:

http://www.geostring.com

Legal Disclaimer

This article and any comments are without prejudice to Geostring or any other organisation. PJCNET tried to be as accurate as possible although we cannot be held responsible for any mistakes make. This article contains my personal opinion and shouldn’t be taken as definite fact. This article, any comments and all other articles and comments on this website are covered by our full legal disclaimer.

I keep receiving unwanted marketing calls from 0843 27640xx, where the last 2 digits (xx) changes for each call, E.g. calls from 0843 2764004 or 0843 2764013 for example. These very annoying phone calls occur randomly at any time throughout the day and sometimes it wakes me up on days that I sleep in. Notice that the phone number starts with 0843, this means that if anyone calls back, the number is excluded from any free call plans and is always chargeable from both landlines and mobiles. It’s also very likely that the owner of these numbers are in fact making a cut out of these returned phone calls including when people press 1471 followed by 3 to call back, which in my opinion is a kick in the teeth when it’s an unwanted marketing call. When calling back you simply get a recorded message saying that you received a telemarketing call and that they will call you back when and if necessary in the future, you then get the chance to leave a recorded message so you can be removed from the system, BUT YOU NEVER ARE REMOVED AS PROMISED (from personal experience)! The recorded message also states that you can join the Telephone Preference Service to stop unwanted marketing calls like this – more about this later, but registering with this service DOESN’T STOP THESE UNWANTED CALLS (also from personal experience)!

The masses of unwanted marketing calls have one thing in common, when I answer I always receive a recorded message from the same voice that boasts about a service that they’re trying to sell on this particular occasion, E.g. a service to write off credit card debts, a service to manage other debts, a will making service, a service to help claiming back mis-sold insurance protection and so on. I normally have to press 5 to speak to an operator or you’re supposed to be-able to press 9 to delete your telephone number from their system, although from personal experience THIS NEVER EVER WORKS! On speaking to an operator they always immediately start their sales pitch to attempt to sell you the service offered at this particular time. When asking to have my phone number removed they either hang up or they tell you that your number is now removed from the system, BUT IT NEVER EVER IS REMOVED AND THE UNWANTED ONSLAUGHT OF CALLS CONTINUES NO MATTER WHAT (again from personal experience)! I’ve asked on numerous occasions to no avail to get them to stop calling me repeatedly nearly every day randomly. On complaining the operator usually gets extremely rude or immediately hangs up and will rarely help in the slightest. The last operator I spoke to was extremely rude for instance after I explained that I’d asked them not to call me at least 25 times already, he simply told me that he hadn’t got any time to waste talking to me about sh*t before hanging up, THIS IS EXTREMELY UNREASONABLE WHEN THEY ARE THE ONES THAT KEEP CALLING ME REPEATEDLY AGAINST MY EXPRESS WISH!

Whether it’s purposeful or not, this marketing company has tracked me down to two different addresses with three different phone numbers and no matter what I say or do, they won’t stop calling me! I moved home only few months ago at the time of writing and had a brand new phone number set-up with Virgin Media, but within just a few days the onslaught of unwanted phone calls from exactly the same marketing company started all over again. I recently asked Virgin Media for help and they changed my phone number to attempt to stop them repeatedly calling me, but within just 1 day the onslaught of calls started yet again on a brand new telephone number. It’s now extremely inconvenient that I’ve got to tell everyone that I deal with my new phone number and it’s all for nothing, caused entirely because of this marketing company’s relentless abuse which has now become harassment. When I explained the current situation to the last sales operator I spoke to after receiving yet another very annoying and unwanted call, I got told that I was lying, he then became even more rude before finally hanging up as usual. The only people that knew my new phone number at this time was myself and of course Virgin Media. Are Virgin Media wrongfully selling customer telephone information without their knowledge or consent to very dodgy telemarketing companies like this one? Perhaps the telemarketing company is just using a random autodialler which is of-course against all UK regulations? It’s a mystery how this awful company keeps tracking me down so quickly, but the problem is now beyond a joke. Either way this terrible marketing company needs to be thoroughly investigated and in my opinion should be put out of business for malpractice and repeated blatant breaches of UK telephone regulations.

I joined the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) at my old accommodation and new. Registering is supposed to stop unsolicited telemarketing calls after 28 days as marketing companies that operate within the law are supposed to honour the fact that a person registered with this service wishes NOT to receive telemarketing calls. Obviously this marketing company isn’t reasonable and they are clearly prepared to operate illegally against all UK regulations as registering with the Telephone Preference Service has never made the slightest difference to this relentless telemarketing organisation who still continue to repeatedly and randomly call me throughout each day.

One can complain to the Telephone Preference Service and The Information Commissioner, but I really need to know the name of the offending telemarketing company in question. Unfortunately each time I receive an unwanted marketing call there is no mention of this company name who are obviously going out of their way to keep their name a secret so they can’t easily be reported for their blatant repeated breaches of UK telephone regulations. Each operator I speak to denies all knowledge of the telemarketing company in question. When I pretend to be interested in the service they’re selling, they usually then tell me the name of their particular company, although this changes on each call along with each different service offered. Each company I speak to appears to be simply a particular client of this very dodgy telemarketing company who they pay for telephone leads, although the leads are clearly obtained wrongfully and against all UK regulations. On one occasion I actually managed to complain to the operator without them hanging up for a while, but this particular operator denied breaking any UK telephone regulations as they said it was the first time that their particular company had actually called me (acting like the innocent party), even though I had received masses of calls from exactly the same dodgy telemarketing company with the same person speaking on the recorded sales message each time with various different services offered by their clients. Maybe their clients are oblivious to the telephone regulation breaches? Well I strongly doubt that individual client companies are entirely innocent judging by their abrupt and very unhelpful way they ignore complaints, they surely must know exactly what’s going on here. It’s useful to keep the names of the client companies, but I really need to somehow find out the name of the offending telemarketing company itself as they’re obviously by far the biggest offender.

It’s even more scandalous that this telephone marketing company is purposely varying the phone number they call on as this makes it harder to block calls from certain numbers when they keep changing it, it’s also harder when making complaints as they normally investigate just one number and I may have only received 1 phone call from one specific number even though in total I’ve received absolute masses. In fact I’m now receiving so many unwanted calls that it’s become criminal harassment, especially after changing my phone number twice and taking every measure possible to stop them calling me.

