The Advertising Protection Agency

My business has been being targeted for about a year from Manchester and Liverpool companies trying to force me and my staff in to sponsoring various emergency services magazines where part of the money you pay for the advertisement banner gets allegedly passed on to the police. I found out this was a scam in the national press and The Daily Mirror and The Mail on Sunday journalists i spoke to advised me to go to The Advertising Protection Agency as they are the only company in the UK that give help to businesses in these circumstances. I signed up with The Advertising Protection Agency up in the 2nd week of September and already the calls have completely stopped to my office. They have recovered two lots of money i gave to Liverpool firms that proved to be bogus operators through VISA and Mastercard and 3 bills i had recieved that i was being pursued for off two other Liverpool and 1 Manchester fundraising blaggers have ceased to pursue me for these payments. I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off my shoulders and advise any business that is deperate and being targeted by Charity sponsorship publication publishers to get on TAPAs list. They are absolutely fantastic and me and my wife and over the moon because our lives were being made a misery by the hundreds of sales calls we were getting from these types of companies.

My wife and I run a small Marquee Hire business from our home in Surrey. Around Easter last year we received a phone call from a company in Manchester asking us to sponsor the police by doing an advertisement in a police magazine where the proceeds would go towards buying new police vehicles.

We agreed and paid the firm a sum of £299 for a half page advert. They said 26,000 copies would go out around London. We later found out that the only people that got the magazine were the 26 advertisers inside it. The magazine was in the end an A5 booklet produced on a home PC and printer on to A4 copier paper. We contacted the firm and the number had been disconnected. We were left very upset and hurt.

Around 3 weeks later we got another call from another publishing company making the same request. We could not believe it. We declined. We then got another call a few days later and then another and slowly but surely they started coming through on a daily basis. The more we protested the more aggressive they became and the more calls we got. By the Autumn, we were getting around 8-10 calls per week.

We went to Trading Standards and the Police and they were not able to help, however Trading Standards advised us to go to a firm called The Advertising Protection Agency. We did and they opened up our eyes to the scam and how all these firms were trading our details with other firms and they knew all of the problems we were having. We signed up at the end of September and to our utter astonishment, the 8-10 calls per week went down to two calls in the very first week of registering and stayed like that till about mid November when the calls then virtually stopped.

We got two more over the month of December and since new year have had none. The Advertising Protection Agency have done a remarkable job and have saved our sanity. Things got really bad just before we joined TAPA and was really affecting the business. I would recommend TAPA to anyone and am glad I went to Trading Standards who told me about them.

I was puzzled as to why I was receiving between 10 & 15 calls a month telling me I had agreed to sponsor various “good causes” in my local area by placing an order for advertising space in various books and wall-planners.

When I started to get a couple of invoices through from different companies all at very similar amounts I became suspicious.

I typed some of the company names in to Google and almost every time found the website for The Advertising Protection Agnecy. Being the only real source of information I decided to contact them.

I was glad to speak to somebody that finally explained what was going on, why it was happening and most importantly how it could be stopped. after an hour of discussion followed by an hour of reading their website it was quite clear the only real choice was to get registered, so I did.

That was 9 weeks ago and since then I can gladly report that I’ve had no calls for about 3 week’s. Early on some of these cold call scammers put a considerable amount of fear in to me with threats of door step collection’s, bailiff’s, solicitors and court. Each time I had a problem I called my appointed representative and he explained why they made these threat’s and completely calmed me down.

My advice is simple, if you have the same problem I did, then visit their site, read their information, and if you are not sure about anything before joining just call them so they can explain as they did with me.

My company was being targeted by a large number of Manchester based publishing companies that were pursuing me for sponsorship in various charity publications. When my staff and relatives were on the receiving end of abuse as a result of me refusing their requests, I was forced to act. I enlisted the help of TAPA who managed to get these companies to deter from contacting me and withdraw the payment demands that they had been sending to my business.

My legal advisor wanted over £2,000 and could not guarantee a definite cessation of these nuisance calls I was receiving.TAPA stopped the problem in less than 4 weeks for £8.00 per month. I am very happy with the prompt and effective service I have received from TAPA so far and would recommend other businesses that are suffering with these types of unwanted sales calls to go to TAPA.

I joined TAPA in April as i was getting a lot of nuisance phone calls off different sales companies. Within 4 weeks of signing up the calls reduced by around two thirds. Slowly but surely, they have stopped altogether over last 5 weeks. TAPA have done a great job. I still do not know how they did it but who cares! Great support staff as well.

I was receiving lots of unwanted unsolicited sales calls from publishing firms attempting to coerce me in to sponsoring advertising space in publications for children's charities and different departments of the emergency services. The calls were coming through almost on a daily basis and two firms actually sent me an invoice for advertisements in these publications that i did not ask for.

These firms became very threatening and demanded the bills to be paid. I approached Trading Standards and Citizens Advice but this did not really help. I arranged for a solicitor to help me but these firms ignored him as well and the calls continued coming through. The two firms that invoiced me only became more aggressive.

After searching the internet i came across The Advertising Protection Agency website and got in touch with them as a result. They said they could stop these calls coming through to my business and personal telephone lines and said that i did not have to pay these invoices and would make representation on my behalf to get the invoices cancelled.

Sure enough the calls have already gone from around three per day (15 per week) to one or two per week since i appointed The Advertising Protection Agency three weeks ago. Its fantastic. They promise me these calls will disappear very soon as well. Furthermore, one of the two firms that invoiced me has not contacted me since i instructed TAPA and the other firm has all of sudden become very friendly and only rang me twice since i instructed TAPA to offer me affordable payment plans!

I'm really pleased with this organisation and advise others that are suffering with unsolicited telephone sales calls to get in touch with this organisation. I'm confident this other firm will give up contacting me soon and these last few calls will stop coming though.