There are very few things that get us as angry on Rogue Traders as pressure selling to the elderly. So when we found out about a mobility company based in Nottingham doing exactly that we decided to give them the special Rogue Traders treatment.
Viewer Marilyn Bower thought she'd made sure her mother-in-law Ada would be properly looked after when she went for a week's holiday but on the night she got back there was a nasty surprise. A call from a police officer at the home the 82-year-old revealed she'd signed a contract for a rise and recliner chair at a cost of £1700.
This was a massive amount of money for Ada, a pensioner on a fixed income. She'd been visited twice by Stewart Young, a salesman from ABM Mobility of Nottingham. He took cash and a cheque before returning for a third time for yet more money. What made this all the more shocking to Marilyn is that Ada has dementia...
Marilyn, who eventually got the money back, looked into whether the price of the chair was reasonable and found a similar product for considerably less.
ABM Mobility has now stopped answering the phone and in its place Virgo Healthcare Ltd has sprung up based in the very same building in Nottingham.
After hearing Marilyn's story we decided it was time to call Virgo out ourselves. As soon as their van arrived it was clear the two businesses were definitely connected. Under a thin layer of paint on the back of the Virgo van the ABM mobility logo was clearly visible.
Driving that van was Virgo's Emma Whyte who'd been sent to meet the actress playing our old lady May. Our undercover pensioner had called Virgo, saying she was interested in a mobility scooter.
We asked Ray Hodgkinson MBE, Director-General of the British Healthcare trades Association to watch as Emma Whyte made her sales pitch which started with an assessment of May's health.
Ray told us the assessment was part of a plan to sell a range of products for the elderly such as special chairs, mattresses or machines to help you get in and out of a bath and he turned out to be spot on.
By the end of the assessment Emma Whyte was trying to sell May the scooter she'd originally called about, plus a mattress, a bath lifter and a couple of other smaller items. The total bill was a whopping £7000 but straight away the discounts started coming. First off a price fall of ten percent brought the cost down to £6300.
Ray explained that this is a classic pressure sales technique. By starting with a high price the company can afford to give discounts and make the customer feel they're getting a bargain even when they aren't.
This was quickly followed by another classic pressure sales technique - the call to the office or - in the case of this super keen bunch - the call from the office. This is used to make customers feel they're getting special treatment and discounts when in fact they're getting nothing of the sort.
After further price falls and still no sale Emma Whyte tried to get our actress May to sign the form on the basis that she could cancel later. When even this scheme failed Emma Whyte was back on the phone to HQ for yet more price reductions. Eventually the price fell from £7000 to just £3925.
After two hours and 18 minutes and at least 16 refusals Emma Whyte finally leaves May alone. She had been telling Emma Whyte she was tired, confused and wanted time to think. Ray Hodgkinson told us: "That's absolute classic pressure selling. That makes me so angry."
The man Emma Whyte was talking to back at head office was called Stewart Young - could he be the same Stewart Young we came across earlier overcharging a woman with dementia?
He worked for ABM Mobility and Emma Whyte's van used to have ABM Mobility written on the back window but her business card reads Virgo Healthcare Ltd.
It sounds like ABM has changed its name but why? Could it be because Derbyshire trading standards received more than 300 complaints about ABM in 2009? So many they took out an injunction to make them trade fairly?
We knew we had to get to the bottom of what was happening. So we sent in one of our team undercover to train as a salesman at Virgo healthcare HQ.
The training was carried out by Sam Routh who called himself the general manager he explained how prices work at Virgo Healthcare Ltd. He presented trainees with two price lists for exactly the same items - one list was around £1000 lower than the other. "Start with this price or above and then we're happy,' he said.
'The second price list that's printing out is what we recommend you sell these products at. Which is about £1000 over what the products is. Personally if I was you no matter what the house looks like I would go in at that big price," he told our mole.
This is about having room to drop the price without hitting profits. Here's an example - we saw salesmen being taught to pitch a bath lift to clients at £2100. The lowest price we found on the net for the same product - less than £500.
Sam Routh also explained to our undercover operative what was in it for the salespeople. If they can sell a product for more than a certain amount, their commission rate shoots up to 50 per cent.
For example, if they sell a particular product at £1000 the salesperson will get their regular 12 per cent commission. But if they can sell the very same product for £2000, they'll get 12 per cent of the first £1000 plus 50 per cent of anything over that - in this case a whopping £500. It's a clear incentive to charge as much as possible.
Then Sam Routh went on to tell us a story that shocked expert Ray Hodgkinson. "When I was back in the field 2 weeks' ago" Routh told our undercover operative, "I went to this house, it was the scruffiest smelliest awful house you've ever seen in your life. So I sold him a dual Balmoral bed for £5300. Went back in I sold him a Midi 4 Plus [a scooter that even Virgo only charge £3200 for] for £5200 and then a couple of days later I went back to deliver his scooter and managed to sell him a rise and recline chair for £4600. So all together I got £15000 out of that one customer."
