At the beginning of February I went to Grand Canaria for a winter break . The problem was I forgot one of my prescription medications. My son immediately packed the missing medication ( a control for high blood pressure ) in a jiffy bag and went to local post office and asked for quickest method to get the package to me , telling the clerk exactly what was in the package . The Post Office counter clerk suggested Parcel Force Global Express for the sum of £47 ( for a small jiffy bag ! ) He duly filled in the dispatch form clearly marking it “medication “ The package was accepted , and the clerk said the package should arrive in 48 hrs ( posted on Monday , arriving Wednesday morning ) At no time was any mention made of possible delays due to customs etc . Following tracking ,I saw the package arrive at the “clearance depot “ Wednesday morning , and there it sat , until it was eventually delivered to the hotel the following Monday , whilst I might add still showing in transit ,even when we arrived home a week later , it was still in transit ! though I had possession of the package As you might expect we submitted a claim for refund , and as you might expect it was refused . Citing , A/ Medication excluded B/ not their fault , customs delay The only time medication is mentioned in exclusions , is under perishable goods , the medication has a shelf life of over 2 years . I repeat , no mention was made of any possible delay due to customs and content of package Simply , do I send a LBA , giving them ie Parcel Force AND their agent the Post Office 14 days to cough up , or without further reference to them , go to small claims procedure ?

A bit of advice would be appreciated with the following - Took out policy online with OneCall Documents were requested as usual to be uploaded to my policy portal I have 2 "claims" on my policy The first is a non fault claim for which I have the paperwork to confirm this from the then insurer. I uploaded this document and subsequently held calls with OneCall to confirm that this document was received, read and understood. Also to confirm that this particular "claim" would not affect the agreed quoted price of my policy. The second is a windscreen replacement which I was advised at the time would not affect my claims record. I could not find the insurer at the time of the windscreen replacements details and therefore explained to OneCall that I would hunt down the info and then share with OneCall. I requested the date and the vehicle reg (I have a couple of cars both insured in my name), so I could hunt the details down asap. They could only share with me the year - which was a start. It proved that the time limit that OneCall was pushing on me to find these details was not enough for me to confirm as OneCall started pushing cancellation notices on me. I requested some guidance from OneCall on how I could contact the central claims database and request all the details held about me to resolve this sooner. I was advised to write to the Motor Insurers Bureau, send the fee and I would receive this info. Which I duly then sent off as advised. On the last day OneCall had given me before the cover expired, I was on the phone (I called them as I knew I had to resolve) I explained the situation that I did not have the details of the windscreen replacement, so to keep me insured I said please continue to cover me and I accept any additional charges for the claim - and asked what these were. The agent on the phone said they were not sure if they could do this as the policy was due to expire at midnight. You can imagine I immediately asked why, please explain, please transfer me onto someone who does know and can understand how to resolve this. None of the answers to resolve came. I also confirmed if the agent could see the first uploaded document - to which I now got a no - we havent received it. I uploaded again whilst the agent was on and she said that she wasnt receiving it but did have issues with her pc. I asked her to log on to another PC or indeed ask a colleague to help. None available. I was told however that due to the technical issue of them receiving documents and they could not answer my request of just insure me with the oe claim (until I can confirm and share later down the line) that the insurance would indeed not expire overnight. I was told that I would be contacted in the morning to confirm and resolve one way or the other. The next day came. I did get a call. I missed it. I did return the call soon afterwards (I was working) and then got cut off whilst we were discussing my account. I called back - no answer - had to jump back into my meeting at work. Called again same day and they confirmed that my insurance was cancelled as I had failed to provide the documents. Quick recap - one set of docs were confirmed to be received - plus I had 3 successful docs uploaded from their website over the period of doing so. The second set I didnt have but said please insure me with knowing I will accept a claim on file until I can resolve. Insured with someone else. Done. Next received docs back from Motor Ins Bureau. Nothing in regards to claims are recorded. Just the years and vehicles I was. Next I receive letters from OneCall Debt Recovery demanding £246.41 saying that they will take this amount from the card used to take out the policy. Which I had to cancel the card as I had 48 hours from which the letter landed to when it would be taken. Cancellation charges - Insurance Cost 1,751.89 Charge for time on cover 293.42 Broker charges during the policy term 39.00 Discounts applied to the policy 74.74 cancellation charge 55.99 Total cancellation cost 388.41 Amount paid (deposit) 142.00 Balance 246.41 Shortly later I have received another letter which includes an additional £25 charge for a handling fee. Balance now £271.41. 7 days to pay or court enforcement action will be taken. The letter is dated 13th April. The original cost for the quoted and accepted insurance was 950.00... How would I deal with these incompetent bandits? Cheers!