I am now logging all these unwanted phone calls along with times, dates, names of these companies and the exact number they’re using to call me from each time so to build up a large complaint against them to the Telephone Preference Service and The Information Commissioner which is advised as the next cause of action. I’m trying to think of a way to find out the name of the actual offending telemarketing company as they seriously need to be investigated, but I’m also hoping that if I keep detailed logs that there will be enough evidence for the official ombudsman to track down the culprit in future. Maybe they could trace one or all of the 0843 numbers they use as the these will almost certainly be owned by the dodgy marketing company itself.

As well as making logs, I’m also updating and checking Who Calls Me for information which might eventually lead me to the actual dodgy marketing company itself. Who Calls Me a free on-line international reverse phone number checker where people log on the system details they know about each number they’ve received.

This illegally operated telemarketing company and perhaps it’s clients needs to be investigated and punished appropriately for operating outside UK phone regulations as they’re now bordering on committing criminal harassment. I strongly urge anyone who receives these marketing calls or similar not to purchase any offers sold because companies that commit abuse in this manner and treat people who complain about it like a piece of dirt cannot be trusted in my opinion, also they don’t deserve to make money from this malpractice – please don’t support them!

I WILL UPDATE – PLEASE WATCH THIS SPACE!

Legal Disclaimer

The article above and any comments are without prejudice to Virgin Media or any other organisation. There is no clear evidence to suggest that Virgin Media have committed any sort of malpractice regarding the issue mentioned in the article. The article is opinionated and this shouldn’t be treated as definite fact. I describe accounts from my own personal experience, but this doesn’t mean that other people will also experience the same problems as described. Although PJCNET has tried to make the article as accurate as possible, we cannot be held responsible for any mistakes made. I have used an image from http://hubpages.com/hub/Reverse-Phone-Number-Look-Ups at the top of this article and I’ve informed the owner appropriately, I will however remove the image immediately on their request. This article, any comments and all other articles on this website are covered by our full legal disclaimer.

Asperger Syndrome is one of the least understood disabilities in the autistic spectrum. Instead of explaining the disability in detail here, there follows a link that describes the many of the characteristics of people with Asperger Syndrome along with the symptoms, please click here.

Paul has had a life of not being accepted by most people in just about every situation and this continued to employers and fellow employees. Paul is very intelligent and has had the single lone interest in computers since an early age to which he’s extremely talented, but Paul is also very vulnerable, he’s been bullied and taken advantage of many times and he finds it hard to cope with basic life skills that are expected of an average person. He finds socialising extremely difficult and he can often unintentionally offend people by his behaviour that is characteristic to Asperger Syndrome as most people don’t understand his disability. Paul constantly worries about things that most people would see as unimportant, he interrupts people’s conversations and repeatedly goes on about a single subject or what’s worrying him at the time. He gets very anxious and gets very upset when people don’t understand him, especially when they see him as rude.

Paul eventually managed to be accepted into full time paid employment in 1990 with computers work, but he nearly lost of job on numerous occasions during the first year because of numerous complaints by his colleges who saw Paul as rude and disruptive towards them, they also complained that he raised his voice (another common symptom of Asperger Syndrome) and he failed to fit in anywhere. Luckily his employer saw how talented he was as his work despite his terrible social skills and he was put into an office alone for sometime until he was slowly integrated back into the main office. Eventually his colleges started accepting Paul as eccentric and he then managed to hold his employment for over 12 years where his attendance was excellent.

Unfortunately Paul was made to leave his parental home and wasn’t able to cope looking after himself without any support when he also started going downhill with serious depression (this is common for people with Asperger Syndrome). He also found himself very tired at work and often couldn’t stay awake at his desk despite having plenty of sleep the night before. This got worse and worse until he found that he was seriously falling behind with work while he suffered extreme fatigue on a regular basis. Eventually his doctor signed him off work when he was diagnosed with depression and put on strong antidepressants starting with the now controversial drug Seroxat that made him much worse with mental side effects. Paul was much later diagnosed with sleep apnoea which stops him from getting a good nights sleep causing extreme fatigue, he was also diagnosed with an under-active thyroid gland which in itself causes extreme fatigue when left untreated, unfortunately this was after he lost his job due to long term ill health and thus bad attendance after almost of year of fighting to continue his employment against this terrible fatigue. Paul tried to fight the decision, but unfortunately it was too late and for some years now Paul has been claiming Incapacity Benefit and Disability Living Allowance (DLA). His depression went from bad to worse and he lost his flat due to debt problems before sinking into severe drug dependency while completely giving up on his life. He ended up in a homeless hostel where matters went from terrible to rock bottom when at last he started getting some support.

Paul has fought to overcome his drug dependency and is now living in his own flat again, although he’s receiving regular support visits to help with general living. He’s now been out of work for a number of years and still has problems with fatigue because of sleep apnoea, although his thyroid problem is being monitored and treated. He’s been given a machine to help him breathe at night with a mask called a CPAP machine, although it unfortunately hasn’t worked well with him and the fatigue continues while he can suddenly need sleep any time day or night for long periods. Paul wants to get back into work, but he knows he now needs a lot of support, plus he’ll need an understanding employer who accepts his disability and can work around his sleep problems. It’s difficult, but he believes there must be some work he can still eventually do, even if it involves working from home when he is able. He’s asked for help at the Job Centre and he’s attended Ingeus (formerly work directions and it’s via Pathways to Work), but he is shocked and dismayed that they won’t offer him any support back to work what-so-ever after asking to attend some of the many training programmes they offer. Paul only got offered this programme at all because his claim changed where he started receiving some income support as it’s not usually available at all to existing claimants. Unfortunately he’s been told that none of the programmes offered at Ingeus are suitable as he’s not likely to be ready for employment within 6 weeks time. Paul’s read what’s he’s supposed to be getting from these interviews, but he’s getting absolutely nothing and it’s a total utter waste of time and tax payers money. He’s argued and asked to attend a course to no avail. Courses involves everything from interview techniques to relaxation and some would have been very good towards improving his confidence and low self esteem. He’s now got to attend 6 mandatory work focused interviews at Ingeus where his employment advisor simply asks him if anything has changed since his last visit (taking about 2 minutes) and then the advisor simply gives him his next appointment date in a months time, instead of accepting Paul on a genuine course that could help him. There are 3 more of these useless appointments left at the time of writing and Paul will be encouraged to put in a complaint, I will update in the comments with the outcome.

