Can any one suggest an alternative account should Nationwide decide to close my account because I am taking them to court I would prefer an account that does direct debits and a cash card and doesn't require heavy credit checks etc. I can use my credit card for any purchases.

Thanks. I will draft them a letter requesting a proper breakdown. Ian

I received all my statements and have tallied up all the charges but not the interest charges. As the account is mostly in overdraft should these charges be included. Monthly an average of less than £0.50 over 6 years. Additionally interest charges where I have exceeded my overdraft limit are minimal, probably less than £20 over 6 years and are a bit of a hassle to work out as they are included in the overall interest charge. Hopefully I am looking at it from the correct perspective. I now want to request a refund of £1055 in various charges over 6 years but am unsure about whether to include interest charges now also or just to ignore them for now but impose them should they refuse and decide to wait for a summons.

I incurred charges of approximately £310 in April due to personal issues. I sent 3 letters off to Nationwide using templates found on this forum but got no response and the money was deducted. Today I phoned them for the first time to complain about it as I had no response and before I could utter two words I was told that they would be refunding the charges and they should be back in my bank by tomorrow. Hooray now for the rest of my dosh which although I have been mainly a good boy over the past six years is still my dosh. Time for a donation to this site. THREADS MERGED.

On pre-payment meters the standing charge is included in the top up payment and is not normally invoiced as a seperate item. Sounds strange!

Posts seem to have mixed themselves up somehow. The standing charge is there to pay for the service cable supplying the property, operating costs such as commission etc and appointing the meter operator, data collector and data aggregator. Sounds strange that they are able to refund this this unless the rates are higher thatn average. Using Uswitch do a search inputting DD and requesting no standing charge. That at least will give you some basis as to whether you want to change supplier. If memory serves me correctly most suppliers offer pre-payment however proabaly only Sottish power & british Gas will show up on Uswitch

Although I have repeatedly asked for a breakdown of the charges, they have either ignored my letters or ent me a letter showing the settlement amount. My question is how can the settlement be more than the original amount borrowed despite us paying 14 months instalments. What sort of letter could I draft to them obliging them to give me a breakdown of costs, interest etc? Are there any regulations obliging them to provide this information?

Join a union like the GMB who will pursue it on your behalf. Alertnatively your job centre can offer advice or steer you in the right direction. If it was me I would not take any of the options as they cannot fire the person without going through certain procedures. If they then make your partner redundant and then replace your partner with someone doing almost the same job, they will have opened a very big can of worms and they will be the losers! Whatever consult some one who is familar with the workings of employment law before making a decision.

Pre-payment meters are one of the most expensive form of electric & gas. Contact your present supplier and request that they change the meter to a credit meter. The current supplier has to give the meter operator a minimum of 10 working days notice. So if you contacted your supplier tonight, the metering should be changed sometime in the second week of June. The request that they send is on a D142. Once that has happened, then you have a wide selection of suppliers to choose from. The cheapest is via Direct Debit. When using Uswitch select Direct debit to view the prcies available. I strongly recommend that you do not go for the dual fuel option, but rather choose a suplier for gas and a supplier for electric. Also if you go for this option, give them meter reads at leaast once every three months for more preferable every month otherwise your bill may be overestimated.

