Royal Mail and Trading Standards join forces on scam mail awareness training
Royal Mail joined forces with National Trading Standards officers yesterday for a UK-wide training day in support of Citizens Advice’s Scams Awareness Month. A notice posted on the myroyalmail.com website yesterday (22 July) said: “Officers from Trading Standards will visit delivery offices across the country to highlight the problem of mail scams and show our people how to spot potentially vulnerable households. They will also teach postmen and women about the tactics used by scammers to defraud customers.
“The training forms part of a wider initiative to create an improved process for cancelling the contracts of companies that send fraudulent mail.
“Over 2,000 postmen and women have already been trained as part of the initiative, with around 800 potentially vulnerable households identified to date.”
Commenting on the training, Royal Mail’s group security director Tony Marsh said: “The initiative with the National Trading Standards Scams Team will help us to better identify scam mail to stop it entering our postal network.
“We do not want our postmen or women handling or delivering mail that causes harm. Royal Mail will work closely with the National Trading Standards Scams Team to identify and stop scam mail wherever we can.”
According to reports published in UK media today (23 July), almost 200,000 potential victims who appear on so-called “suckers lists” used by scammers have been identified by Trading Standards teams in a crackdown on fraudulent mail. Trading Standards said the average age of those on the lists was 74, showing that criminals tended to prey on older and often vulnerable people. The 10,843 identified victims lost an average of £1,184 each, or just over £13 million in total.
A notice about the scam mail training was also posted on the RoyaMailChat board yesterday – but some responses from staff working in delivery offices indicated that they felt that the scam mail should be sorted out at the mail centres, and “should never reach us in the Delivery Offices”.