Paul wants to work towards some sort of paid employment and ultimately full time employment, but he’s getting no support what-so-ever from the very system that’s supposed to be helping people like himself back into work. Money is being wasted forcing him to attend Ingeus that refuse to offer him any training towards his goal of employment and he obviously feels completely abandoned. He’s now frightened that with welfare reforms he could be eventually expected to do things that he’s not capable or risk losing his benefit while also put into uncomfortable situations where he won’t be accepted by people who don’t understand his disability, then he could be punished when he fails.

In my opinion the welfare system certainly needs to change as some people don’t want to work when they’re certainly able, but the system must consider genuine people with illnesses and/or disabilities who do want to work, but are unable to without at least a lot of compassionate support that works towards the ultimate goal of employment at a suitable pace. The people making the decisions and those who impose penalties against people for not taking work need to be compassionate and understanding towards genuine people with support needs. I’m personally very concerned that governments are only really looking into ways of saving money by getting more people into work as quickly as possible and only the fear of losing popularity is stopping them introducing extremely harsh measures that won’t properly consider people like Paul. Anyway at the moment it’s a pointless exercise to make people attend Ingeus appointments when they simply refuse to help even when people ask for it simply because they don’t see them ready for work within 6 weeks, this is just completely wasting tax payers money.

I sincerely hope the new Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government isn’t just going to be a new face of Labour or perhaps even worse. I’m very concerned by Iain Duncan Smith (the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) and his new proposals for welfare reform, although only time will tell if it will be a truly fair system that won’t punish genuine people with disabilities, if of-course the government keeps their promise and implements them at all.

New Government Welfare Reforms (Update 14/05/2010)

The new coalition government has already stated the following, “to end all existing welfare to work programmes and to create a single welfare to work programme to help all unemployed people get back into work.” and “that receipt of benefits for those able to work should be conditional on the willingness to work.”, please click here for full details. But please also take a look at the following article dated back before 2000 under the Labour government titled, The Single Work-Focused Gateway, aka the ‘ONE’: how it works. Sounds very similar doesn’t it, but has it really worked, well based on the number of long term unemployed and by the way Paul and other people have been treated, in my opinion NO, definitely NOT? People who have been let down in the past will only trust any new welfare to work programme when they see actual results and when they see that they’re treated fairly instead of being punished for not being able to do what’s expected of them because of their disability or illness by uncompassionate employment advisers who often don’t understand the first thing about their special needs.

It’s also very unfair to force people into what I see as slave labour. Slave labour is in my opinion forced work that’s not suitable for the particular employee where they are left no better off than when they claimed benefits or perhaps even worse off. Slave labour is also when the worker has most normal employment rights taken away from them, E.g. they have no right to leave or in fact strike if they’re treated badly, which the employer is in my opinion more likely to do when they know the employee has barely any rights. The Labour government wanted to introduce mandatory work for long term claimants on Job Seekers Allowance, although in my opinion this would have been a stepping stone to slowly forcing most long term claimants into similar forced work, but would this work be for a fair wage and would the employees have same employment rights like everyone else? Well, I suspect not as the employee would probably just continue to get benefits and only if they stayed in the position doing exactly what they’re told, otherwise they’d literally starve to death (and probably freeze) with no money coming in what-so-ever unless they stole food or managed to get charity food hand outs. Many would be put in a desperate situation where going to prison would be preferable to starving on the street. What’s more, someone who’s committed a crime often gets given the punishment of community service for a fixed amount of time, but someone who’s out of work could through no fault of their own find themselves doing the equivalent punishment of community service (or worse) for what could be a life sentence as they’d probably be no fixed end until they reach retirement age, would this really be fair?

Are People Who Are Ill or Disabled Going To Be Thrown Onto JSA? (Update 14/05/2010)

Another way of saving the government money is by taking people off higher disability benefits onto Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) where their benefits will be slashed and they’ll be subject to harsher rules about getting back into work as they’d be officially declared as fit to work. This is all very well, but I’ve seen various people who are most certainly very ill and sometimes even have disabilities forced onto JSA because of ever increasing pressure on the welfare system to save money. I saw a particular very vulnerable adult who certainly had a lot of support needs simply thrown onto JSA where he was left literally having a nervous breakdown. He was given a review, but he didn’t get any support filling the form in and afterwards I later discovered he’d answered the questions incorrectly saying that he was better than he actually was. I saw his suffering and I was very concerned at the time when I found him very distressed walking back and forth around the the communal area where he was living literally throughout most nights, pouncing on anyone who came in or out, desperately trying to tell them about his problems, often shouting and getting very upset, following them to their door or even up the road. Some people didn’t understand and got nasty to him which only made him more upset and worse. He simply couldn’t cope, but the Job Centre didn’t want to listen and he was left destitute with hardly an money while they simply told him he was fit for work repeatedly. In fact at first he was even left without any money to live on what-so-ever while his application for JSA was still being processed and during this extremely stressful time he suffered the humiliation of being forced to virtually ‘beg’ for a crisis loan just to survive. He really was too ill to fight and gave up, I was left very concerned for his personal safety and well-being because he was clearly very ill and was acting very irrationally. Unfortunately he was then involved in a public order incident due to being extremely distressed where he got arrested when other people didn’t understand why, but instead of receiving the help and support he desperately needed, he got given community service as according to job centre records he was fit for work and not unwell. He in my opinion definitely wasn’t fit for work and was soon close to being punished further through poor community service attendance, but he was having what was in my opinion a serious nervous breakdown where he was at serious risk. I’m unsure what finally happened to him, but I know that luckily he had family and eventually he moved in with them, he at least had this safety net when he was at rock bottom, but not everyone has a supportive family that will help in this way. I was totally shocked to see the way he’d been treated by the welfare system and then also later by the criminal justice system who in my opinion completely failed to understand that he was a vulnerable adult who was being made more ill by their complete and utter failure to understand his support needs. Because of the extremely unfair way he’s been treated, his illness has become much worse and now with a criminal record it’s even harder for him to find suitable work in future. If he was instead treated fairly in the first place and was given the right support that he needed, he would have eventually recovered and got back into paid employment much quicker where he’d also be much happier. This person always wanted to work, but was unable to at this time even though he had worked in the past because he really was very unwell with a serious mental illness which made him very vulnerable and I certainly saw this every single day I spoke to him.

The conservative government said before getting into office with their Lib Dem coalition that they wanted to see tighter measures on claimants of existing benefits to prevent fraud, meaning everyone will be eventually reassessed, followed by regular reassessments in the future. The problem is that the programme will be designed to throw some people onto JSA. If they deserve to be on JSA, then okay and I’m strongly against people who knowingly commit benefit fraud, but in my opinion even more genuine people with serious illnesses and/or disabilities will also be wrongfully thrown onto JSA where they’d also be treated like hell with pittance to live on. Once on JSA, they could be forced to do things or take on work (probably just for benefits) that they’re not able to because of their illness or disability and then they could even be punished when they fail. If people are punished by having their benefits removed completely, they won’t even be-able to feed themselves and would ultimately become homeless. These people will obviously become desperate and many would be forced to steal or rely on charity just to eat and keep warm, this should never happen in a civilised country. It would be utterly terrible if genuinely ill and/or disabled people slipped through the welfare net and ended up this way all because of an incorrect benefit assessment that is ultimately geared towards saving the government money.

IS THE INFINITY DOWNLINE SYSTEM REALLY AS GOOD AS THEY CLAIM?

Well in short DEFINITELY NOT, and this is why:

There is one very important point to me made from The Infinity Downline System and other similar systems:

The ONLY money going into the system is from membership fees!

In other words. the entire pool of income is made up from people paying to join the system itself which in this case costs $25 a time!

This income pool is then shared amongst it’s members non equally. The members who sell the system itself well will get larger shares of the income pool, while the majority of people without any referrals at all will get nothing. The highest member is the webmaster who always makes by far the largest cut from the income pool. It is therefore an income redistribution system and not a genuine money making or work from home opportunity.

Look at it another way, if everyone puts just $25 into the system and this is the system’s entire revenue, how can every member be possibly taking out many times this? The Infinity Downline System sounds too good to be true and in this situation it most certainly is!

The Infinity Download System is in my opinion just another example of a pyramid like system in disguise like literally 1000’s of other get rich schemes that simply don’t deliver what they claim. Well in fact the membership system looks more like a massive family tree structure (an inverted tree structure of referrals instead of brothers and daughters).

With ALL income redistribution systems like this, around 89% of members will always be making a loss at any given time until the system is finally saturated when most people will be left at the bottom of the tree without any referrals at all and will lose. This is always true no matter how well members are trained to sell as all members are put in direct competition with each other, so the better other members sell the system, the harder it is to get referrals yourself. Even if you happen to know people who you know you can introduce, you might then make something out of the system yourself, but the people you introduce will have a much harder time trying not to lose all their money. No matter what anyone does, the vast majority of people will always be at the bottom of the tree with no referrals and will lose their money to the few. Many systems like The Infinity Downline System tries to confuse people using various different methods and often complex rules to redistribute the income pool, but don’t be fooled or confused, take a step back and look at the big picture and see that it’s just an income redistribution system that passes income from the many to a few where the highest member will be the webmaster themselves.

Don’t be fooled to think that the webmaster makes nothing out of such a system, like I’ve seen some people mention around the Internet while defending this system. Even if 100% of the income pool from paid memberships is given back to the members, it’s extremely easy for the webmaster to simply be the first person who joins the system before launch at the very top of the tree, hence they refer everyone and make by far the biggest cut of the money, plus he could even kick off the system with multiple memberships at the top that will make him even more money. As people start joining during the initial launch when the system is much more prosperous, there’s also nothing stopping the webmaster from taking various memberships high up on the tree too as the webmaster has the massive advantage of seeing the entire tree and the exact amount of sales. I’m definitely NOT accusing this webmaster of the following as there’s no evidence, but it would be quite easy for any especially greedy webmaster of such pyramid like schemes to take even more money out of the system dishonestly without other members knowing as there’s various ways the system could be doctored.

The only sure winner of such income redistribution systems is the person at the very top of the system, E.g. the webmaster, while the vast majority of people lose out no matter what happens. This is why pyramid schemes are illegal in most civilised countries around the World today, but as I’ve already mentioned in my article titled Get Rich Quick – Don’t Be Scammed!, many get around the law by offering a worthless excuse for a product like an Ebook or something else of little or no value that can usually be downloaded easily as it costs them nothing to give it away to as many members as they wish automatically. In the case of The Infinity Downline, the so called product is downloadable training videos and audio books, but I doubt if anyone would genuinely pay for these if they were sold for $25 separately without the get rich quick scheme included. I’ve tried selling similar myself in the past and it’s certainly extremely difficult to sell downloadable training media products like this even for $1, let alone $25. Please remember that you can watch literally 1000s of hours of training videos and audio books for free simply by visiting YouTube. Also, how can you seriously trust a training program from a person who sells a pyramid like system such as this one? In fact you usually find that any training material supplied is mainly geared towards helping people further sell the system itself which indirectly puts even more money into the pocket of the webmaster.

I’ve noticed that members cannot join The Infinity Downline System without having a referrer ID, but it’s extremely easy to find one by simply searching for the system through Google or any other major search engine where you’ll find a flood of existing members all desperately trying to sell the system along with their affiliate links, remember that these are just a few of the members you’ll have to compete against to sell the system yourself if you choose to join the system yourself – I really don’t recommend it. Making new members have a referrer makes the system look more exclusive which will make more potential members want to join. This also proves that the top member is the in fact the webmaster himself as when the system was launched, the first new members would also need a referrer ID to join which would be the referrer ID of the webmaster, but as I mentioned earlier, I suspect he’d have various membership IDs to help kick the system off and to make him the maximum amount of money. The webmaster might even help kick off the system by advertising elsewhere, perhaps even pretending to be a member who’s already made money from the system with one of his referral IDs. Alternatively during the first so many weeks after launch, people might not need a referal ID, then the referral ID would simply default to the webmaster making him just as much money.

