Thanks for the reply. So, out of the eleven that are not enforceable- have they continued to chase you or have they backed off. Did you inform them that what they sent was unenforceable or do you just sit back and wait once you know? Sorry if that sounds nosey, its just that when mine come back (hopefully unenforceable) I want some idea of what follows.

Well, just to give a bit of support, I totally see where you are coming from. I have a son who for similar reasons has had to come and live with me and my partner. He is trying to find work at the moment but in the meantime we try to help. But there is no doubt that there is an additional drain on the household income. Now on the other hand my sister also has a son. She and her husband are divorced. Her son has a girlfriend and he lives with her parents. They BOTH claim benefit, he says he is renting at her parents address, she says she is renting at his dads address so they cheat the system and both get rent paid. It really does make me sick and I really understand your argument. My son cant get any benefit because he is living under my roof.

Just wondering, after reading these forums for a while what percentage of CCA,s turn out to be unenforceable. I know no one will have a definitive answer but there are so many posters acting on advice to ask for the CCA, myself included. I have 6 I am waiting for, all over 12 days and one over the 12 plus 30. I just wondered if there are thousands of us all withholding payments they must be in sheer panic now, or, is it the rule that most turn out to be enforceable?

I could be wrong on this but as the packet origonally came from the USA I think the limit is £18 you can import without duty. It dosnt matter that it came via Germany and the cost is taken by customs as being whatever the sender has written. Its also not a case of Royal Mail 'interfereing with mail' as they are only folowing the law as it stands with Customs and Excise. This is not calssed as interfering with mail, they are not allowed to pass it on to you till you pay the duty.

The charge you have for customs is nothing to do with Royal Mail. The customs and excise department put that charge on when they do the checks. They then pass the item to Royal Mail and they in turn have to collect the payment and return it to customs. Thats where the Royal Mail admin charge comes in. The charge is high for the amount of work Royal Mail have to do but I have seen parcels come into the office where the custome duty is only a pound or so but Royal Mail are not allowed to pass it to the customer without payment as they are carefully monitored and have to send the money. Its just your luck with customs, some items are checked, some are not. But it is them that put the charge on, once its there Royal Mail cant delete it.

Thanks Joa. We have thought long and hard about it but there dosnt seem to be any option. We have a morgage and secured loan on it (we should NEVER have taken the loan out but hindsight is a wonderful thing and I hadnt found this site then!) The payments are crippling us every month and we have also got other debts and people threatening to put charges on the house and force us to sell. At the moment we are struggling to make every payment on the house and have had a repossession hearing , the outcome was a suspeded order as long as we keep paying. The thing is that if we sold and then rented we would be about 300 a month better off. I really dont want to let the house go but cant see an alternative. Also, I divorced my ex and now live with a new partner who is 11 years younger than me so the morgage has only been running 7 years and so will be round our necks till Im nearly 70. I cant see a way round this without selling, not if we are ever to have any quality of life again.

Thank you JOA. At the moment it wouldny apply but I was just wondering what would happen in the future. Our house is for sale so we can get rid of the morgage and secured loan which are crippling us. We will be able to rent somewhere decent and still be better off each month. We have been looking at some of the new build apartments in the area and they are fantastic. What worries me is that in 10 years when I reach retirement age we will be managing on other halfs wage. (He is younger than me by 11 years so will be working after me although I hope to be able to carry on working for as lond as poss) My brother is disabled and unable to work and lost his home 8 months ago. He has found a place to rent but because he is on benefits the place is the pits but all he can afford. I guess what Im really asking is. When the time comes where the rent may be unmanagable on our income and we apply for benefit could they turn round and say 'you can rent cheaper than that so find somewhere else' or, do they take it that as you have been renting long term and that is your home you can expect to stay put. We have been looking at the new build because if we rent a private house we may have to move on in a few years if they want to sell or use the property themselves. If we go into purpose built new flats then hopefully we could put down roots long term. I just dont want to find myself having to leave when our incone drops at retirement.

BQ dont deliver direct from store on the kitchens you order. They only do that if you have what they call the 'takeaway kitchen' which they hold in stock in store. Kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms supplied by BQ have always been delivered direct by the manufacturer. (Unless things have changed in the last couple of years) They are still responsible, you paid them so your contract is with them even though they are not delivering direct. You should write to the call centre but also the store manager and BQ head office. If you can elaborate a bit more as to the 'stress' and whats caused it I may be able to advise better.

Just a quick question. If you have to sell your house then you dont qualify for council help and so have to, or choose to, rent from a private landlord. The rent is around 550 and so affordably whilst working but what happens when you retire and your income drops rapidly. Are you going to find yourself homeless or would you be able to get help?

