08443573311

I am glad I found these posts, although 2 yrs. on! I must say I called TAPA a few days ago, was having issues with a scam Media Company.  However what made me curious is the call I received back was on a mobile!  I would not sign up online as the whole conversation seemed to revolve around MONEY!  and with the Media Company antics, made me very weary of the conversation I had with TAPA. Having looked a little further (from a previous post) I find there is no company with the VAT registration listed by TAPA (unless systems are being poor).  They are listed under the ICO, but I don't recommend or endorse them, I personally am very dubious! My choice is to let the professionals deal with my problems regarding the media company, actionfraud!  I will speak to ASA today on TAPA though as I did come across there site when researching.

Looks like the bungling Eastway's back as a ? ineffectually attempting to move away from the facts about the TAPA scams Anthony Michael Simister, the criminal fraudster:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2004/523.html
" The business of the Company was founded and continued on the basis of deception. If, in accordance with the undertakings offered, the deception is removed it seems unlikely that the Company would have any worthwhile business to carry on. Further, the extent and nature of the undertakings and the past conduct of Mr Simister are such that it would be necessary for the Secretary of State, through his officers, to monitor due performance of the undertakings and to supervise the future conduct of the Company's business. That is not his or their function. The matters to which I have referred show, in my judgment, that it is just and equitable that the Company should be wound up. The acceptance of undertakings from the Company or Mr Simister instead of making that order would be an abdication, not an exercise, of the Court's jurisdiction. For all these reasons I will make the usual compulsory order."

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Charity+scam+gives+needle.-a0121931635

"The man who set up Help at Hand UK was called Anthony Simister; Anthony Simister was taken to the High Court in March and his then company The Supporting Link was wound up after the judge said it was based on deception;  Anthony Simister's partner Natalie Selby is a director of Direct Action UK. Anthony Simister gave us their telephone number as a contact number; Wayne Chadwick, also a director of Help at Hand, is known by staff at Direct Action UK. The accounts manager at Help at Hand Philip Hunt is now working for Direct Action UK. We will be sending copies of The Ferret programme to the Charity Commission and to the Department of Trade and Industry, who both want to curb the abuse of charity ads. Greater Manchester police also requested a tape for their Economic Crime Unit."

www.nuisancecalls.org.uk › ... › The Nuisance Calls Forum UKOct 12, 2011 – IT SAYS 'A TAPA COMMUNITY' OF COURSE TAPA MODERATE THIS SITE! YOU MAKE OUT THEY ARE HIDING THE FACT IT IS THEIR SITE!

Nuisancecalls.org.uk - Simplified website statistics & valuation data
184.173.15.223/www.nuisancecalls.org.uk Browsing the site, we can see that there are pages about, A Tapa Community, Nuisance Calls, Nuisance Calls Forums For Consumers, Toothfairy Northern Debt

"A Tapa Community"  = A community run by criminals for criminals to promote and disguise their criminal businesses

They are a partnership according to their website.

Yes... a shadowy secret partnership led by a criminal fraudster... nameless but not blameless...

1. TAPA, The Advertising Protection Agency, is an "unlimited partnership", defined within the BIS document http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/business ... or-business.pdf, as a Partnership and thus an unincorporated legal form, the distinguishing feature of unincorporated forms being that they no separate legal personality.

Partnership

A Partnership is a relatively simple way for two or more legal persons to set up and run a business together with a view to profit. A partnership can arise, without any formal agreement, when people carry on a business in common, but typically there is agreement to trade as a partnership. Partners will usually draw up a legally binding partnership agreement, setting out such matters as the amount of capital contributed by each partner and the way in which they will share the profits (and losses) of the business.  
Again the Partnership has no separate legal personality. Partners share the risks, costs and responsibilities of being in business. Because partners generally bear the consequences of each other’s decisions, partners usually manage the business themselves, though they can hire employees. Partners usually raise money for the business out of their own assets, and / or with loans, although again being unincorporated limits borrowing in practice, and not being a company with a share capital prevents the
business itself from raising equity finance by issuing shares.

