Both of my parents are becoming increasingly infirm so their GP arranged for a visit from the Occupational Therapist’s department. To prevent Mum telling them that they don’t need any help, I went along to join the meeting. The administrator they sent took herself off on a tour of my parents’ small house and came back into the living room with a list of modifications that they would make at no charge to Mum and Dad. The list included a second stair rail and hand rails either side of the front door both inside and out. They also supplied sturdy walking sticks, a foot stool and commode and a stool for the kitchen. Mum uses the footstool as a coffee table and the commode and kitchen stool are just gathering dust in the corner of their dining room. I expect there are unused items like this all over the country, what a colossal waste of NHS money. As the woman left the house my mum bellowed “Bugger Off”. My parents don’t swear and never in my entire life have I heard Mum speak this way. I told her she was being rude and she just replied “I can say a lot worse than that”. In that moment she didn’t seem like the Mum I know at all. 

The woman visited my parents on a Tuesday and the workman arrived to carry out her instructions two days later. The handrail going up their stairway has really made their staircase a lot safer and Mum sort of pulls herself up.

Unfortunately the workman may as well have erected a huge sign stating Vulnerable elderly people live here, feel free to rip them off. They now seem to be targeted by every cowboy, rogue trader conman within a one hundred mile radius. I bought two stickers for their front door saying No cold callers, the police will be informed, but it has made no difference. A week or so after the rails were fitted I went to visit my parents and their, even more elderly, next door neighbours were having their driveway jet washed by a man who had pitched up at their door in a shabby white truck, no company name or branding. He was simply blasting all the dirt onto my parent’s driveway and also all over their brand new garage doors. I looked at him, horrified and he stood very still and glared at me as if daring me to say something. I decided not to. His young son, was playing on my parent’s front garden. I had a cup of tea with my parents and warned them again about people like this aggressive looking man. I told Dad not to answer the door to anyone they don’t know. Later that evening Dad rang and announced that the man had returned and washed his driveway for the bargain price of £90. I imagine the thug knocked on their door and Dad felt too intimidated to refuse. Their garage doors were completely showered in dirt and the driveway did not look any different.

Since my uncle’s death seen years ago my aunt lives alone. She was watching television recently when there was a knock at her front door and a man informed her that her roof needed repairing and he was the bloke for the job. My aunt was telling him, no she already has someone to take care of home repairs when she heard a crash. Another man was actually already on her roof and had dislodged some tiles. My aunt, very shaken, told them to get off her property and called the police, who did absolutely nothing. She then had to pay a roofer to repair the damage these low-lives had caused. 

My mother-in-law, a very vulnerable individual, lost her savings in a foreign property scam. The fraudster, David Ames, the head of a company called Harlequin, persuaded her to invest in holiday homes that weren’t built. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison and stole the savings of thousands of hard-working people, some of them could not retire because of their losses. Ames personally rang my mother-in-law to persuade her to keep “investing”. She thought he was a nice man. Anyone speaking to her is immediately aware that she is not capable of making any important financial decisions herself. No wonder he took such an interest. My mother-in-law didn’t tell anyone about her so-called “investments” until her bank account had been drained.

One of the many reasons that my mum could never live alone is because she would be so vulnerable to fraudsters. Where I live we have regular “Nottingham Knockers” calling selling dusters from the pound shop for £10 and claiming to be on a young offenders rehabilitation scheme. There is no such scheme, it is a scam. If you politely decline to buy anything you are more than likely to be called a vile name and have your car keyed. These people are the reason I now have a Ring video doorbell after I opened the door the an aggressive young man who bizarrely demanded I give him dry clothes as it was raining. He got verbally very abusive when I refused. 

So how to protect our elderly relatives (and ourselves) from scammers? Not opening the door to people they don’t know is the main thing in my opinion. My dad thinks he is being clever by engaging telephone scammers in chat but this is a mistake, these people are criminals, just put the phone down and block the number. If the elderly person lives alone and does open the door to a uninvited “tradesman” then they should pretend there is somebody else at home. I tell my dad to say that his sons do all the repairs on his house. If someone claiming to be from their bank rings then put the phone down and ring the bank, on another phone if possible. If ringing on the same phone then wait half an hour. I read about a woman who thought she was ringing her bank to check the validity of a call she’d just received but the fraudsters had stayed on the line and she was simply still speaking to them. She said the man seemed so helpful as he defrauded her out of ten thousand pounds. These people are often very charming. The old saying goes that a fool and their money are soon parted but, these days, anyone can become a victim of fraud. It is a sad world when we have to be so suspicious of everybody.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash