Have any other members ever had a call from a company claiming you have won a holiday?

I had about 6 in one month from the same place!

They ring you up. and say, your partner filled out a questionairre in the High street and you have won a Holiday, flights, accomodation the works!

They go on to say there is no catch, alls we need you to do is spread the word of our company when you come back from you island in the sun, by telling them how good we are.

They then say, we just need to ask a few simple questions to make sure we have the right you!!

Asking, your 18=60?(Yes), Married/Living with Partner(Yes),Own your own home?(Um... as soon as you say RENTING???)
They say OK fine, great and your address is 43 Regents Park Road, some made up crap!! You say No, of course, they say Oh, wrong number!!! SLAM???

Very annoying!! The numbers not witheld either

Timeshare companies. Finding out if you meet the correct criteria. At some point one of you will have entered your details towards a draw for a free expenses paid holiday, whilst out shopping.

Thought as much...

Beware time-share company they get you out there and pressure sell to you. They want people with the collateral to enable them to buy their apartments abroad. No such thing as a free holiday.
Very annoying a do agree these people should be stopped from doing this

You can stop them if you wish. Register (free) with the TPS.
http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/

(What has this to do with Sky?)

Have a whistle by the phone, whenever I hear 'You've won a holiday' I deafen the bastards, I think they have got the message as I haven't had any of those calls in ages, or it could be I've dumped the landline and use VoIP.

Register with the Telephone Preference Service.

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/

Before you answer the caller's questions, ask your own: get the company address and telephone number and the name of the caller and then, just before you hang up, congratulate them on being the lucky recipient of a complaint to the tps, which you can file online.

TPS are pretty useless for complaining to.

We have been with the TPS for years, but still used to get calls for these holidays, as they were coming from outside the UK, window companies and the like dried up though.

The MPS however has reduced out junk mail down to virtually zero, it's only companies we are with that still send junk, even though we have told them not to.

We use both TPS and MPS and have found they really reduce the rubbish!

Yes MPS has been great, especially at stopping getting other peoples junk too.

TPS has worked, except for junk calls from outside the UK. Though they are pretty toothless when it comes to complaining about a company who has still called.

As said above since switching to VoIP for our phone, we haven't received a single call from anyone other than people we know.

It's either a timeshare or a scam, to me.

I registered with TPS and the cold calls have all but vanished. Still get some from outside the UK (usually recorded messages) but I just put the phone down (after saying "no thank you" if it's a person).

Have a nice day.

Register with the TPS and go ex-directory.

The only calls you get then is the automated ones. I imagine these systems have a start and finish phone number and call every number in between. We even get them on 1571 now and again.

Regarding TPS and MPS. People should not have to opt out of something they do not want, they should have to opt in.

In the case of junk mail the amount of paper and printed matter put in people's doors that are binned without reading is enormous and is a total waste of the earth's resources.

Unwanted telephone calls are an infringement on people's privacy and should be outlawed.

Regarding the OP these people are definitely timeshare -- there is no such thing as a free holiday, they get you out there OK and then put very heavy pressure on you to sign up and they probably want property owners as this will be used for collateral.

Having had a couple of similar calls, I think they get round the TPS by saying something along the lines of:

you completed a survey about your holidays last year and at the time you agreed that we could contact you again.

Of course you didn't agree that they could phone you up and try to get you to attend a timeshare presentation.

I have to hold up my hand now and admit that I once worked for one of these companies for about two weeks (got completely fed up with them and their practises and left at that point).

The TPS means nothing to these people. We literally sat there with pages torn out of the phone book, and called every single number in the area. If someone got upset, we were told to just say that we're not covered by TPS as we're not selling - we only want you to come to our "research" session and we will give you a free holiday. Baloney.

Oh, and you wouldn't believe how much trouble people got into if someone who didn't fit the "criteria" turned up to one of their meetings. I heard a story of a woman literally being turned away from the meeting (and the 'free' holiday) because she was black.

At the end of the day, I can't believe it took me 2 weeks to work out how much I disagreed with their practises. Should have been more like 2 minutes!

Anyone who's offered the holiday should go and go to the required meeting at the end of the holiday and then say thanks, but I'm not interested.

Let them hassle you, i'll lose my job etc.... shame...thanks for the holiday though.

I went on one with someone ages ago, a good free holiday !

Same here, nearly 10 years ago. My then partner and I were offered a free holiday if we attended a timeshare presentation. We went but made it quite clear we would *not* be buying a timeshare but took the holiday - a week in Portugal (self-catering appt) just before Christmas. We also got a week in Gloucestershire when they tried to entice us back a second time, again made it clear we would not buy a timeshare.

Second prize, two weeks in Gloucestershire?

I've received a couple of calls like this, the important thing I noticed was that they did not use the word 'won', they said I had been "awarded" a holiday. They wanted me to attend some sort of seminar and only then would I be able to get a holiday although I'm sure there would have been more catches further down the line, I told them I was not interested. They had my details because I foolishly stopped to help someone on the street to carry out a survey for something or other.