I most definitely DON’T recommend The Infinity Downline system, but please take a look at how they sell it at:

http://www.infinitydownline.com and http://www.infinitydownline.com/comp.php

Learn to spot these systems if you haven’t already done so. DON’T waste your $25 for this system or on any of the 1000s of systems just like it or very similar. Please also remember that the system sells itself as most members are all desperately to sell the system itself to try to be in the small minority that actually make a profit at the expense of the many, so you’ll find very biased reviews from members all over the place along with their affiliate link. Even if you did work harder than most and manage to be in the minority that make money, you’ll have sold numerous people a system that won’t work for them with blatant lies that it will, DON’T DO IT AS IT ISN’T RIGHT OR FAIR! These minority of profit making members are effectively taking money directly out of the pockets of other people who will lose their money, yet these members often wrongfully continue to believe that anyone can make money using the system and they might even falsely review the system as being excellent while believing this to be true. This isn’t the case as the the majority of members will always be at the bottom and will lose their money no matter what they do.

Once you become a member, most people will find it much harder to sell the system than they think as every other member will be competing with you trying to sell exactly the same system and it’s becomes saturated extremely quickly around the Internet. I notice they have a powerful sales page that’s obviously given to members to help promote the system which talks about very early retirement, but it can be seen across numerous traffic exchanges already, most people will already have seen this advertisement many times over and will flick past it without bothering to even read it again. They state that if you introduce just 1 person you break even, well yes this is probably the case, but most people won’t even manage to refer a single person as there will always be the majority of people at the bottom of the tree at any given time, until eventually the system is so saturated that virtually everyone in the world who will buy into the system already has. Before this system becomes completely saturated and his income starts grinding to a halt, it’s very likely that he will have already set-up at least one more very similar system under a different name to continue his large income. In fact often one webmaster will run numerous very similar schemes under different names at any given time, so giving them a constantly large income from most people’s unfortunate loss.

Like thousands of dodgy money making pyramid like schemes, The Infinity Downline system heads it web page with images a extreme wealth, in this case an expensive sports car and a smart gentlemen living it up on the beach with money around him, all thanks to this system – LOL! WELL IT REALLY IS LAUGHABLE, WELL IT WOULD BE IF SO MANY PEOPLE DIDN’T STILL FALL FOR IT – DON’T BE ONE OF THEM!

Because so many people still fall for these fake get rich schemes that don’t deliver, there’s literally 1000s of them saturating the Internet today with new ones appearing almost every day as they still make the webmaster big money and this is sadly one of the best dishonest ways of making money on-line where at the moment there’s hardly any chance of being prosecuted for doing it. Unfortunately most of the members who have been scammed are too embarrassed to talk about it and they usually won’t share their bad experiences with others, but this even further biases the coverage of the dodgy system across the Internet.

To help spot this and many other dodgy so call money making opportunities on the Internet today including work from home opportunities and get rich schemes, please see my article titled, Get Rich Quick – Don’t Be Scammed!.

Stop Pyramid Schemes in Disguise With an Urgent Change in the Law:

Pyramid scheme laws should be tightened up around the world to help stop organisations working around the law by disguising similar system that always leave the vast majority of it’s members out of pocket and/or by offering a worthless downloadable excuse for a product. If the only money going into a so called home income opportunity is the fee for membership itself, the system should be banned. This would stop all similar systems from being legal like matrix systems or other systems that often use complex formulae and/or rules to confuse potential members into thinking it’s a genuine work from home opportunity or similar.

Any product that’s allegedly sold along with any so called money making opportunity should be proven to be worth the money it’s sold for so these schemes don’t use worthless downloadable products as an excuse to disguise a pyramid scheme or similar. To prove the product is worth the money asked, it should have been sold previously for the amount asked successfully without any income opportunity included. This would stop organisations selling worthless Ebooks as the product or perhaps even training videos that can often be found freely on YouTube or at least the same information can be freely found elsewhere.

The law certainly needs improving as there’s now thousands of similar systems spread everywhere across the Internet and they’re now the main thing found advertised on traffic exchanges and other free advertising websites. In fact most so called money making opportunities are funded entirely from membership fees, leaving the majority of members always doomed to fail no matter what, making them very similar to pyramid schemes even though they’re often very cleverly disguised.

PLEASE ALSO READ MY COMMENTS BELOW THIS ARTICLE…

Legal Disclaimer:

This article and any comments are my own personal opinion only and shouldn’t be taken as definite fact. Although PJCNET tries to make the article as accurate as possible, we cannot be held responsible for any mistakes made or inaccuracy of information. It is without prejudice to The Infinity Download System, The Power of 4, The Infinity 100 System, Peter Wolfing or to any members of such systems. We welcome feedback from anyone or organisation mentioned or anyone else with an opinion on the article. We’d be happy to print any opinions in the interests of being unbiased, even if it’s a completely different opinion to that of the author of the article. This article, any comments and all other articles on this website are covered by my full legal disclaimer.

I started off as a paranormal investigator from 1996 who investigated using purely scientific investigation techniques and various equipment including EMF meters, thermometers (both standard and laser), ultrasound meters, infra red camcorders, cameras, dictaphones, compasses, CCTV equipment, beam breakers and more. I started off quite sceptical and I found some sort of possible scientific explanation for most (but not all) alleged paranormal activity and evidence. I did however experience some amazing alleged paranormal activity first hand that simply couldn’t be explained by science and I started collecting masses of unexplained evidence including photographs, videos and E.V.P. recordings.

About 3 years ago I when I was part of a purely scientific, but very professional paranormal investigation group in Birmingham (UK) named MPI (Midland Paranormal Investigations), I started researching unproven psychic investigation techniques Etc with an open mind along with Astral Projection (travelling outside your physical body) where I had some amazing success. Incidentally, if you’d like a purely scientific and very professional paranormal investigation conducted to the book, then I recommend MPI, but if you’d like a team that goes further than simply a scientific paranormal investigation, then look elsewhere.

When I met my good friend Peter, he proved to me on numerous occasions that he could in fact communicate with Spirit by for-instance telling me my Nan’s full name with detailed descriptions of where she used to live and much more. I was now eager to learn much more and see if I could in fact develop my own skills in this so far scientifically unproven science. I soon branched away from the entirely scientific MPI team and we set-up our own paranormal group which used both scientific and psychic investigation techniques, but our group has now evolved into more of a free service available to anyone effected by spiritual activity (we won’t be calling it paranormal activity any more) including both physical people and the spirits themselves. We have therefore become less of a paranormal investigation group, but more of a spiritual service. Our group used to be called BirminghamIU (Birmingham Investigators of the Unknown) which is still up an running at the time of writing, although we’ve come such a long way since our website and videos were published that we’re changing our name to BirminghamPA (Birmingham Paranormal Agency).

