The following message has been received from Trading Standards fraud reports:

We have received reports of scam phone calls and letters from people claiming to work for the telecommunication service, BT. The caller asks for an upfront fee of £300 to opt-out of scam telephone calls and tries to gain the resident’s confidence by quoting the last four digits of their credit card. The caller then asks for the beginning of their credit card number to complete the transaction. We believe this person may be using the identity of an existing company to scam residents.

There is no need to pay anyone to use this service.

The Telephone Preference Service is a free service that helps to reduce unsolicited sales and marketing telephone calls.