Ray said: "That's just robbery isn't it? Just dreadful."
With three mornings of training concluded, it was time for our undercover operative to head out onto the open road to shadow super-salesman Mark Murphy and learn how to put the theory into practice.
Some of the things Mark Murphy told our undercover operative were shocking: "Last week I went to see a guy and then I think seven days later he died," he said. "Thankfully it's outside of the cancellation notice. Sorry about that but that's how it happened. So I've still got my £2000 commission coming on that. It's remarkable how God works. If you ever wanted someone to turn their toes up after paying a load of dough this was your guy."
Next our mole and Mark Murphy arrived at their appointment. They'd come to meet a man in his mid 80's who'd expressed an interest in an armchair adapted to help him stand as he'd had two strokes - but he didn't want to buy that day.
The sales patter followed the same structure as we'd seen with Emma Whyte and that our undercover operative had been taught on his training course. After making it clear on a number of occasions that he didn't want to buy the customer succumbed to the pressure and bought a chair.
Again Mark Murphy was jubilant: "...a master class in perseverance, do not leave the beach. Do not ever leave the beach and think it's a dead deal." He told our undercover operative.
"It was like nicking a mars bar off a baby. So in two hours we've walked out with £2300. How the **** is that possible? About £500 worth of commission there for two hours work."
Mark Murphy went on to mock the speech impediment of his customer.
With such shocking evidence of pressure selling and disregard for the welfare of clients it was time to put some tough questions to Amarjit Gill, the de facto boss of Virgo Healthcare Ltd.
We tracked Amarjit Gill down outside his offices but he refused to speak to us and instead got back into his Mercedes CL500 and drove away.
At that point Sam Routh who trained our undercover operative arrived at Virgo Healthcare Ltd's offices. Matt Allwright pointed out to him that poor sales practice was bound to occur at the company because, "you have a commission structure which rewards people by paying them fifty percent over a certain point so they're bound to ask for more money than [the product] is actually worth."
Sam Routh's response was: "At the end of the day everybody has got to make a living."
Yes they do Sam but not at the expense of elderly and vulnerable people.
If you or someone you know may need a mobility product please visit the website of the British Healthcare Trades Association (http://www.bhta.net/).
The sales reps who won't take no for an answer...
Viewer Marilyn Bower thought she'd made sure her mother-in-law Ada would be properly looked after when she went for a week's holiday but on the night she got back there was a nasty surprise. A call from a police officer at the home the 82-year-old revealed she'd signed a contract for a rise and recliner chair at a cost of £1700.
This was a massive amount of money for Ada, a pensioner on a fixed income. She'd been visited twice by Stewart Young, a salesman from ABM Mobility of Nottingham. He took cash and a cheque before returning for a third time for yet more money. What made this all the more shocking to Marilyn is that Ada has dementia...
Marilyn, who eventually got the money back, looked into whether the price of the chair was reasonable and found a similar product for considerably less.
ABM Mobility has now stopped answering the phone and in its place Virgo Healthcare Ltd has sprung up based in the very same building in Nottingham.
After hearing Marilyn's story we decided it was time to call Virgo out ourselves. As soon as their van arrived it was clear the two businesses were definitely connected. Under a thin layer of paint on the back of the Virgo van the ABM mobility logo was clearly visible.
Driving that van was Virgo's Emma Whyte who'd been sent to meet the actress playing our old lady May. Our undercover pensioner had called Virgo, saying she was interested in a mobility scooter.
We asked Ray Hodgkinson MBE, Director-General of the British Healthcare trades Association to watch as Emma Whyte made her sales pitch which started with an assessment of May's health.
Ray told us the assessment was part of a plan to sell a range of products for the elderly such as special chairs, mattresses or machines to help you get in and out of a bath and he turned out to be spot on.
By the end of the assessment Emma Whyte was trying to sell May the scooter she'd originally called about, plus a mattress, a bath lifter and a couple of other smaller items. The total bill was a whopping £7000 but straight away the discounts started coming. First off a price fall of ten percent brought the cost down to £6300.
Ray explained that this is a classic pressure sales technique. By starting with a high price the company can afford to give discounts and make the customer feel they're getting a bargain even when they aren't.
This was quickly followed by another classic pressure sales technique - the call to the office or - in the case of this super keen bunch - the call from the office. This is used to make customers feel they're getting special treatment and discounts when in fact they're getting nothing of the sort.
After further price falls and still no sale Emma Whyte tried to get our actress May to sign the form on the basis that she could cancel later. When even this scheme failed Emma Whyte was back on the phone to HQ for yet more price reductions. Eventually the price fell from £7000 to just £3925.