Up until a recently I’ve managed partial trance (a spirit takes partial control of the physical body) where I’ve felt intense energy around my head that is incredible and my face has changed to appear to take on the features of another person, but I’ve seen my college in full trance on numerous occasions where a spirit takes full control of his body and can often talk which is amazing to witness. We now however are much more experienced in our use of trance than in the past and it’s usually a much better experience for both the trance medium and for Spirit.

BirminghamPA will also hopefully eventually be able to offer Spiritual healing too and my friend is currently already working and learning from a Reiki master at the time of writing, but there’s various spiritual healing techniques including Reiki, psychic surgery and more that are all extremely effective. To be able to help people by providing spiritual healing is in my opinion equally as rewarding as soul rescue (helping a soul move on the light). In the mean time contact your local spiritualist church for spiritual healing, they usually only charge a small donation towards the church’s running costs. I’ve personally seen some amazing results from spiritual healing and I recommend it for anyone who’s suffering from any illness no matter what – please try it, there’s nothing to lose. If you can’t visit your local spiritualist church in person, please give them a call as they can usually provide remote healing, I know The Ash Centre in Birmingham, UK certainly provides this service free of charge to all throughout the world.

I read various books and sat down with my friend Pete on numerous occasions trying to practice psychic development techniques, but it wasn’t until I started attending my local spiritualist church on a mediumship course that things eventually started to happen. It took months of practice and meditation where most of the time I’d see nothing and I’d start getting frustrated at times, but my mind eventually began to open as I saw more and more proof that there was much more than simply explainable science. I soon managed to feel energies more where I could walk into a room and tell if there was for instance a negative or positive presence.

The last week I’ve made an amazing breakthrough where I’ve started seeing regular images and sometimes I’m even getting given spoken words during meditation. I’ve seen lots of things including people, places and much more. I’ve completed some recent experiments that have been extraordinary. For instance, I physically picked up a ring randomly that could have been from anyone in a large group to see if I could pick anything up from it. After starting to meditate and asking Spirit for a clue as to the owner of the ring, I saw a witch’s hat. After speaking what I’d seen, I then found that the ring belonged to the only person in the group who strongly believed in Wicca and saw herself as a white witch (I don’t practice this). Each time I see an image or hear something now it means something and it’s fascinating that I’ve seen definite first hand proof that psychic abilities most certainly DO exist.

I’ve certainly got a long way to go to become a full Spiritualist Medium and/or psychic, but I hope eventually to be-able to give away my services to people who need it totally free. I’m already part of a group that provides various spiritual services as I’ve explained earlier, and my college and friend is now a powerful Spiritualist Medium who is already able to deal with almost anything we encounter. As a team we provide all our services totally free including soul rescue which is one of the most rewarding things any Spiritualist Medium can achieve as a spirit is helped to move on to the light. We also help with noisy or troublesome spirits and have made numerous very successful clearances where afterwards a location usually feels totally different with a warm welcoming atmosphere, but we always use the utmost of compassion to all spirits, we only force a spirit on as an absolute last resort where they’re continuously trying to harm others and when they refuse repeatedly to listen to all reason after much patience.

What I will say to people who are trying to develop their psychic skills is persevere, but don’t get too frustrated if you don’t get results straight away as this doesn’t help and slows down your development, it will come when it’s ready – relax. I recommend you attend a psychic development circle at your local spiritualist church (UK). In a development circle one can quickly gain the confidence to share all your experiences with like minded individuals who all work to help each other. If you’re already experiencing what you might think could be psychic abilities, then you’ll often be very pleasantly surprised by just how many other people are experiencing exactly the same thing when you attend a spiritualist church. I was quite sceptical at first, but if your sceptical, please try to be a little more open minded to the possibility that not everything that exists is explainable to science, please just open up enough to find out for yourself as you’ve got nothing to lose and there’s so much to gain. Once you finally let go and start believing more, you will be open to develop your psychic skills quickly. Ensure you do plenty of meditation, even 10 minutes a day can make a big difference.

My Sky account is currently £5.71 in credit on the 22nd April 2010 and since the 5th March 2010 I have been trying to leave Sky to no avail. My 12 month contract ends in 31 days from the 20th April so as instructed by every Sky operator since the beginning of March 2010, I called Sky to formally give my legal 31 days notice, but they’ve wrongfully refused to accept the notice no matter what I said or tried to do and are therefore illegally trying to hold me to an extended contract along with all the charges.

Up until I decided to leave Sky, the actual Sky Broadband and TV service I received was in fact very good and cheaper than Virgin Media. The 20Mb/S truly unlimited broadband service was especially good where I was getting consistently fast speeds of 14.5Mb/S which my line was capable of 24/7, 7 days a week. Even when I decided to download vast amounts of data, there was no throttling what-so-ever. Having Sky was great when there was no problems, but when I needed their customer services recently to arrange to leave, I found their customer service absolutely abysmal to the extreme.

Firstly you have to pay to call an expensive 0844 number every time to call Sky that purposely isn’t included in any free minute plans unless you have Sky Talk as otherwise you’re charged up to 5p a minute (even more on mobiles) to go through numerous menus before being held in a queue while Sky make a considerable cut from the call charges. What’s worse is there’s a good website called SayNoTo0870 that shares alternatives to various 0870, 0844, 0845 numbers and more, so people don’t have to pay higher rates just to speak to customer service departments Etc, but Sky are now monitoring this website and are actively barring any direct numbers that are leaked on purpose so forcing people to pay through the nose even when they need to complain. I’ve so far been forced to make countless expensive calls since the 5th March 2010 along with numerous email complaints, entirely because Sky won’t keep to an agreement and every single Sky operator then gives a totally different account of what’s happening with different instructions along with false information and agreements that Sky break and they never ever call you back as agreed, forcing yet more expensive 0844 calls where one has to start all over again explaining to yet another Sky operator. In fact it’s virtually impossible to speak to the same Sky operator twice or to get one person to deal with a query or complaint. Email complaints have proved even more hopeless as Sky clearly don’t even bother to read them properly as the replies I’ve received haven’t even been relevant to the email I sent, instead it appears to be one of many standard replies.

