Trading Standards Offices are Useless

Trading standards offices are useless. That's my conclusion as I finished speaking to a local office in Harrow after reporting an obvious scam to them. The scam in question, an outfit calling themselves MoreThan Traffic, set up a website which promised unlikely amounts of web traffic to your website. All they wanted was 15% of what YOU earned after 6 months, and they wouldn't take a penny from you upfront.

But, er, they did want about £100 from you upfront for setting it up.

I phoned up Haroow Trading Standards, which is close to where the scamsters'offices were in Station Road, but trading standards offices are useless, and true to form they said that they could do nothing about it. They advised me that until lots of people complained about them they could not act.

Isn't it about time we did away with the Trading Standards system in the UK completely? We sould get in place something like the Federal Trade Commission in the US. The FTC has real teeth, and has powers similar to the police. Or perhaps trading standards offices are useless because the government don't actually mind these scams operating as long as they pay their taxes into Treasury coffers.