According to a recent article published by the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, no win no fee legal services companies generating revenue from nuisance texts to mobile phones are currently under investigation.
These unwanted text messages, which promote personal injury claims for financial mis-selling or RTAs, are at the bull’s eye of a growing industry that is worth an estimated £175 million at the very least. Nearly one out of every three mobile phone customers have reported that they ended up getting a minimum of one of the spam texts in June, which adds up to more than 12.7 million unwanted texts.
Investigators for the newspaper discovered the identities of those involved in the legal services field that are responsible for the nuisance texts. Oftentimes the responsible parties are mysteriously vague communications companies based in such far-flung places as Eastern Europe or India, so-called ‘claims farmers’ who specialise in gathering compensation cases for personal injury lawyers, and legal firms directly.
These nuisance texts are usually sent from pay-as-you-go mobiles that often prove untraceable and attempt to entice customers with the promise of thousands upon thousands of pounds in damages from mis-sold financial services and ‘no win no fee’ traffic accident claims.
The onslaught of texts, which are outlawed due to their ‘cold call’ classification when sent without the consent of the receivers, is primarily driven by the highly lucrative information trade on those who could possibly be in need of legal advice. Representatives from the legal field have spoken out against the practice, calling it ‘abhorrent that access to justice can be both bought and sold in this manner.