It’s now scandalous and in fact illegal that Sky are refusing to let me cancel my account at the end of my 12 month contract when I’ve given my legal 31 days notice on the 20th April 2010 after I’ve followed Sky’s instructions exactly throughout and Sky haven’t kept to their part of the agreement since the 5th March 2010 with numerous broken promises and mistakes. I will now explain in detail exactly what’s gone wrong and the situation.

Full Details Of Problem:

Background:

Due to sudden redevelopment beyond my control I was forced to leave my old flat to relocate to a new flat provided by the same landlord. Because I had a BT landline (not Sky Talk) along with Sky Broadband and Sky TV, it was not possible to move home without having a disconnection of service for at least 3 weeks as BT would have needed to first reinstall a new phone line in my new property at a cost of £125 after disconnecting the old one, then after that Sky Broadband and Sky TV would have to be re-ordered in the new property which in it’s self takes around 2 weeks or more, plus they’d be further charges to have a Sky engineer visit to fit a new dish Etc. Since I need broadband Internet without interruption and because there was a Virgin Media cable connection point already in the property it was arranged for Virgin to install a new phone line, Internet and cable TV services where an engineer was arranged to visit during the week I moved. In compensation my landlord agreed to pay any costs left to Sky and also to BT for ending the 12 month contract with them slightly early, this meant that I could move without any interruption to my phone, broadband or TV services what-so-ever.

A Diary of Events and What’s Gone Wrong:

Firstly before I finally decided to go ahead and change all my services over from BT and Sky to Virgin Media, I called to check with both BT and Sky beforehand and they both told me that it would be no problem for me to finish the contract slightly early and receive a final paper bill as long as I was willing to pay as if I’d had the minimum services until the end of the 12 month contract. Because of this, I went ahead with the only reasonable plan possible without any interruption to my services.

On the 5th March 2010 I called both Sky and BT to arrange to leave and receive a final paper bill with anything that is owed until the end of the 12 month contract as they’d both agreed previously so my landlord could pay it off quickly and easily along with any extra charges.

Firstly BT have been no problem at all when I phoned up to cancel on the 5th March 2010. They disconnected my phone service in the old property and a final bill arrived to be paid by my landlord which was paid quickly as arranged. BT and everyone else is happy and I’m in a position where I could one day in the future decide to go back to BT as a customer without any problem what-so-ever. It was so quick and easily for BT to sort this out with just one phone call, so why wasn’t it like this for Sky? instead Sky have been the total opposite of easy to deal with as I’ll now explain.

Even though I checked beforehand that it was okay, when I called to cancel Sky on the 5th March 2010, they refused to cancel my contract with a final bill for ending the contract slightly early as previously agreed. They instead demanded that I would have to pay my bills until the end of contract and then 31 days before the 12 month contract was up on the 31st May 2010, I could give them notice to cancel my contract. I was allowed to reduce my services to the barest minimum and cost, but I would have to remember to phone them on the 20th April 2010 to cancel the contract with the 31 days notice. This wasn’t agreed and was much more awkward than simply paying off what was owed, but I agreed and Sky then agreed to send me paper bills (invoices) to my new address as it was explained that my landlord needed this to pay the bills as they’d agreed as part of the compensation package for forcing me to move home. I also explained that I would cancel my direct debit agreement as it wouldn’t be myself paying the bill and Sky agreed that this would be okay except I would have to pay slightly extra for having a paper bill sent which was also agreed. Incidentally I also asked how much all my bills would cost to the end of the contract and the quote was given to my landlord so they knew exactly how much they would need to pay, or so I thought!

On the 7th March a bill was created on-line saying that I’d have to pay for my full TV and broadband services for the next month in advance when the services had been reduced to the minimum (1 TV Pack). I called Sky to ask them why this bill was asking for money that I didn’t owe and I was told not to worry because it would be adjusted. A couple of weeks went by and the bill still wasn’t adjusted and it was coming close to the payment due date, plus no paper invoice had arrived as Sky had clearly agreed so my landlord could pay off the bill, so I called Sky again. This time I was told not to worry as a paper invoice would be automatically generated when my direct debit didn’t go through and the amount would be reduced to what was really owed. Throughout this time I also wrote more than one Email to Sky asking them for the paper invoice that was needed and agreed so it could be paid by my landlord and I’ve actually got a reply stating that I would be receiving one.

I waited another week and I received an email stating that my account was overdue payment and I still hadn’t received a paper invoice as arranged. I called Sky yet again asking them what was going on and why Sky hadn’t reduced the balance to the correct amount as owed on the bill. I was yet again promised a paper invoice which I needed for my landlord to pay them and again got told that the balance would be sorted out. I then received a letter from Sky threatening me with account suspension for non payment for money that wasn’t even owed and still no paper invoice had arrived as they clearly agreed both over the phone repeatedly and by email (the letter didn’t even show any amounts). Very annoyed my landlord agreed to pay the amount Sky wanted to get them off my back even though no invoice had been received and even though it wasn’t even owed at the time as it was for full services in advance that had been cancelled.

I called Sky with my landlord to pay the bill and I logged into my on-line account to find my account corrected as it should have been all along and I was in fact £5.77 in credit because I’d already paid in advance for all my services that had been cancelled to the minimum. On speaking to Sky yet again, they advised that no payment was required at this time, completely messing about my landlord who had got the funding authorised for payment. We asked for a paper invoice yet again and was promised it yet again. A quote was again given for the total amount to finish the contract which was higher than the one given a few weeks earlier, but we was still told we would have to wait until the 20th April to phone to cancel the contract giving Sky 31 days notice, paying all bills outstanding up until the end.

Instead of receiving an invoice I received a letter stating that my Sky account had now been suspended for non payment even though at this time I owed nothing, in fact the account was still £5.77 in credit and in fact Sky even refused payment saying it wasn’t necessary at this time. The letter ridiculously went on stating that I could set-up a payment plan by direct debit and if I didn’t, all my services would be suspended soon. I was by now furious and I still hadn’t received a single paper invoice as promised numerous times by Sky. I wrote Sky a number of complaint emails, but they clearly didn’t bother reading them properly as my response was again stating that I’d have to set-up a payment plan, they obviously failed to read that MY ACCOUNT WAS IN CREDIT – so how can one set-up a payment plan to pay it? By now I was also worried that Sky might have blackened my credit history, stating that I was late paying a bill even though they owed me! I tried calling Sky and even my landlord tried calling Sky but we got nowhere except up against a brick wall, each time we were told a different story and we have been given more different quotes to end the contract, plus now Sky were now blatantly refusing to send out a paper invoice as they’d agreed many times beforehand as the account was now suspended.