Hi all Apologies for the length and the sarcasm of this post but as in the title - this has been going on a long time and was on the phone for an hour to Eon today. We moved in to our 3 bed terraced in Nov 13 and kept with Eon as the supplier. The house has no gas but we noticed old storage heaters downstairs that I removed as I knew they were expensive to use (and in one case, broken anyway). As we have two meters, one that runs the heaters and the other runs all other services, I was under the impression that, when I asked them to, Eon would arrange the removal of one meter and the change of the other through Scottish Power. On 15 Jan 2015, I received a yearly electricity bill of £1025. I emailed several times why I wasn't receiving more regular bills but received no reply. After a sarcastic but angry email, my query was taken up by a dedicated complaints manager who advised that the meter would be change over for the correct rate meter and remove the redundant one. This was replaced on 5 March 2015. She also set up a direct debit for £120 for my current usage and £42 for the arrears for the next 24 months. I was under the impression, she had also ensured I could submit meter readings online to keep things accurate. However I was unaware that she hadn't. I had attempted to submit meter readings online from my single meter, but these were rejected as the system required me to submit readings from 2 separate meters. (I have been told today that my reading were placed on file as 'notes') Over the last 2 years, on about 8 occasions, I have had readers in to read my meter. In addition, all my bills have been estimated statements. As I have said, I run electric only, a fire in the lounge when it's cold and 3 x panel heaters upstairs which are run on timers for 1-2 hours per night depending on the time of year, immersion heater and cooker. Today, I received my second annual bill from Eon totalling £1753. It seems my usage has gone up to 50 kwh per day and I have not even paid my usage for this year, much less the arrears from last year. As stated, I spent an hour with a complaint manager that offered me £560 off the bill from their reviewing my account, which seems poor as I thought the £42 was for that purpose and expected some reduction in the previous year's arrears. On hearing this I escalated my complaint to a bill review department. I stated to him that I wanted at least some of the previous years arrears to be discounted. He stated I had a choice: Pay £93 for a 'load check' on my meter, or Have the meter changed completely and he stated he would monitor the usage over the next few weeks to check usage. I can't afford the £93 so opted for the meter change and monitor. After speaking to the appointments department, he said they would not change the meter as they say there they monitor the meter and there is be nothing wrong with it. (How do they know this and if they do know, why can't they take meter readings from it direct?) So I am left with a £1753 bill with a £560 reduction and a £20 'gesture of goodwill' to cover phone costs, etc (thanks!) - Final total - £1173 What I want to know, if anyone can answer, is: Do I have a case here with the Ombudsman? I have had dealings with other (Financial) Ombudsman in the past and have found them to be ineffective in helping me with my case. Is this the same with the Energy Ombudsman? Could my meter be faulty? Unless I pay the £93, I have no way of finding out. Why don't we have an industry standard (which I questioned in the phone call) for energy usage? Should I be resigned to paying as much as I can for the next 10 years while I save the money to pay these bully boys in full? Do I have any rights here? (Should I ask for their Consumer Credit Licence number as they now offer/encourage overdrafts!) I have just checked my account and I can now submit a meter reading for a single meter - for the first time in 13 months We are paying other debts off at the moment but it's slow progress - this feels like 5 steps back. Apologies again for the sarcasm - even writing this is p*ssing me off. Thanks for reading Lawrence

