The zero percent interest that my bank doesn't do! Would give me more breathing space financially.

Not sure if posting in the correct category. My issue is that first time in my life I have decided to apply for a credit card. A good friend of mine recommended MBNA as she has a very good experience with them. Turns out for some mysterious reason that MBNA thinks I do not qualify for their credit card. I never checked my credit score and don't really wanna do it. Here's my history in a nutshell: Living in London for 15 years, residency status, EU national. NEVER applied for a credit card in my life before Banking with Santander ever since opening my first account in England in 2005 4 bank account with my bank, cash card, current account with a visa debit card, savings account and credit card. Not much money in the first 3 accounts currently but never used overdraft, only once or twice my current account went into unarranged overdraft but only lasted a few days before my wages arrived into my account to balance it. Been using my Santander credit card but always repayed the money in one payment. Currently I do have a small amount on it that I have not paid back yet, but I used that amount only 1 week ago so no repayments or anything else due on it yet. Living as a private tenant, 18 months at my current address, 2 years at previous address Part time employed for 7 years, been self employed before for 2 years, all taxes, NI, etc been always paid without delay. Annual income 15K. Recently my hours had been permanently reduced by my employer and I am only receiving pay per hour for my work, about 15 hours per week at the moment. Still in employment and job hunting, of course. Also the most interesting thing is that time to time I am being spammed by other credit card companies such as American Express and etc by post, sending me their credit cards even though I don't even know where they got my details from as I have never applied. When Santander gave me a credit card, I didn't apply for it, they asked me in the branch at the counter if I'd like one, I said 'yes', and they handed me the card. If anyone got any tips or ideas what might be the issue, it'd be very helpful.... Oh, and I am not on the electoral roll register - if that counts, that's literally the only thing I can think of what might be the issue.

Nope! They live somewhere not too far as they just walk here every time. Been googleing the issue, so far have found bits of info that's not too extensive but said they do have the right to collect the football from our property. Last year my housemate's bike got nicked from our garden, it was just lifted out from garden onto the street by someone/some ppl over the fence. These kids always say they were just trying to fetch their football back but I only have seen the actual football in the boy's hand who climed in only on 2 occassions and not the other times, I do catch them and see them climbing through our fence often and often they say their football landed in our garden but it's not there however about 10mins later when they think we're not watching, we see them climbing in anyway. Questionable just what's the real reason for them playing here when the football often gets lost on someone else's property...? My parents' next door neighbour is a proper gypsy family, their kids were doing the same to us and to the other neighbours to use the opportunity by entering your property to check out what's worth nicking. They always use the younger kids for this as they can seem less suspicious, because of their young age noone would think they are actually helping the older ones to steal!

There is this bunch of local kids around the ages of 6-7 years, definitely not more than 8 years playing very very noisy football right next to our house. All sorts of swearwords flying around between themselves as they play and they kicking the football into big metal garage doors (they use that as the goal). It is a huge bang at every 'goal' (every minute) and they do this for about 2 hours on most evenings from 7pm till 9pm and on weekends in good weather also on bank holidays and any other school holiday times when they go on for even 5 or 6 hours. It is insane! The position of our house is on a corner where 2 streets meet and these metal garage doors are located at the end of our garden. The houses of other residents located past these garage doors and I guess that is enough distance for them not having to 'enjoy' the racket these boys make. As far as I'm aware kids of that age are not even supposed to be let out from home without adult supervision. Been in touch with police on the 101 phone number. First time 3 months ago they were very helpful, they asked a lot of details and came out in 1 hour to deal with the kids. The boys obviously tried to do a runner but I think the police did manage to speak to 1 or 2 of them.... The kids started coming here again a few weeks ago and now their numbers are growing (last night 6 of them) and in line with that the number of loud bangs we have to suffer grows too as well as the general kids' shouting noise. They play on the road and there are garage doors on either side of the road so they just kicking the football around right on the road and kicking it into these metal doors on either side. This is a quiet residential area with not much traffic - moreover there is a park 5 minutes from here! The football obviously often lands in our garden (at least 3 times a week) and they just climb up our fence from the street, sometimes by pulling to the fence an object they find nearby as people do flytip on this particular street corner and the kids just come into our garden to look for their football. The football also goes into other people's sheds that is next to these garages and those only got wooden doors with a padlock locking it down but with large enough gaps under and above. These belong to residents in other streets nearby. The kids do climb in there too to retrieve the ball and been causing more than a little damage to the some of these shed doors. Last night I got home from work at 8pm only to find that 1 of these boys is ramaging around in our garden whilst the other boy is sitting on the top of our fence giving him directions which way to look for the football. I've obviously told them off as this is not the first time nor the second. I've then called the police on 101 again. I got an answer from the officer that 'what exactly do you expect from the police to do about little boys playing football?' So not so helpful this time.... Tried to explain the case of trespassing and how much of a nuisance they are but the officer just shrugged me off and hung up. Have contacted my local council 3 months ago with this issue but they said it's not in their authority to act (I asked if they could put up here a No Ball Play Area sign) because it is a normal residential area and not a council housing. I know that reading this might sound like I'm just some grumpy, old hag who just doesn't like kids but that is totally not the case at all. In fact for a few weeks after the police talked to them, the kids only came here 1-2 times a week and did not kick the ball into the metal doors and that was absolutely fine. Just wondering that if this is not the council's authority to deal with and neither does the police care then where shall we turn to change the current situation? Social services....? By the way we did talk to these boys a lot before on a friendly way to convince them that it's not safe to play football on the road like this and please don't kick the metal doors with the ball but obviously they don't give a flying monkeys....They claim but it might as well just be a lie that their parents don't allow them to play football in the park because they don't think it's safe.... Park only 5mins walk from here!!!