Think I can shed a bit of light here for you. Without wanting to say who I worked for cos I dont want to be recognised I can say that I dealt with BQ on a daily basis through my job. On occasions I worked at the BQ call centre as well and with peole who were on a special team put together by BQ to deal with escalated complaints. This is a sticky one because it depends on the current documentaion BQ are giving out when you order a kitchen. Our company used to do the deliveries and lias with the customer on BQs behalf so if there were any delays/delivery failures etc the customer would ring us not BQ. If they rang the store they were given our number and told to call us. In other words they washed thier hands of the problem. However I dont know what the current home delivery situation is with BQ. What I do know though is that they dont like getting complaints. Every complaint that is put in writing has to be put on a system which flags it up at thier head officein Eastleigh. each store is monitored carefully for these complaints and it reflects badly on them. My advice to you wouldbe to write to the store manager, be clear about your complaint and if you are asking for compensation make sure you put the ammount you expect. Dont just say you want compensation, say exactly how much and why. Also send a copy of your letterto head office and make sure that the store manager knows you are doing this. It would help if you could give me a bit more detail before you write as to why you are complaining, I may be able to help more.

I have had the same problem. I paid in HMV for an item on Dec 22nd and it was supposed to be delivered to my home address. After making 3 calls during the last 2 weeks trying to find out where it has got to I was yesterday informed that it had not been paid for and so was on hold. I explained that I paid by chip and pin on the 22nd Dec but was told that they dont try to take the money until the moment of despatch and that when they tried the payment was declined!!

Surely, if the OP has proof of the item being sent that is all a judge will need. The sellers liability ended there and Royal Mail took over. This is not correct, look at this from another point of view. If you ordered something and it didnt arrive would you be happy if the seller or company just said 'Oh well, not my problem, I posted it' Sending by a recorded means is for the sellers protection not the buyers. However as an ex Royal Mail employee I can say that it is becoming quite common with ebay claim non delivery and do a chargeback from Paypal. The system is wide open to abuse and for this reason anyone selling on ebay should cover thier backs. Royal Mail are wise to this because everyone who tries to cheat the seller also results in a 'lost item' claim for them. If I were you I would have a good look at your buyers ebay record. If he makes a habit of doing ths then Royal Mail may have a record of claims on his address. You could also check his feedback to see if this is hapening to his other sellers and see if there is a pattern. However there is also the fact that he may just be genuine and noy have his item, you have no proof that he has.

Wow. I thought I had a an issue with the Abbey but after reading that I dont think I do!!!! Dosnt it get you mad, all these people who are supposedly 'trained' to do a job. All hiding behind that old line 'the system'. No one will ever stand up and take responsibility and we, the customer, to whom they owe thier jobs just get shoved to one side. I wish you luck, get it sorted then throw the book at them. (Not your chequebook! )

If you have proof of payment then it should be enough for them. The thing is that they may say that even though you were paying it was not the correct amount. This happened to my partner. He didnt pay through the CSA but had kept all his bank slips showing payments to her account. It was a long tedious process as they never seem to know which dept is dealing with you but the upshot of it was that he disputed he owed the money and sent them all the reciepts. They finally came to the conclusion that he had underpaid £140 at some stage of the previous 7 years. He had to pay it again directly to the csa. Strangly enough his ex didnt get a pennt of that £140, nor did she dispute that she had always been paid. Do you normally make payments through the CSA? Why have they only just got in touch about arrears from over 10 years ago? In our case it was because his ex had started to claim a benefit and so the csa had to be involved even though neither of them wanted to involve them. They had an agreement which worked perfectly for years for both of them. The only good thing was that they told him he was paying too much a month from his current wage. getting it sorted was a nightmare. Hope it goes well for you.

They cant be everywhere, as lawbunny says you have to accept there is risk when you choose to go out in bad weather. The council knew it was icy, but then again, so did you so the choice to go out in it was your own.

I know from past experience that the Royal Mail will need to see some proof the the items were damaged. They also now want to see the packaging. What were the items and how did you pack them?

Have you contacted a doctor as this is vital if you are going to claim against the council

Thanks as usual Spamheed. We wont be going down the full and final route as we dont have the cash to do it yet but will take your advice when the time comes. I wondered if the letter was an indication they dont have the paperwork. Im just filing everything they send us now. Thanks again

Sorry, I didnt mean it to sound offensive. I only ask cos my next door neighbour did a similar thing. The council argued that they could not be responsible for every inch of road/footpath. My neighbour was going across the road to her daughter who lives opposite when she slipped outside her daughters gate. They called an ambulance and she was taken to the local A+E dept. She tried to claim but got nothing as her injury was not 'significant long term' and also the footwear she had on was 'not suitable for the conditions' They said she had a duty of care to herself and as the weather condition was obvious she should have taken extra care.

