The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has recently been contacted by concerned householders who have received unsolicited phone calls from businesses offering to service their Dyson vacuum cleaners.
Some unscrupulous callers falsely claiming to be authorised Dyson engineers are making speculative phone calls offering to service Dyson vacuums cheaply. Services carried out by bogus engineers have seen duped owners of Dyson vacuums shelling out up to ?150 for what is often very poor workmanship. Some bogus engineers use fake parts and there have even been cases where bogus engineers have sabotaged vacuums in order to sell new machines. Warranties for Dyson vacuums may be invalidated if owners employ bogus engineers.
Householders have been particularly concerned about the fact that the bogus callers somehow know that they have a Dyson vacuum. This may simply be coincidental, as there is a good chance that they will speak to an owner of a Dyson vacuum if they make a few random calls. What is more worrying is where they seem to have details of warranties.
This is not the first time that this has happened over the last few years and so the OFT is offering the following advice:
• Try to obtain as much information about the caller as you can (e.g. business name, phone number and address), and make a note of what the caller actually said, e.g. “We are authorised Dyson engineers”.
• Contact Trading Standards on 686500 for advice.
• Do not agree to have your vacuum serviced or to have a home visit. Simply advise the caller that you will call them back after you have made some checks to establish whether or not they are genuine.
A spokesperson for Dyson said: “Dyson is aware of a small number of disreputable firms offering servicing, repairs and parts for Dyson technology. We have already provided technical assistance to BBC Watchdog investigations that expose the dishonest behaviour of such companies. At Dyson we do not cold call with sales or services.”
John Peet, Chief Inspector of Trading Standards, said: “This is a simple but effective scam that can easily be prevented by householders following our advice and checking that the caller is genuine before agreeing to anything.”
Trading Standards can be contacted on telephone 686500.