It was "Your plan 200" which included the Try 3G data package for the 1st 3 months. Your Plan 200 Free Music Stand & Free weekend calls Free Bluetooth Headset or Free 3G£ 30.00200 mins Any Network Anytime * Also on mobiles.co.uk website; 1 February 2005 sees the launch of full 3G services from Orange. There are many reasons to choose Orange 3G including: 70% population coverage and widest UK integrated network dedicated 3G customer service exclusive and official film, music and sport content You can simply connect to any standard Your Plan bundle with a 3G phone and in addition can try all Orange 3G related services free: 60 minutes of Video Calling per month included for first 12 months (YP400+) or 30 minutes of Video Calling per month included for first 3 months (YP120 & YP200) plus 1000MB data included per month for first 3 months – access Orange World, email and the internet NO mention of price for 1000 mb after trial except what I was told in email. I assumed that £4 for 1000 mb was right. Blow is the email received from them when I queried the price after the promotion Hello, Thank you for your email. After the 3 month promotional period, 1000mb's will cost £4 per month. We also offer the following handsets that you may be interested in viewing. Nokia 6630 http://www.mobiles.co.uk/orange-nokia-6630.html and the Sony Ericsson K600i http://www.mobiles.co.uk/sony-ericsson-k600i.html Regards, XXXXXX My reply; Hi, Just to clarify. I get a 3G handset Sony Eriksson, 200 mins a month cross network calls with 3 free gigabits per month for the first three months downloadable at speeds up to 300k plus and thereafter 1GB per month at £4, all on a 12 month contract. Regards, Ian M Kirkman Hope this help;s clarify the situation.

As far as I am aware there is no facility bfor 3G phones to go onto PAYG at this stage. I suppose I could go to normal GPRS after the contract expires. I have a copy of a second email whih I sent to them querying the package and specifically asking about the data download at £4 per 1000mb. The issue is that initially the data download was 3GB for first three months and nowhere does it state that after the 3 months it will revert to another tariff, i.e. £1 per 1Mb. Thanks for the help so far

The deal was done over the Internet through mobiles.co.uk who are an agent for suppliers. My problem is with the agent, not the supplier Orange as the agent misrepresented the package and not Orange. The terms and conditions do not state the package. The package comes as "x" minutes per month etc plus Try 3G data download for 3 months but does not mention the cost of the data download after the 3 months and that is why I specifically asked about the cost of the download after the 3 months. They replied in writing that it costs £4 for 1000 megabytes after the three months. If I had taken out the Vodafone card at the beginning I would not have changed my phones to the 3G network As the Try 3G data offer ends at the end of my contract in order to continue to download data, I now have an additional expense over and above the purchase of the phones. At present these phones are not on a PAYG and as far as I know this will not happen in the near future so I can't switch to that at the end of the contract. I can revert back to my old phones, but then the 3G phones might as well go in the bin!

Last year as we were selling up our home I decided I needed a 3G phone that would allow me to connect onto the Internet and download data. I made numerous inquiries and mobiles.co.uk came up with a Orange package that gave me the minutes and also offered a free 3GB download for the 1st 3 months. It was never stated whether it was 1GB per month or 3G over the months. At the time we had 2 x pay as you go phones and I was a bit reluctant to enter into any long term contracts. An alternative way was to purchase a Vodafone 3G card which would allow me to connect to the Internet for £35 per month excl VAT and keep the PAYG phones. I questioned by email what the price for the download would be after the 3 month trial period and in writing they responded that it would be £4 per 1000 megabytes. I thought this was very reasonable and consequently signed up for 2 new Nokia 6680 phones on the same package. On the 29th March I received a bill for over £400 for the period 23/2/06 to 22/03/06 which caused me to turn shade paler than white. Realising that the DD would bounce I cancelled the DD with Orange and contacted mobiles.co.uk. After much negotiation and because I had it in writing they refunded me the data charges on the 19.04.06. At this time I just assumed that there had been a clerical error on the package and that the 3G data download would be re-instated at £4 per 1000 megabytes. At the end of April I received another bill again for approximatley £400 and once again I questioned this with mobiles.co.uk. This time they refused to pay up stating that I was aware that the 3G data download would be charged at £1 per megabyte, however as I only received my bill at the end of March 2006 how would I know that was incurring charges for the period 23/03/06 through to the 29/03/06 and anyway I was still under the impression that there had been a clerical error. At no time did they advise me that there had been a clerical error and to stop downloading datauntil the issue had been resolved. Either way I was induced into signing up for the contract because I would only be paying £4 per 1000 megabytes data download. I feel that the contract was mis-represented to me and is therefore invalid. Orange have been very co-operative about this and have put me back onto the 3G trial data download but only from the 15/04/06 and only until the end of my contract. Another issues is that at the end of the contract, I will need to go back to Plan "A" and purchase the Vodafone card thus putting me even more out of pocket. I have written to Trading Standards but no reply so far. Orange are going to start chasing for the outstanding amount soon and may even cut off out phones. I cannot blame them if they do this as it is a basically a bad debt due to misrepresentation by mobiles.co.uk. As mobiles.co.uk are refusing to pay up the data charges part of the bill, this is causing me a great deal of concern and I would like to know if there is anyway I can force their hand prior to taking it to a small claims court. Is the contract invalid due to mis-representation? There is also the question of the arrears being registered against my name. What about when the contract ends as in normal circumstances the supplier will rollover the contract, but in this case they may not and I will need to purhase the additional card. I need the data download but not so much the free minutes as my usage is below 60 minutes a month. Any advice appreciated. This is the 3rd bad thing to happen to us within a period of 2 months. I guess as they say everything comes in threes. Up to now we have not had any credit problems, but this is causing concern.