Each partner is self-employed and pays tax on this basis on their share of the profits: The partnership itself and each individual partner must make annual self-assessment returns to HMRC, and the Partnership must keep records showing business income and expenses. Legal persons other than individuals – such as Limited Companies or Limited Liability Partnerships – can also be partners in a partnership. They are treated like any other partner except that they have additional tax and reporting obligations – for example
companies must pay corporation tax rather than income tax on their profits from the partnership.

2. And that TAPA is not a:

i) Limited Partnership

Not to be confused with a Limited Liability Partnership (see below) – a Limited Partnership has two sorts of partner: general partners and limited partners. The form is similar to a Partnership, with the main differences being that the limited partners may not be involved in the management of the business and their liability is limited to the amount that they have invested in the partnership. Note that limited partners are different from ‘sleeping’ partners in a Partnership or Limited Partnership, who do not take part in running the business but remain fully liable for its debts.  Limited partnerships must register at Companies House, and do not come into existence until they are registered.  Changes to the partnership must also be registered

ii) Limited Liability Partnership (LLP)

A Limited Liability Partnership is a body corporate with a separate legal personality similar to a company. Unlike in a normal partnership, the members of an LLP enjoy limited liability as the name suggests liability is limited to the amount of money they have invested in the business and to any personal guarantees they have given to raise finance. Each member takes an equal share of the profits, unless the members' agreement specifies otherwise.  

Much like a Partnership, each non-corporate member of an LLP needs to register as selfemployed with HMRC, and both the LLP itself and each individual member must make annual self-assessment returns HMRC. Non-corporate members of an LLP pay income tax and national insurance contributions on their share of the profits. Additionally, LLPs must register and file accounts and annual returns at Companies House. At least two members must be “designated members” who hold additional responsibilities – it is they who appoint auditors and sign off and file the accounts at Companies House.

Limited Liability Partnerships have much more freedom than companies over arranging their internal affairs, for example in the way in which decisions are made, and the way in which profits are distributed to members.

iii) Nor a Sole Trader, Unincorporated Association, or any type of incorporated legal form such as a Limited Company.  

2) Given the above, and that the The Business Names Act 1985 ( http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1985/7 ) requires the disclosure of the names of current partners where the firm (in this case TAPA) has a place of business (which in TAPA's case is 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AX) and carries on business in Great Britain under a business name (TAPA) and which does not consist exclusively of the surnames of all of the partners, why are the partners so reluctant to comply with the The Business Names Act 1985 and not publish their names?

3) Given that TAPA by definition has no separate legal personality...

i) When an individual or company instruct TAPA, who exactly are they entering into a contract with?

ii) How can a third party conduct due-diligence if the partners are unknown?

iii) Bring legal proceedings for e.g. breach of contract if the partners are unknown?

These are the facts and you are welcome to get in touch to verify. The short of the long is I took up the TAPA service back in 2009 on a years contract at £8 per month. I hadnt been having any nusiance calls and I normally deal with these calls politely but I was concerned about some publicity around scammers trying to telephone sell and when you declined they then invoice you anyway - hence I joined TAPA. Big mistake!
Lo and behold, TAPA are doing exactly what they claimed to be protecting my business from.
The initial 12 month agreement was completed in full on 22nd February 2010 and we paid a further 6 months on a rolling month to month basis, in total 18 months of payment. We provided 30 days-notice in writing (but the ltter was 1st class and not registered) that we wished to end our service as of 20th September 2010, our final payment having been made on the 20th August 2010 by standing order. As per their T&C’s we cancelled our standing order. I really didn't think that a lousy £8 a month subscription really warranted a detailed review of their 2 page contract, particularly as the contract was for 12 months and we had subscribed and paid for a full 18 months! Nevertheless, TAPA then telephone me months later with a belligerent and very unproffesional approach claiming I owed them £136 and I had better pay or else! I gave them the facts and made it very clear that I had indeed cancelled their service and I no longer wished to continue.
It is now early April 2013 and since late 2010 we have harrasement calls from TAPA and they are now trying to claim a total of 29 months of premiums plus interests and costs! A total of some £345 punds plus more costs. So CAVEAT EMPTOR folks - buyer beware!! Whatever this operation is, whoever the bloggers are on here, for or against, BEWARE the small business. There is something very wrong here and I will get to the bottom of this; where there is smoke, there is fire!
For the record, we are taking legal action and we will be seeking damages. My name is Kurt Finch of NOMAD Sea Kayaking. You are very welcome to get in touch to verify.

