Cycling UK Forum

I got a cold call purporting to be from Cycling UK yesterday (Sunday !),I'm afraid it got my cold call immediate hang up treatment.Has anyone else had one of these ? It was from a Plymouth STD code.
Edit, Apologies, I meant to post this in CUK topics, I don't know how to move it there.

Yes I got one on Thursday, also from a Plymouth / 01752 STD code. It was about gift-aiding my Cycling UK membership.

backnotes wrote:Yes I got one on Thursday, also from a Plymouth / 01752 STD code. It was about gift-aiding my Cycling UK membership.

Did it involve giving any bank details ? It seems a weird way to go about it, normally there's a box to tick on membership forms for that sort of thing. I hate cold callers, I've unplugged my landline
because of them.

If its genuine then it would add an extra £7 or more to your subs at no cost to you. I would have thought that was worth a phone call. I think I remember doing something about Gift Aid, but can't remember for sure. If not I would be happy to be prompted by a phone.

I wonder how a cold call is defined. Surely most calls to tradesmen, shops, etc are cold calls. If your golf club rings you to say that the beer is free on Friday, is that a cold call to be ignored?

Another reason why I'm glad I didn't renew my membership. Looks like they are using a call centre to contact members. What's the chances of your personal information being used for other purposes.
And I don't like gift aid. It only works if you are a UK tax payer. If your income falls below the personal allowance then you don't pay tax and if you gift aid your membership the tax man can ask you to pay for it. And why does gift aid cost more than a standard admission for places like the NT. I just don't get it. How does that work? Does one then have to claim the difference back from HMRC? It's just not worth the aggravation. You could always send the Gunnislake sailor around to sort them out.

Sadly (or maybe fortunately) I never got as far as that, because the train I was on went into the tunnel outside Liverpool St and we were cut off....

I just Googled the number that called me (01752 926296) and it appears to be an outfit called QTS Fundraising who do subcontracted outbound calling on behalf of charities. Several well-known charities are mentioned on their website http://qtsfundraising.co.uk/charities/ (though not Cycling UK), and trying to get people to Gift Aid their charity memberships seems to be one of the things they are famous for. I still think of myself as being a "member" of Cycling UK, so if they call back and start calling me a "supporter" as per their website, I may find I have suddenly gone into a tunnel again!

Others appear to have called the charities mentioned by the firm to check them out and have been told they are legit. So I think QTS Fundraising will have been subcontracted by Cycling UK to chase up naughty people like me who haven't Gift-Aided their memberships (supporterships?) yet. If you want to be 100% sure, though, best check it out with "Supportership" Services at Cycling UK?

Thanks backnotes, excellent research, much obliged.

Simple! If you never gift-aided a subscription or a donation in the first place, why would you want to now? After all, the option is always on the donation forms even the charity raffle tickets that come unsolicited through the post!