Dirty sales tactics from CBG/Autotrader etc..

TheJaff

I'm not sure if i'm posting this in the right place. Mods feel free to move if not.

I am trying to sell my car for the past few months. I had it advertised in CBG, Autotrader and the Buy&Sell. I started to recieve phone calls from people asking was the car still for sale. When I replied that it was the person would then say that they were calling from one of the above mentioned mags and would I like to put an ad in their mag. After explaining to them that I already had an ad with them, they quickly went away. After awhile I decided to only place the ad in the Buy&Sell as it was free (the others were costing me a fortune).
I am still recieving calls from the other mags at least 3 times a week. The actuall phone calls don't bother me that much, its the tactics they use in order to get you to say that the car is still for sale. Every time they ring and ask me "Is the car still for sale" I always get a little excited because I hope that it might be a genuine caller until they say "I'm calling from (whatever) mag" I don't like getting angry with the person on the phone cause they're only doing what they're hired to do, but I really want to find a way to stop them hounding me. I can't even ignore the call because they always have their number blocked.
Today I got a phone call from Independent Newspapers asking me to put an ad in the Herold. So that makes a total of 4 different companies calling me on a regular basis.
Does any body know if this sales pratice is legal? I would gladly write a long winded letter of complaint to some sales advertising regulator if I could get it stopped, but would it be worth my while?
Anybody got any suggestions?

Cheers,
Aidan

dahamsta

Search the forums for "data protection" and my handle, you'll find a few posts detailing what to do.

adam

TheJaff

Will do.

Cheers Adam.

seamus

In fairness, you put your details out for the purposes of detailing how to contact you in relation to this vehicle. That's what they're doing. I can't see how this could be illegal or even abusive.

But I could be wrong. They're using details from a private ad for the purpose of advertising a retail service. There may be a precedent.

dahamsta

Seamus has a point. It might be an idea to contact the Data Protection Commissioner's office directly and ask them how the Act applies to this kind of abuse (I do believe it's abusive), and how best to deal with it. It wouldn't be unprecedented for them to get a ticking off from the man himself.

adam

mike65

Same happened to me years back. Had a car in buyandsell then someone from the indo classified desk phones and tries to part me from 20 quid for an ad! I said no thankyou.

Mike.

Victor

dahamsta wrote:

It might be an idea to contact the Data Protection Commissioner's office directly and ask them how the Act applies to this kind of abuse (I do believe it's abusive), and how best to deal with it.

I don't think there is a case against them for using the paper. However one wonders if they have scanned the other papers / copied from their websites (and filter for certain categories, e.g. repeat advertisers). At that point it becomes computer data and it's being used in a way not consented to (the charge of being collected in an unfair manner would be lesser in this case).

TheJaff

The actuall phone calls are not really the problem. Its the way they try an fool me into saying that the car is still for sale. If they just said who they were from the start it wouldn't bother me, i'd just say "no thank you". Now when they ring and ask me is the car still for sale I just say "It is but I don't want to put an ad in your mag" before they say anything else. I may have even lost a potential buyer who rang me one day and I thought it was a sales call and was a bit snotty to the person. When I realised it wasn't I was very embarrassed and tried to apologise. The person said she was gonna come and view the car but never showed up. Probably thought I was some kind of wierdo.

Dan_B

I had the same thing happen to me.
I usually advertise in the buy and sell cos it's free.
Now at the end of all my classified I put a "No Canvassers".
As far as I know, it is now illegal for them to contact me?

TheJaff

Dan_B wrote:

Now at the end of all my classified I put a "No Canvassers".
As far as I know, it is now illegal for them to contact me?

Thats a great idea. I'm going to do that in future. That way I can just tell them to read the ad in full next time before calling me.

Victor

Hmmm, you could just try the heavy breather routine on them.

De Hipster

A lot of autotrader ads have a 'no private numbers' tag...would prob work