In 2004 we took out a debt consolidation loan from Firstplus for £52000 with repayments of £520 per month for 15 years at an APR 8.9%. This was secured against our home. We kept up the payments but then decided to sell our home and pay off the debt. The home was sold off after 14 months of taking on the debt. At that time there was still an outstanding amount of about £48000. The sale went through and they got paid but then decided that there was still outstanding interest for an amount just over £5000 which took it to more than I had borrowed in the first place. I have repeatedly asked for a full statement showing how they have arrived at this figure but have been fobbed off everytime. The outstanding amount should be spread over the remainder of the 15 years but in their wisdom they have amended it to 5 years but no new contract has been signed. Are they allowed to do this and can they refuse to supply me with a breakdown showing how they arrive at us still owing them £5000 plus? I really need something legal to thrown at them.

When was the last time that you phoned your gas or electric company to give them an up to date reading? According to industry regulations they only have to read a domestic meter once every two years. Most of your bills are estimated and because the amount seems reasonable you don't query it, however should you decide to change supplier, either the new or the old supplier may request that you give a closing read and suddenly you have a bill in excess of £200 or £300 because everything was estimated up to that date. You then have no choice but to stay with your current supplier in order to pay off your bill because they under estimated and they continue to hit you with high charges as they know you are now locked in. It is a brilliant tactic and helps the company keep their customers and you are the one suffering as you cannot enjoy a lower price from another company. This is actually anti-competitive. In order to avoid this I strongly suggest that where possible you give readings to your supplier at least every 3 months. Monthly is obviously better. Also if your bills are over estimated they are taking money from you and enjoying the interest. Imagine if they over estimate £10 on the bills of a million people, the interest is quite handsome. Initially you may have a high amount to pay off, but once you have paid it, you are free to chop and change and the end result is the market becomes more competitive and forces prices down.

And me £320 mainly due to DDs. Unfortunately my wife was on SSP for two months due to a work related accident and her wages dropped to £60 per week. Plus getting done £110 last month for bounced DDs. We are just getting back on our feet and now £320 off my account at the end of the month which means more DDs may bounce due to insufficient funds. A right merry go round! Luckily everything is paid up to date so at present there are no arrears, but next month may be a different story.

I lived in South Africa for 43 years and only once did we experience a water shortage. A new dam was then built and no more water shortages and this is a country where some places do not see rain for several years not a few months. These water companies need to get their act together. I am surprised that a de-salination plant has not been built.

The problem is that you then get charged an admin fee if you use a standing order and if there are insufficient funds to meet the standing order you get a penalty of between £20 and £30 anyway. So direct debit appears to be the cheaper option however I am open to correction as banks impose their own T & Cs as and when they like.

I have sent off the first of probably many letters requesting a refund of all charges to my account over the past 6 years. In addition, I sent then a second letter requesting that they squash any charges that will be made on my account at the end of this month. Normally I am a fairly good boy but with the wife on SSP we got hit rather hard everything went wrong. Will keep you updated and once again thanks for all the good advice.