Suspicious house caller

Yesterday afternoon whilst making the dinner my elderly mother answered the door. A man had rang the bell and stood looking into our living room window!

The man asked her what TV proigrammes she watched, she replied it was mainly the soaps to which he asked if he could come in Apparently he was quite pushy and insistent about wanting entry to the house, he asked her several times. She had the presence of mind to tell him that it was not convenient as she was preparing a meal He wanted to knoiw what time would be convenient and said he would call back today at 4pm

I did not like the sound of it at all - after all tv companies dont need to get door to door callers.

4pm came and went and again I was in the kitchen preparing food at 5pm the bell went. I had warned mum not to answer the door. Instead I sent the dogs into the living room with the instructions to "bark" which they did. I didnt open the door and this guy [different one from yesterday] stood with his nose pressed against the window looking in

Something about these callers didnt ring right so I decided to ask some of our neighbours if these guys had called with them yesterday - I asked 3 different neighbours and they all said "NO". That rang alarm bells and I wondered if they were aware that my elderly mum lived in the house but did not realise someone else did nor did they know about the dogs. There are other elderly people who live on this road on their own

So, taking it all into consideration I decided to ring the Police. The Police took all the detatails down but other than that what can you do. My mother wont open the door again to anyone unless of course she knows who it is.

That sounds very odd & not right, glad nothing untoward happened with your mum xx

Ohh not good, you hear horror stories similar to this about vunerable people answering the door, and getting robbed

Glad she won't be opening the door to anyone else!

Glad your Mom won't answer the door again....that sounds abit suss to me Glad she is ok xxxxx

I'm pleased that you were in this time they called. Your Mam was very alert to refuse them entry the 1st time.

Does all seem very strange! Makes you wonder if theyve done it to other elderly folk but they just haven't bothered to tell the police.

Might it be worth just ringing the local newspaper and asking them to do a small snippet on it without using your names? Just to make others in the area aware of what is going on.

Bev x

I hate scumbags who prey on old people ..
I once took the dogs over to a elderly neighbours to help her get rid of a utilities salesmen who was trying to get her to change suppliers ..

Sound very suspect to me, glad you rang the police. Hope your Mum remains safe with people like that around.

glad your mum was on the ball, you do worry though huh !
definetly worth speaking to local neighbourhood watch etc too

Very odd. Usually any callers like that are upfront with their ID (or should be) and quite aware that people can be/will be suspicious.

Is there a local Neighbourhood Watch? This is right up their street, excuse the pun! My mother was involved in NW for many years, and still gets any circular emails about suspicious callers/weird phone calls etc. in her area.

Local Police PCSO's are also interested in this kind of thing and happy to pass on details of anything suspicious.

You did the right thing Helen, sounds very odd. Hopefully the dogs will have made them more cautious now. I get so saddened to hear about elderly people being targeted by distraction con men.

A friend of mine lives a stones throw from a very exclusive area in London, we often drive through to see how the other half live They have a lot of signs up to say 'door to door selling is not permitted in this area' These aren't signs on people's doors, they are official street signs. I really do believe that if door to door selling was not allowed and people got used to only answering the door to people they know, less people would be targeted by scum.