Posting this in attempt to try to help my friend who was quite irresponsible with her credit cards. I think they are all with different banks and she says no way for these to be combined into one or for her to get a loan (bad credit rating) to pay them off. £1000 overdraft on each card so £3000 in total plus monthly interest rates piling up on top of each sum plus I think there are some late payment fees too or something. She only can make small payments (meeting the monthly minimum) but it is going on for her for almost 3 years now and because of the interest rates piling up on top of the rest each month, she can't see the light at the end of the tunnel and I am worried for her because of this. Her health is affected as well as her general mood. I am noticing psychological effects too, she is becoming short tempered with her nearest and dearest (including me as best friend) which is really not like her. She's got no money for buying presents for family or anyone else, no holidays, nor for new items of clothing or to afford more than 2 drinks somewhere out once or max twice a month and that's pretty much the only time she spends out of her home and workplace, apart from when buying groceries. She's basically got no life because no money and the paying off seems to be taking painfully long. I know she has some sort of depression symptoms too. The situation is very stressful for her and she cries often, she doesn't tell me but I know this. Are there any options/solutions to make paying off these overdrafts more manageable? Even if she could put paying off 1 of the cards on hold would be helpful...? Any hacks/tricks are welcome! She's got a job working with kids on a self employed basis and paying her NI and taxes but she's not being left with much at all after paying rent, bills (houseshare with others) and travel expenses. Does a bit of paid extra work in childcare but it's only enough to barely keep her head above the water. In some weeks when the extra childcare not needed, she's got no money for food.

Did you just basically call me a parasite then.... How easy to be condescending, much easier than provide a helpful/insightful answer or just don't post your rant on a forum that is supposed to be helping ppl not getting ripped off! My housemates are all english guys from places outside of London so if you wanna be swearing and having a go at someone, maybe start with them. How am I a strain on the system, am employed, paying my taxes, got NI nr, don't work for cash in hand and pay self employed tax on any extra income I earn besides of employment, never used the benefits system and not planning my life to be relying on that anytime soon. I can't take days off for sickness or any other reasons otherwise the ppl I work for in both jobs would just let me down gently. I have all my family in my home country and I can only rely on myself here. I am saving money in the bank, working 2 part time jobs over 6 days a week to be able to go into higher education some time while my housemates sit around every evening and all weekend drinking their brains away and blarring music all night till the morning. I am trying to find somewhere else to live. Your rant contributes less to answering my question than any other replies I've got on here before. You looking for violent individuals, I'll happily give you my address, drop by any given weekend and observe for yourself what my housemates get up to under the name of 'partying'. I am not violent whatsoever and would never lay a finger on anyone. I'm only human with normal human emotions, I get annoyed when I'm being singled out to be ripped off just because I'm the only one in the house who's name the council got hold of. So if I gave the council all of my housemates names and details, I'd be doing the right thing, right???