After two hours and 18 minutes and at least 16 refusals Emma Whyte finally leaves May alone. She had been telling Emma Whyte she was tired, confused and wanted time to think. Ray Hodgkinson told us: "That's absolute classic pressure selling. That makes me so angry."
The man Emma Whyte was talking to back at head office was called Stewart Young - could he be the same Stewart Young we came across earlier overcharging a woman with dementia?
He worked for ABM Mobility and Emma Whyte's van used to have ABM Mobility written on the back window but her business card reads Virgo Healthcare Ltd.
It sounds like ABM has changed its name but why? Could it be because Derbyshire trading standards received more than 300 complaints about ABM in 2009? So many they took out an injunction to make them trade fairly?
We knew we had to get to the bottom of what was happening. So we sent in one of our team undercover to train as a salesman at Virgo healthcare HQ.
The training was carried out by Sam Routh who called himself the general manager he explained how prices work at Virgo Healthcare Ltd. He presented trainees with two price lists for exactly the same items - one list was around £1000 lower than the other. "Start with this price or above and then we're happy,' he said.
'The second price list that's printing out is what we recommend you sell these products at. Which is about £1000 over what the products is. Personally if I was you no matter what the house looks like I would go in at that big price," he told our mole.
This is about having room to drop the price without hitting profits. Here's an example - we saw salesmen being taught to pitch a bath lift to clients at £2100. The lowest price we found on the net for the same product - less than £500.
Sam Routh also explained to our undercover operative what was in it for the salespeople. If they can sell a product for more than a certain amount, their commission rate shoots up to 50 per cent.
For example, if they sell a particular product at £1000 the salesperson will get their regular 12 per cent commission. But if they can sell the very same product for £2000, they'll get 12 per cent of the first £1000 plus 50 per cent of anything over that - in this case a whopping £500. It's a clear incentive to charge as much as possible.
Then Sam Routh went on to tell us a story that shocked expert Ray Hodgkinson. "When I was back in the field 2 weeks' ago" Routh told our undercover operative, "I went to this house, it was the scruffiest smelliest awful house you've ever seen in your life. So I sold him a dual Balmoral bed for £5300. Went back in I sold him a Midi 4 Plus [a scooter that even Virgo only charge £3200 for] for £5200 and then a couple of days later I went back to deliver his scooter and managed to sell him a rise and recline chair for £4600. So all together I got £15000 out of that one customer."
Ray said: "That's just robbery isn't it? Just dreadful."
With three mornings of training concluded, it was time for our undercover operative to head out onto the open road to shadow super-salesman Mark Murphy and learn how to put the theory into practice.
Some of the things Mark Murphy told our undercover operative were shocking: "Last week I went to see a guy and then I think seven days later he died," he said. "Thankfully it's outside of the cancellation notice. Sorry about that but that's how it happened. So I've still got my £2000 commission coming on that. It's remarkable how God works. If you ever wanted someone to turn their toes up after paying a load of dough this was your guy."
Next our mole and Mark Murphy arrived at their appointment. They'd come to meet a man in his mid 80's who'd expressed an interest in an armchair adapted to help him stand as he'd had two strokes - but he didn't want to buy that day.
The sales patter followed the same structure as we'd seen with Emma Whyte and that our undercover operative had been taught on his training course. After making it clear on a number of occasions that he didn't want to buy the customer succumbed to the pressure and bought a chair.
Again Mark Murphy was jubilant: "...a master class in perseverance, do not leave the beach. Do not ever leave the beach and think it's a dead deal." He told our undercover operative.
"It was like nicking a mars bar off a baby. So in two hours we've walked out with £2300. How the **** is that possible? About £500 worth of commission there for two hours work."
Mark Murphy went on to mock the speech impediment of his customer.
With such shocking evidence of pressure selling and disregard for the welfare of clients it was time to put some tough questions to Amarjit Gill, the de facto boss of Virgo Healthcare Ltd.
We tracked Amarjit Gill down outside his offices but he refused to speak to us and instead got back into his Mercedes CL500 and drove away.
At that point Sam Routh who trained our undercover operative arrived at Virgo Healthcare Ltd's offices. Matt Allwright pointed out to him that poor sales practice was bound to occur at the company because, "you have a commission structure which rewards people by paying them fifty percent over a certain point so they're bound to ask for more money than [the product] is actually worth."
Sam Routh's response was: "At the end of the day everybody has got to make a living."
Yes they do Sam but not at the expense of elderly and vulnerable people.
If you or someone you know may need a mobility product please visit the website of the British Healthcare Trades Association (http://www.bhta.net/).
The sales reps who won't take no for an answer...