Hi, please have a read on my entry and get in touch to verify. I have all the documentation, dates, times, names the lot and I am persuing this.

Philip Medhurst, Head of Client Services,TAPA
Hello Philip, fancy meeting you here after your your six lengthy emails today, two of which have different dates! Trying to convince me to hand over £345 of my money by 3pm today! Oh and thank you for the extension to tomorrow at 9am, very kind of you. Clearly, judging by the huge amount of content online about your operation and dubious trading methods, there is something very strange going on....and I will get to the bottom of it.

Hi, please see my experience with TAPA and Philip Medhurst. Dont touch TAPA and dont hand over any details and report them to trading standards ASAP. Please get in touch to verify any details.

I've had a long conversation with Action Fraud and they are investigating, awaiting a call tomorrow early afternoon so I hope to update again.

I paid TAPA by standing order for 18 months so they do take payments in other forms.

Kurt I wish you luck but if you're unable to dismiss any cold caller with a summary FO and ignore all further calls from that number you've got an uphill struggle ahead of you. You could pay a parrot to say it for you for £8 PCM and have a lot more fun.

Likewise if you couldn't see that TAPA is a scam when the warnings are all over the web and have been for years and are unable to read a contract... should you be in business? But there you go, lesson learned. Dodgy call? Charity? Some other bollocks? Just hang up. It's your phone, you control it, not it you.

Contact the Insolvency Service (the links are further back) and give them all the information you have, they have files on all the support publishers and the TAPA protection racket scam. You may find that Medhurst is Hunt; nothing TAPA state is true unless it's ripped off another site.

If you pay them you are supporting crime. Lodge a harassment report with www.actionfraud.police.uk and ask for a crime number. Keep any further mail unopened for prints. Good luck.

I will be reporting tAPA to my Trading Standards bright and early tomorrow morning. Thanks for all the helpful bits of info from everyone.

Lizzie died of cancer, Nan said, so won't respond. But Nan may recall some details. She loves baiting and exposing the scam artists for the cretins they are as well.

Curiously enough the TAPA VAT number is genuine. What they do with the VAT receipts is another matter... contact HMRC if you paid them and see what they say. They hate VAT scammers. Further back you'll see how few complaints it takes to the ASA about TAPA's various dodgy sites for them to investigate.

What's TAPA's sort code and account number, Kurt?

Ooouch that hurt.......but true! Lesson learnt and I just wasnt aware of TAPA as a scammer even though a simple search this evening brought up a huge amount of information. Yep, I think a big FO is forthcoming and thank you for your response and advise, I'll let you know if anything interesting comes out of this. Keep up the threads as they are a life saver to anyone being screwed over. Thanks.

Hi, as you may have realised from reading back on this thread, LizzieM was fighting cancer at the time she was posting on here.  Phil142, another poster, had contact with her outside this forum and it stopped, so we assume the cancer won.  I think that her discussions with Paypal back in 2011 led to TAPA accepting other forms of payment, but cannot be sure.  One thing with your DDs, you have hard proof of payment.

I haven't checked this site for quite a while now. I can confirm however that I never did hear from Lizzie again. Initially I hoped that it was a temporary gap (perhaps an emergency hospital stay) but it is now over a year since I last heard from her.

This is the usual TAPA scam Comedy of Errors :-) The TAPA stooges are unable to substantiate their claims about their opponents with evidence or hard data such as a court case proving fraud and criminality so are falling back on ineffectual logical fallacies. This site is a real pain for criminals and is therefore trashed and discredited at every opportunity, albeit ineffectually.

Simister's TAPA scam protection racket is in pain - the scam's income stream is threatened so his posts are increasingly emotional. Every exposed scam requires a quota of 'fence-sitters' to attempt to sway those who see through the scam into believing that the scam it is not as criminal as it actually is. Posts like Phil's and ?'s are designed to do just that and question the validity of hard data and factual evidence.

Enjoy the Comedy of Errors while it lasts :-) It is a play as old as human criminality, the only thing that changes are the actors. As long as human stupidity exists, criminals' scams will exist. You can legislate against the latter but not the former ;-)