I have an electoral roll official guy turning up on my doorstep, asking to update/provide my details for the electoral roll register. He always picks a sunday evening for this which is very wierd, has he not got a life or is he getting a percentage out of it....? Hahaha. i live with other ppl in a shared house and he doesn't care that nobody else in my house is registered because they are refusing to provide their details. A few years ago when this electoral roll bullsh.. started, I was living at this same address with a different set of ppl and (without my permission) annoyingly those guys provided my details to that female official who came to register the ppl at this address. At that time I happened to just got home while they were in the middle of it and I was 'threatened' by this female official (if we can call it that...) that if I don't provide my full and truthful details, I'll get a fine of up to 5000 pounds. This happened 2 years ago. Last year however I did not fill in a new form. In May i moved out from here. After living somewhere else for 5 months, I ended up back at this same address and living here since. Funnily I'm due to move out again before the end of the year, got landlord's (unofficial) notice (as I have no signed tenancy contract - and nobody else does). So I'm being informed that if I don't provide my details again on the form the official left here for me today, I will be fined up to 5000 GBP. My housemates just keep telling him that they do not live here and he just leaves it at that even though it's blatantly obvious that they do live here. Last year I did not update my details on the electoral roll and I did not receive a fine whatsoever (probably that is due to moving so frequently). I am not trying to dodge anything or be running from anything, it just happens that I am unlucky with the houseshares where I chose to live. I am really not happy about having my details on government databases and God knows where else where they sell my data to. I am not a british national and couldn't care less about voting and really don't think I will ever get to the financial stage to apply for a mortgage so for these reasons I don't want to fill in the form again. Basically I am looking for a legit way out of this constant, nagging, pain in the backside electoral roll bullsh.. Such an annoyance! The official brought a form again today (sunday) with my name and current address on it and said to my housemates that if I do not fill in and send it within 7 days, I'll get a 5000 GBP fine! Really makes me feel wanting to slap him across the face, lucky it wasn't me he said this to!

I am wondering what happens if i report my ex-boyfriend's mobile phone stolen to the police? The phone and monthly direct debit for it is on my name on my bank account. He has a recent criminal past and therefore he said he cannot have his own bank account, ID, passport or any possessions. He obviously did not pay me the monthly fees, only gave me the first month's charge that was charged to me after using phone for 7 days. He lived with me altogether for 3 months and at this point he was still with me. 3 weeks after he got the phone we fell out with each other and he moved out, said he'll stay with his sister for a while but in reality he moved to his ex-gf and he left me high and dry with his phone bills piled up over the following few weeks to £97.65. This amount is made up of another month's monthly charge plus 47 GBP in call charges that he ran up (not with me!). When I found out about this I asked the network to put on a barring on his outgoing calls and txts and to hold any payments to be taken from my account as I'm in the process of chasing up payments from him first. When i confronted him about the situation, he admitted being back under his ex's roof but kept saying he wants to come back to me and he has his financials too tangled up with his ex so he's trying to sort that out. Since then i was always asking him to pay the phone bills or give phone back to take the contract off my name but he did not do so, just kept making promises and kept saying he wants to keep seeing me, stay for the weekend with me, go on a day trip with me, etc. I met him a few times after he moved from me but he never gave me any money and as usual whenever I spent time with him, I always ended up spending my money on him mainly for food and alcohol. He has a job and his wages are going into his ex-gf's bank account, this was unknown to me until a few days ago i found at my place one of his payslips from this year january that he must have accidentally left behind when taking his stuff from me. His address on it is the ex-gf's address. He might have changed this to his parents' address by now, I wouldn't know that and i have no info what that address is. He is now in the clear in terms of being able to get a bank account and passport for himself, unless he did something stupid again after he moved out from me but that as well I wouldn't know about. He was a very lousy, lazy and expensive boyfriend to have and I never had intention spending money on him at all but he always found a way with me. He was also drinking a lot and intimidating my housemates for no good reason. He left me out of pocket quite a bit but i have no actual proof of any of that. He owes money even to this ex-gf for bail money, he owes money to his own parents for a lot of unpaid fines and charges from before when he lived with them and had a car on his name on their address (before going into prison). Since am trying to chase up phone from him and bill payments, i have been contacting him on whatsapp mainly. Lately I have been refusing to 'see him to try to work things out between us' and told him he has to cough up money that he owes me. Then this week he started telling me to eff off when i asked him to pay up so i called the network and told them the issue, they advised to blacklist his nr and phone IMEI nr too, they also told me it is basically theft because he has refused to give phone back. Network then sent me a new sim card and I was able to transfer his phone's phone number onto this new sim card so now he only got the handset. Whatsapp and wifi was still working on his phone until I took over his phone nr so i messaged him last chance to pay up or give phone back. Then i was getting an answer that am sure his ex-gf was typing to me, threatening me with pressing harassment charges (would not stand on strong legs at all!) and was making contradicting claims that the phone was a gift (which it was not, in the general sense anyway but might be in the legal terms) then was saying the phone isn't his phone then said they'll let me know when they'll arrange the phone to be dropped off to me. I was asking for being a bit more specific but obviously nothing more was specified to give a time and date even just approximately. I also asked what form of communication is he gonna use to notify me about phone drop off coz his phone nr will stop working in a few days due to unpaid phone bills. No answer of course. I did keep all these messages when they started bringing up the harassment accusation but i got no proof of previous messages about just how many times he has been asking to see me and spend time with me but I have got some more txt messages from the past few weeks when i asked him for phone back and bill payments. This week i have paid off his phone bills because the network was about to cancel the service and i would've been left with a bad credit to my name. He still wasn't agreeing to make a payment of any sort. He (or his ex-gf...) was requesting me to give them the phone's PUK code but obviously am not an idiot! So all what he's got now is the handset (newly bought at end of March this year, Motorola). I am wondering if he can still use wifi or phone at all or getting into his contact list, txt messages or photos on there and be still walking away laughing with the handset with a different but same network sim card? Could he just get a new sim card on the same network and still use the phone? Can he have it unlocked and use with any sim card? What happens if i report phone stolen to the police? Should I also tell them it is my ex-boyfriend who last had the phone? I want justice to be done and wouldn't bat an eyelash even if he gets nicked for it! But i also don't want to give grounds to him/them for starting some kinda 'slander' or 'false accusation' charges against me! Can i legally do anything about chasing up payments for his living expenses while he lived with me or for the mobile bill he ran up and i paid for or maybe for a compensation for the handset as well?