Hi everyone, my dad recently had a problem with his Toyota Urban Cruiser 4WD Diesel. The vehicle is four years old has been serviced all its life (He bought it from new) at a Toyota garage. The vehicle has only done just over 20K He has recently had problems getting the vehicle into gear so he took it to our local Wolverhampton Toyota Dealer Charles Clark Toyota. They diagnosed the problem to be the clutch. They quoted £1000 to replace the clutch (Original) or approx £800 for a none Toyota one I find this rather odd a Toyota dealer offering none Toyota parts. The clutch on the vehicle was previously replaced at about 10K due to a major problem with the vehicle apparently Toyota only cover the clutches for 2 year so my Dad had only done 10k miles on this one. This one was just over the 2 year mark. My dad mentioned that he was getting a bit tired of the vehicle to which the dealer suddenly stated that a Hybrid would be a good idea as no clutch. My Dad and myself find this attitude rather bad basically it was your car is buggered tell you what we can sell you a new Priusfor £22K. They introduced him to the sales manager gave some story about how parents have them and love them etc. To cut a long story short my Dad left it and contacted A1 Clutches in Wolverhampton. When he took it to A1 Clutches the said that it might be the clutch but it could be the flywheel this part would have been covered under the Toyota warranty. Unfortunately my dad went ahead with the repair and it did turn out to be the flywheel. He contacted Charles Clark who were basically not interested they said that they needed to do the work and replace it with a proper Toyota part apparently A1 did replace it with a clutch from the same manufacturer. They stated that the teeth were worn on the fly wheel. He went to A1 as they quoted £650 for the clutch. The repair has now cost him over £1k. My Dad has trouble walking a heart condition and is undergoing treatment for cancer at the moment his vehicle is absolutely vital to get him to the hospital hence his haste at getting the vehicle sorted out. I find Charles Clark Wolverhampton attitude to be disgusting, the vehicle obviously had serious design/manufacturing faults a clutch does not fail after 10k and a fly wheel after 20k. The vehicle has a dual Mass flywheel which causes real issues I believe. How can a Toyota dealer offer none Toyota parts on a vehicle that is still under a Toyota Warranty also??? There attitude by trying to wash their hands of the problem and sell my dad another vehicle is also very bad. Should we contact Toyota and state our displeasure with the dealer or just go for the dealer with the sale of good act? Thanks

British Gas broke into my house while I was at work, giving my disabled wife a scare in the process. Because I hadn't paid my last bill they fitted a prepayment meter, and told the wife a top-up card with which we can add credit to the meter would come within 3 days. The card never came, so after a week I phoned to tell them. They apologised, sent a man within four hours to add £5 of emergency credit to the meter, and said they were sending out another card. It obviously didn't occur to them that they could have got said man to bring a card with him. The second card never came, and the £5 credit went in two days, so the meter cut the gas off. In the meantime I'd looked up info on the Net and read that I could go to any PayPoint store, get a meter card from them, bring it home, stick it in the meter to initialise it (presumably with a meter identity code, though nobody actually tells you that), take it back to the PayPoint store and have them put some credit on it. When I returned the card to the store they found they couldn't credit it and would get the message "Invalid Card". So they gave me another new card in case the first was faulty, which I took back and initialised, returning to the store for credit. Their PayPoint machine again said "Invalid Card". I phoned BG, told them all about it, and they sent out another bloke to put a walloping great £5 of credit on it. They listened to what I was saying, made me cycle through menus on the meter and read off some spurious code, then proudly announced it wasn't working because this meter doesn't take the usual BG card, but requires a modified version known as an RTI card - available from them (yes, they were sending out yet another new card that would never reach me) or also available from PayPoint "superagents". What a load of old rubbish. I found myself a superagent, got an RTI card off them, quoted an identification number given to me by BG over the last phone chat and based on the code I'd read to them off the meter, and they loaded this code successfully onto my shiny new RTI card. Trouble is that when they then tried to load £20 of credit onto the card, the PayPoint machine choked in horror at the attempt, saying this card