On the 20th April as agreed I called to give Sky my formal and legal 31 days notice to end my contact on the 21st May 2010 which was the earliest opportunity (exactly 12 months from the start), but Sky have blatantly refused to cancel the contract. They won’t cancel because the account is suspended even though this is entirely their error and entirely their fault. I have stated that my account is in fact £5.71 in credit and it shouldn’t be suspended. After a few more attempts at calling asking different Sky operators to see reason, I was at last put through to an operator that I thought understood the problem and agreed that my account shouldn’t be suspended and he didn’t know why it had been, but the system wouldn’t allow them to unblock the account to allow me to cancel the contract. The operator however promised and assured me that he would call me back after investigating the problem with hopefully some sort of resolution within 2 days and he seemed to actually look into the problem itself rather than stating that a payment plan need to be set-up by direct debit which was ridiculous for an account was in credit. Unfortunately even this latest Sky operator obviously lied, forget or just couldn’t be bothered as he broke his promise and there was never any call back as promised.

Since the latest Sky operator failed to bother to call back as promised, I called Sky yet again on the 22nd April 2010 and Sky were now getting quite nasty, refusing to do anything until the account is unsuspended even though it shouldn’t be suspended in the first place and the latest Sky operator was in fact quite rude. To get the account unsuspended I was now told that I’d have to reset up a direct debit plan to make future payments. I explained that numerous customers pay their Sky bill without direct debit and that it was explained and agreed from the very start that my direct debit would be cancelled so Sky could send paper invoices for my landlord to pay, but all I got was a brick wall, Sky completely refused to budge saying that they couldn’t unsuspended my account until this was done while I kept telling them that my account was wrongful suspended and that it was arranged for paper invoices for my landlord to pay the bill. My landlord has even offered to pay them the latest and again changed quote for total costs up until the end of contact so I’d never owe them anything again, but Sky have even refused to take payment over the phone, so making resolving the issue reasonably totally impossible. They simply won’t cancel my contract at the end of term and they won’t send out a paper invoice so my landlord can pay them. I most certainly don’t want to set-up a direct debit again as Sky clearly cannot be trusted as they’ve given numerous different quotes for the total amount due until the end of contract and my landlord need to pay Sky, not myself. Even if I did now get my account unsuspended, Sky will only start the 31 days notice from then even though I called on the 20th April 2010, leaving extra subscription charges which I shouldn’t be paying. I’m now also left in a situation were I need to check my credit file to ensure Sky haven’t wrongfully blackened it through their extreme incompetence as if so I’ll be forced to get a solicitor.

I have written dates and accounts of all phone calls to and emails along with any email replies from Sky including an email that stated I’d be getting a paper invoice in writing, yet they haven’t sent a single invoice since requesting one on the 5th March 2010. I even have witnesses that heard Sky making these agreements on speaker phone which they’ve since broken. Every time one calls Sky, one has to go through a long menu system before waiting in a queue, then one finally speaks to a completely different operator every time and there’s never any comeback from each operator. For each and every operator I’ve had to re-explain and go through the entire problem again from scratch on their always chargeable 0844 number where Sky make a considerable cut from calls. I must have already make around £15 worth of calls to Sky so far and it’s still nowhere near resolved, with BT I made one phone call to do exactly the same thing!

ALL I WANT TO DO IS RECEIVE AN INVOICE FROM SKY TO PAY THEM OFF IN FULL TO FINISH MY CONTRACT AT THE END OF TERM, BUT THIS HAS PROVEN TOTALLY AND UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE!

I decided to call Sky one last time to ask them finally to listen and resolve the problem amicably before I’d be forced to escalate the complaint to OFCOM if they continue to refuse to cancel my contract of the end of the 12 month term while demanding payment for services beyond this cancellation date. This latest Sky operator I spoke to told me a completely different story to all the rest so who knows what to believe, explaining that if I don’t do anything at all with the account and ignore the threatening suspension letter, my account will be automatically terminated automatically after sometime. The problem is the contract will wrongfully run beyond the 21st May 2010 when it should end and it will most probably lead to extra charges on the account that I most certainly shouldn’t be paying. Also my good name will probably be blacklisted with Sky in future as if I’m someone who doesn’t pay their bills as according to their records the account will be terminated because of non-payment WHEN THIS ISN’T TRUE, plus I’m very concerned that an incorrect default or false arrears could appear on my credit file making it difficult to get future credit.

Last Resort Solution:

I have legally given Sky their 31 days notice to end my 12 month contract even though they’re refusing to accept this due to the account being suspended when it’s in fact £5.71 in credit at the time of writing. After trying absolutely everything to resolve the issue with Sky to no avail, my landlord will make out a cheque out to Sky for the latest quote (they keep changing this) for all charges until the end of contract which should be ended on the 21st May 2010. We will post this cheque payment via snail mail, along with all logs of all complaints, phone calls, emails Etc along with a long letter of complaint stating everything we’ve done and everything Sky have done wrong throughout with all the broken promises and changes to the agreement with each different Sky operators (see section above for full details). We will state on the letter that we have legally ended the 12 month contract which ends on the 21st May 2010 and that all charges have been paid in full until the end of term as quoted by Sky on the 22nd April 2010 (they have incompetently given various different quotes, but this is the latest one). If Sky continue to refuse to end the contract, if they refuse to accept the payment and/or if they keep sending me bills after this, I will be forced to complain look into complaining to OFCOM and perhaps even a solicitor. I will be keeping a check on my credit file throughout to ensure I’m not blacklisted wrongfully.

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Conclusion:

I’m absolutely disgusted that customer’s can be treated in this dire and totally incompetent manner by Sky customer services and how I have no option except to go to extremes to force Sky to finish a contract even at the end of a 12 month term when they’re given the 31 days notice for an account that’s in credit at the time. Sky fail to realise that by providing a good service and customer service, even when someone is leaving will open the door for the customer to possibly come back one day, but now they’ve treated me like this I’d be extremely hesitant to use them ever again and I’ll be advising other people to use caution before signing up in future. Sky also need to understand that word of mouth is a very powerful way of advertising and this can be both good or bad depending on personal customer experiences, so providing an incompetent service like this will ultimately damage their reputation which could cost them masses of future sales.

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