Normally I would find it funny.... Surely noone would get suspicious who's responsible for the cat 'disappearing'.... I do like cats but not in my home thanks! Would never hurt a pet, it's not their fault!

Could I pull out from moving there without losing my money? On another forum, someone says I could but the landlord would get to keep half of what's been paid or at least the costs of the cleaning, etc additional costs that occured due to my complaint. I can justify this last one for cleaning costs but not to keeping half or more of my money. Also I am not sure what is happening now if it is being cleaned or not as I got no reply from LL. Shall I also email him?

The landlord knew about the cat all along. Yesterday when I was there checking the new room, the landlord walked through the front door within 10 minutes after my arrival, said brief hi to me and quickly went upstairs with some other people, as apparently the boiler needs fixing too and they have no hot water in the house at the moment. The cat was standing on the stairs and landlord just walked past it. By the way, since the day I have made full payment to him for deposit and rent upfront, he is not responding to my communications, including when I asked him to txt me a msg to confirm receiving my money. The bank said it'll take 2 hours to appear on his account but it took him hours to finally reply. Maybe some ppl reading all this now think that I am a whining, annoying kinda person but I can assure you that I am not. My current landlord would be more than happy if I stayed in my current place. So it's not like I keep ringing the landlord's phone every 5mins with something to complain about. It's just that it's a new place and if it would be exactly in the same condition as it was when I viewed it, then I wouldn't need to be writing here. So for example, when I signed the contract in front of this new landlord and he gave me the keys, I said to him that is it ok if I go to the room now because I need to check how my stuff will fit in. He said, yes ok but we agreed you are only moving in your stuff on Sat, to which I nodded and it's true. No probs with that. Before I left him, he said, the mum and daughter in the house have got a lot of stuff and they are trying to shift some of it to somewhere else to free some space so there might will be 1 or 2 boxes of stuff around in the house. I said to him, as long as I can take measurement in my new room with a tape measurer along walls, between wall and wardrobe, etc. it's fine with me. But when I got there the same evening, on Wed this week, my new room was absolutely flooded with boxes of stuff, up to the ceiling and covering up every piece of furniture that if you didn't know there was a wardrobe, you couldn't see it! Now in my dictionary, there is a difference between '1 or 2 boxes will be there' and 'your room is flooded with stuff, don't waste your time going there'. Hope everyone gets the full picture now. So finally yesterday evening I could actually take the measurements I needed and that's when the stink hit me for the first time together with seeing cat fur on sofa, bed, etc. Did call landlord on Wed evening about why he couldn't tell me not to go there wasting my time, to which he replied that he did tell me there are boxes.... I asked to notify me when I can come to take the measurements. He never did, I just went there yesterday. This morning I sent him the following txt msg: 'Good Morning! I am txting you to say that I haven't been aware of a cat living in the house until yesterday evening! I also found yesterday that now there is an unbearable smell of cat wee in my new room and cat fur covers all the furniture, these hasn't been occuring at the time of my viewing. Can you please make sure for all traces of cat fur and cat smell (!!!) to be gone, thanks. I have cancelled my move in for today to allow sufficient time for this to be carried out and I will be awaiting You to notify me when the room is clean and free of pet odour. Also one of the parents where I work is highly allergic to cats so it would've been only fair to indicate this issue to me prior to signing the lease!' Yes I am angry but who wouldn't be? Last sentence is not made up about someone being cat allergic in the family for whom I work for. I am not sure if this will become an issue or not with the family but in case if it does, I wanted this new landlord to be aware of it.

