Beware if you are in the AA

[jasper]

I got an odd call this morning from a call centre claiming to be the AA, saying they could upgrade my breakdown cover to include car parts required subsequent to any breakdown/accident.
Except it was not explained clearly AT ALL. The caller had a hard accent for me to follow and kept asking me to repeat ( and spell) my answers.
She claimed this service would "not require any financial information from me" (EH??)and then asked for the registration number of my car..
It all sounded distinctly odd so I apologised but said I did not want to proceed with the call.
I then phoned member services at the AA to check whether this was a legitimate call.
A very helpful operator explained the AA do indeed cold call their customers to ask if they want to extend their cover - at a cost of about £60 a year. She said they had contracted out the selling to call centres in India and basically many of the operators were not following the correct procedures and were misleading people into signing up without explaining the costs and indeed may well have deducted the amount from my credit card already!(which will be refunded)
Thought I should warn you all

Thanks for the warning. We get a lot of cold calling and sometimes with noisy children around and babies who need feeding we say anything to get the caller off the phone quickly. Will be more aware from now on

That's a good tip about the answerphone,SueW.
Posey I agree about saying anything to get off the phone quickly when there are kids yelling in your ear. Also I try to be polite to people making these calls (can't be a very nicejob to have to do)so have a tendency to get sucked in.

I am registered with One-Tel, and they also use callers from India to try to sell you extra services. Because of the distance/satellite (?) there is a distinct time-lag between you talking and them talking, so as soon as they've said their first piece about ringing from One-Tel I speak into the silence and say I'm quite happy with what I've got thanks, and hang up - avoids the polite being-sucked-in!

A quick tip to get out of market research if you don't like it or can't be bothered. Tell them either you or partner (doesn't matter which) is a journalist. They are 9 times out of 10 on the list of unsuitable respondents.

To avoid cold callers register with www.tpsonline.org.uk
It takes a couple of months to be fully effective, but I now get no more than a couple of calls each year. I always report these calls to tps in the hope they'll prosecute.
My free time is valuable to me and I don't want it interrupted by these companies who are after my hard-earned savings.