Well presumably if you want to make a claim you will need proof of what happenend. Do you have any witnesses? Have you been to the doctor/hospital? Did you take due care, were you wearing sensible footwear for the conditions. A lot more info is needed I think.

Just an update. I have sent a copy of the letter supplied above by Spamheed to KPR, The Nationwide and also Drydens. The 30 days plus 12 have now expired. Yesterday we got a letter from KPR which had no mention of the CCA request but was offering to settle for a reduced figure if we contact them. Of course we wont do that but Im now wondering why they would have sent that letter under the circumstances.

Is this the 'popular' chain I think it is. If so I can tell you what the manager of our local one told me. It is a popular meeting place for mums with prams babies and toddlers. They have tables with chairs and also big couches in the area where you can take children. There is room for prams and in winter there is a lovely fake fireplace to sit round. He said that m ums will go in at 11 when they open and order a coffee which is 60p. They then sit there talking while the kids run around and shout and cry while the mums have a coffee every half hour. Customers in the 'other end' dont like it and people who want a meal dont like it as there is often no room for them. The only way they can control the time the mums are in there is to make them have a meal otherwise it is not cost effective. As he put it, we are not a creche, we need to take money. Please dont shoot me, Im only telling you what he said!

Most of the time the delivery person doesn`t ask for a signature because they can`t be bothered with all the letters they have. So, what are they getting paid for then? Please dont keep making assumptions without getting your facts right. I wouldnt assume to do that about anyone elses job. You have to do the job to know what it entails. As I said in my earlier post there will always be the bad apples but they dont account for the entire workforce of Royal Mail. Having worked as a postie and also having worked in the office where they scan the barcodes after delivery I have seen it frrom both sides. If the postie delivers and gets a signature but dosnt hand in his sheet on time the item will not show delivered, but, if the postie does his job correctly but the office staff dont scan correctly the letter will still not show signed for although it has been. Every person is dependant on another completeing the task properly. You cant always blame the postie. I know a lot of them dont always bother to get signatures and this IS wrong. But to say they dont get a signature because they cant be bothered is not true at all. When I was a postie I always asked for a signature. However, if the customer wasnt in I had to write out a card and then carry the item for the rest of my round and then go to the nearest post office and hand over the letter/parcel and have it signed for there. Much easier just to get it signed for at the door and get rid of it.

To my absolute shame I once applied for a job with one of these companies. I didnt know what I know now or I wouldnt have even considered it however at the time it seemed the answer to my prayers, good money, work my own hours etc. I went for three weeks training with another agent. I left aftre 2 weeks as I couldnt believe how depicable the whole system was. The first thing he told me was to make friends with my customers, find out the childrens names and birthdates. That way I would know to offer a loan about a month before a birthday which they would probably jump at. Check out the tv and washing machine if they are on. If the washer is noisy tell them you can get them a new one for x pounds a week. They would arrange a loan for say 300 for a tv and just buy one from Comet or somewhere for half the price and deliver it themselves making the customer think they are 'so helpful!' I was also told that as soon as a customer had paid back a third of the orig loan to offer tham another straight away. Another trick was to see if I could 'Help' if a customer was behind with payments. Say they borrowed400 and still owed 200 but couldnt make the payment I would have to offer them a new loan of 400. I would then take back the 200 from the orig loan straight away so therefore they would have paid the orig loan and not be in arrears, but, they now owe twice as much. It was so awful, we went into homes where he was treated like a family friend and all I could see was that he was preying on these people when they were at the lowest and pretending to do them a favour. The worst I ever witnessed was when we visited a house where the lady was dying of cancer, She sat in a chair and he even knew where her key was hidden outside so we could let ourselves in. She made her payment and said her daughter was out shopping but would be back soon. When we left the house I was almost in tears. He siad, "Hey, harden up! when she dies the daughter will be borrowing for a funeral, every cloud!" Needless to say I quit on week 3 before I was due to go it alone. I just couldnt do it. The company were so mad at me that I never got paid for the time I had worked, they said they would have to offset the pay against the training I had recieved. I didnt fight it, they have some pretty unsavoury characters there. I could not have lived with myself if I had stayed. The guy that trained me made several hundred pounds a week and had been doing the job for 14 years.

Be careful, my son had this happen and he was the one who rang to say I think you are overpaying me. He had just left the company and as his wage slips did not state what was back pay, holiday pay, severence pay or delayed overtime pay it was all very confusing. Than you for letting us know, they said, we will look into it. He heard nothing for 2 years and 10 months---then they took him to court and he has to pay it back!!!!