I wouldn't stay up til 2am to write my story here if the smell wasn't THAT horrible!

Hello All! I really wish if I wouldn't need to keep coming back here because of rogue landlords!!! So the brief story is, I am due to move out from my current place and found this nice, clean, new room in a house only 2 streets away, so hiring a man&van won't break the bank but the room is quite pricey for the area - was in hope to get quality for my money. Everything was nice, clean and fresh smelling when I viewed the room and property last weekend. I was shown around by the tenant who has the cat but she didn't say a thing of course and as I didn't see obvious signs (nor smells) of a pet, I didn't ask if there were any pets as in my experience people always tell about this sort of thing upfront. I signed contract this Wed 19th of Sept 2012 and paid 1 month's rent upfront and 1 month's rent worth of deposit and got keys handed to me. Says in my contract that besides of other rules, I am not allowed to keep pets so it gave me the impression the same rule applies to everyone else in the same property. I went round there tonight just to check how my stuff gonna fit in the new room as I am due to move in tomorrow or the latest on the day after. Only now I found out about a cat being kept in the house! The cat belongs to a mum and daughter (daughter is about 18-20) who rent another room upstairs. Just now when I was there, the cat was in my new room, having a nap on the double bed but the 2-seater sofa in the room was also covered in cat fur, and there was this reeking stink of ('scuse the language), cat p*ss as it's a male cat and as we all know, they 'mark' their territory around - in this case in my new room!!! Do I just have to put up with this now??? I am not allergic to cats but the landlord didn't know that before I paid for the room so I might as well could be. I am also outraged by how stinky my new room is now! I'm afraid this smell will remain and airing the room or using air freshener not gonna be much help as the smell gone into all the furniture. I feel depressed and ripped off..... The other problem is that my job is to work for a family looking after their kids where one of the parents is actually allergic to cats. Now I'm also worried, that just by living under the same roof with a cat, it will leave enough traces on my clothes, hands, handbags, etc to be enough to trigger the allergic reaction, which would very likely upset the parents when they realize it's me. Can anyone advise what is the best thing to do now and if I have any legal rights to resolve this? I feel like I should be getting a discount on the rent at the least! I will be moving out from there ASAP as the smell is churning my stomach, feeling sick already having to move in there! Thanks for any help!

Lost my passport in Dec 2011 just when I was supposed to pack my bags the night before my Christmas flight that was booked with Opodo. Cut a long story short, obviously I couldn`t make it to the flight. That was costing me 170 GBP but the way back was ok so it`s only this 170 pounds I`m worried about. I do know I cannot expect all of it back but had been informed by someone else (an airport customer services person or something), that it`ll be only the taxes part of the money that I actually can get back which won`t be a lot. I followed it up, but everyone just make note: IN THE FIRST ROUND OF EXCHANGING EMAILS, OPODO SAID THEY ARE NOT GIVING ANY MONEY BACK BECAUSE OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS BLABLABLA BUT WHEN I WROTE BACK AGAIN THAT I KNOW MY RIGHTS THAT THEY HAVE TO GIVE THE TAXES BACK, THEY WROTE ANOTHER EMAIL ADMITTING HAVING TO PAY BACK THE TAXES EVEN THOUGH IT WAS MY FAULT TO MISS THE FLIGHT. Why I`m writing all this here is because I think they are still trying to take me round the bend and wanting to charge 25 GBP for admin fee for processing my refund request if I wish to go ahead with it, whereas all these taxes that they need to pay me back only come to a total of 48 GBP. Surely they can`t charge such a hefty fee on a small refund like that, am I right???

No its definitely not a business deal!