was just a load of invalid nonsense. Marvellous. So I phoned BG yet again, gave them the entire spiel, read more numbers off meter menus, waited forever, then was told they had the solution - that this was a special type of meter requiring a different type of card again, this time called a "PCV" card or something similar; unfortunately the man I spoke too was very foreign, and although I made him repeat the "PCV" three times, each time it sounded completely different, so all I know is that it's a combination of three consonants. I think. Anyway, even PayPoint superagents wouldn't have one of these beauties, so the BG man was seeing to it that one would be sent to me first-class so I'd have it in two days. I pointed out to him that it's unlikely I'd receive anything, since the previous two mailings of cards to me never materialised. (The real mystery here is why, when they send someone to my door, it's successful - so they clearly have the right address - but when they send prepayment cars to me in the post, it's as effective as if they didn't send me anything at all). But he was confident I'd get it, and guess what? I didn't. That was five days ago. Still no gas. In fact we've now had no gas at all for 90% of the last four weeks, and tomorrow the weather forecast says will be no warmer than 3 deg. C. My wife is disabled, we have a four-year-old living with us (and two other kids), and our shiny new hi-tech gas meter is little more than a decorative fixture embellishing some dirty old pipes - one that I never asked for and do not want. I should also mention that every time I phone these people I'm on the telephone for about 45 minutes - AT A COST OF 14p PER MINUTE - I am paying through the nose for the crassness and incompetence of a stinking rich utility company that seems not to give one jot about the fact that it has shafted me and my family big-time. If I didn't owe these peasants so much money I would switch pronto to another gas supplier. So that's where we're at: new meter, no gas, no cards I've ever seen will work in it, BG is incapable of working out what's wrong or sending me anything in the post - except bills, which somehow do successfully make it to my house. Funny that. I'm not expecting anyone on this forum to have any useful suggestions for me, but I do want people to understand the depths of uselessness which this fine utility company is plumbing. There is only consolation for me in all this: that all the while the meter is inoperative BG is receiving no money from me and certainly not getting any of the outstanding debt paid. When they choose to take an interest and fix the problem rather than making empty pledges and mouthing confused platitudes, I will consider paying them. Never again, British Gas. Never again. I will be paying the French, the Germans or even the Spanish for my gas in the future. DieselDoctor STOP PRESS: Wow! I've just got off the phone to my wife, who tells me she's been badgering BG all afternoon (at a personal cost of 14p a minute, don't forget), and she's been told that we didn't receive the three meter cards because the despatch system has been rejecting the possibility on our account. But nobody told us that. Funnily enough, she then spoke to another operative, because the first one she was speaking to failed to phone her back, who gives a different version of that story: that since September the twenty-somethingth the card-despatching system has not been working and has been refusing to send anybody cards! Today it's the 25th of October - that's how long we've been cold. So either the previous people I spoke to and who came to my door weren't told this by their employers, or they were deliberately avoiding acknowledging the fact, and lying through their teeth to us every time they said a new card in the post would be the solution. Anyway, they are "sending a new card by manual despatch", and promise it will be with us by Monday (today is Thursday). Don't be so darned stupid, because no, it won't. But despatch systems apart.... the new cards from PayPoint stores haven't been working anyway, and my internet trawl reveals NO mention of any 'new-type' "PCV" or "BBC" or "123" card being in use. So, another damn lie, I suspect.

French farce as British expats face a shock £8,000 fine if they do not declare their inheritance trusts to the Paris tax office Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2158326/British-expats-France-face-shock-8-000-fine-declare-inheritance-trusts.html#ixzz1xmmGQ3RJ