AIBU to hope this sad story gives charities that emply cold callers pause for thought.

[MythicalKings]

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/14/bristol-pensioner-body-avon-gorge-olive-cooke

Over 200 begging letters in a month from charities and frequent cold callers asking for money.

It's horrific. I know how persuasive they can be, there ought to be a way to opt out of receiving charity calls and letters.

Seems to me that charities have become big business these days.
People can sign up to the telephone and postal preference system but I don't know if that would stop charity calls and post.
So very sad

Oops, they should have a cut off age for contacting donors. I'm not involved in our fundraising (i deal with gift aid) but iirc we don't contact people over 65, it's lower than the usual cut off age apparently.

I think it might well not, Fluffcake - or at any rate, not the bulk. There is usually a TPS/MPS exclusion where you've 'given permission' for them to contact you and many people may inadvertently have done so having simply not realized what the initial contact was asking for.

I don't give to the big charities now - they were spending my donations on trying to get me to give more and sending me self promoting literature I didn't want. I felt like I was Paying for them to send me recycling- lovely.

Now I give to small local charities with low overheads where the money gets to where it's meant to be.

I will sponsor friends doing runs etc too - where I can protect how my data is shared.

Very tragic sad story - poor lady.

OP, yanbu to be horrified by this. Charities that do this should be ashamed of themselves. In theory, they will have got permission from the homeowner to call by virtue of those teeny tiny easy-to-miss tick boxes on forms but those tick boxes tick boxes should be banned in my opinion.

All cold calls should be banned.

Yanbu. I make donations through payroll giving, so my employer gives it to my chosen charity and the charity has no idea who I am. I have a no cold caller sign on my door too, seems to stop the chuggers, except one from oxfam who said 'but everyone knows who oxfam are'

I made a complaint about some charity cold callers who were rude to me and as part of the apology from the agency who employed them I was advised that their employees are told to ignore "no cold caller" signs unless they explicitly mention charity collectors.

Horrifying I agree. I bloody loathe this sort of horribly aggressive charity collecting. Last year someone stopped me from RNIB and did the hard sell on me. I told him I appreciated the good work they did but I already gave to lots of charities. He asked me which ones and for some reason I told him. He then told me that some of those charities were pathetic and not worth donating to!

I have just done the Christian Aid collection tonight. I put the envelopes through and then go back to pick them up. I go round once. Ask for their envelope and then go. If they don't give or say it's not their charity then I move on. I do know a lot of people in my street which helps. But if they say no then leave it.

Even that is difficult though, Musicaltheatremum. If they knew you, how could they easily say No to you? (And there are plenty people counting pennies at the moment even if they appear to be sailing along happily on the surface.)

I would remove charitable status from them all
As far as I'm concerned all the big charities are just big business now

I'm another one who donates through work to avoid being on the charity's contact list. I don't want any of the magazines that they send out, not to mention the begging letters.

What a desperately sad story?? I hate these big cash rich charities knocking my door or approaching me in the street. The worst was cancer research 3 months after I ran my first race for life just a few months after I lost my precious Dad. Some cocky telemarketing girl who is sitting in a call centre rings me out of the blue one afternoon while I'm at work to "thank me" for the money I had raised for race for life. She then says "can I take you back to that day, "who were you running for? Thinking about that day,How did you feel reading everyone's messages on their shirts,the messages for the survivors and also the people they had lost to cancer?" I was immediately traumatised and tearful with anger. With my Dad's painful death still so raw and this unexpected trip down memory lane I was appalled that cancer research would do this to me. Why? "As you have been so generous with your fundraising would you be prepared to give regularly, how about a monthly donation of £25 quid?"
Using my grief to prey on me to get more money out of me. Absolutely below the belt, fuck right off

YANBU - what a shocking story .

Agree with PP that these charities can be ruthless, conniving and incredibly persistent - think it took about 3 years for the calls to stop when I cancelled my DD to the Red Cross (because I had decided to support another charity). And we get a LOT of door-steppers round here which I don't like.

A friend was telling me about a (children's?) charity where they send a text every month, if you want to pay that month you do nothing and if you don't you text back "No", apparently no hassling afterwards. I thought that was quite a good idea - but still has a DD underlying it.

Poor lady - am watching the story now on C4 news on 4+1. Very sad.

It's so sad. I was so angry when I read that story earlier, poor lady had tried to do so much good in her life to die in such awful circumstances.

I think cold calling at the door or telephone should be banned because it is deliberately preying on the vulnerable. The charities will know that it is the elderly, vulnerable, and exploitable who will hand out financial information at their door or on the phone without going away to think about it, because it isn't prudent to do so. Trouble is these are the people who can often least afford it. It is calculated and horrible. The good that they do with the money does not make it right, and the people who could be supporting charities are turned off by the tactics.

I've often wondered just how much information is swapped around/sold on by these various charities because there seems to be a concentration on certain people.

Here are some things you can do for yourself or on behalf of any relatives to help try and prevent being pestered by unwanted calls or visitors.

1. Remove your information from the the open electoral register INFORMATION HERE

2. Remove your information from 192.com. You have to send them a form. Form HERE

3. Register with the telephone preference service REGISTER and info HERE

4. Report every spam or cold call or text to the Information Commissioners Office ONLINE report form HERE it only takes a minute or two.

5. Register with the Post Office to opt out of receiving any mail that is not personally addressed to you. This gets rid of a lot, but not all, of junk mail. INFO HERE You can register for the Mailing Preference service HERE

6. Get a NO COLD CALLERS sign for your front door. They don't always work but they help a lot. If anyone ignores them them complain to the organisation instead

7. Finally, follow up any unwanted calls with a complaint. Tell companies that they DO NOT have permission to contact you.

Any charities that come to the door/ring me I tell them I already donate.

If they then enquire further I just make something up..oh for 2 years now. Yes I think it is a great charity.

Works every time and I don't donate to any charities :)

I had a very similar experience to Onedayinthesun, did race for life weeks after losing Mum and had a call saying just the same. I asked them nicely to leave me alone. FIVE calls later, I won't repeat what I said

Poor lady, and her poor family

Most of the big charities employ firms to do their fund-raising for them.

When I was repeatedly called asking me to take out a dd to the Red Cross after I'd made a donation for the NZ earthquake, I rang the Red Cross direct and explained how the fundraiser refused to take no for an answer and that every time they rang, I became less, not more, likely to support the charity.

They asked a lot of questions, were clearly concerned about the nature of the calls I'd received - and the fund-raiser never rang me again.

Thanks to the mntters who pm ive fb my friend who said she is going to pop into the bank with her sister and try and get new dd blocked if she can. She has also mentioned it to key worker of her sister. X

I echo everything already said on here, but did want to put in a good word for Kids Company. I've had a DD set up with them for a couple of years and have never been hassled to give any more or anything like that. Occasionally I receive a letter written by Camilla Batmingela thanking me for my continued support and that's it. I've never regretted a penny that I've donated to them. They're a really fucking awesome charity.

I saw this and I felt really angry. That poor lady. The way some charities operate is despicable.
I had a persistent caller in the week after DS was born. DH told them to bugger off- eventually I spoke to them myself and they wanted me to up my donation for a child sponsorship from £25 a month to £75.WTF? I said I couldn't afford to because we'd just had a baby and the woman told me I was lucky to have brought my bby home alive because many women in the developing world weren't so lucky. I told her to never call back put the phone down and was really upset and angry. I decided to continue sponsoring the child because we'd done if for years but when it ended I made a complaint and cancelled my dd. That was Action Aid.

Awful.

The response from FRSB makes me quite angry. It sounds quite clear that this was a woman who didn't know how to get her message across, and felt guilty saying no. She was 92 - she shouldn't have been put in a position where she put hounded, and the onus shouldn't be on her!

When my granny was getting to the end of her life, she would not have been able to tell a request for donations from a demand for payment (eg. for the gas bill), especially from someone as persuasive/unprincipled as some chuggers can be. She got huge numbers of cold calls, clearly from people targeting her as an elderly person likely to be gullible.