Hi, I'm a first time user on here, so please bear with me... I am hoping someone might be able to help regarding a matter that a very good friend and client of mine has found herself in. She had the usual telesales hostage taking call that I have read loads about on here where she was tricked and mis-sold into agreeing to a contract without actually realising what was happening. She specifically asked "what if she changed her mind? and were there any cancellation fees?" and she was told "no problem cancelling if she changed her mind and no fees!!!" she also agreed to a 3 year contract as she only has a 3 year lease... later that day, she recieved an email with the t's & c's which now somehow have attracted a £400 cancellation fee and that she is in a 4 year contract!!! (1 year longer than she is in the property)???...??? What I am hoping to find out is... As I was with her when it happenned & as I took the call and suffered the first 5 minutes of the sales pitch before I told them they needed to speak to her, do I qualify as a credible wittness as far as an ombudsman case is concerned? I heard the whole conversation including her asking about cancellation fees and agreeing to a 3 year contract. Also, on 2 occasions she said to the telesales rep that she was talking too fast and couldnt understand what she was saying, And that she had a very hoarse/raspy voice and she wasnt sounding very clear. She is in the process of their complaints procedure (stage 2) which seems to me to be a stalling tactic on their part, and has now got a recording of the 'alleged agreement' which she asked for to be unedited. However, when she listened to it, it sounds well dodgy, you cant understand a word of what the telesales rep is saying, also, at 1 point, you can clearly hear me in the background reading out the postcode of the business to her. and, at the end of the recording, there is a succession of repeats of my friend saying the word 'yes' (6 times, one after the other, must have been left over from their editing process). also, at no point in the recording do they ask if it is a micro business, as it clearly is, only turning over a few hundred pounds a month!!! If that wasnt dodgy enough, when we finished listening to the recording, a new recording started playing from a completely different company that they were hounding, we sat there horrified to hear this poor bloke reading out all of his personal details, incuding bank sort code and account number, full name and address etc. Luckily, this guy is very safe with us as we are very honest people but we are now wondering who could possibly be sitting there with her details??? This surely must contravene the data protection act? she tried to get eon to keep hold of the account before it went 'live' but they sneaked in and took it anyway, eon requested an eroneous transfer but it didnt work Based on what I have said, can anyone advise please as all of this has made her quite ill and I cant just sit by and watch all of her hard work and hard earned cash go to these revolting gutter rats! All the best Jamie

Hi all, I have requested British Gas to take over my electric and gas meters as i'm currently paying in excess of £50 a week alone in electric to NPower for our small 2 bedroom house. I'm a single mum of two teenagers and self-employed. Business is dead at the moment so our sole income is tax/child tax credits. I can't afford gas, in fact I only put money on my gas card when the cold is unbearable as we only use the gas for heating purposes, a couple of weeks ago I put £15.00 on the gas card that only gave us around £4.50 of gas. The bill for my gas is currently at £300.00 because i'm not putting money on the card weekly, just when we need it desperately. I'm livid that I have a bill so high for something we seldom use. There is apparantly a daily fee for having the pre-payment meter in the first place. I only requested it in the first place so I didnt have yet another large bill to pay out for and wanted to remain in charge of what we spend. As you can imagine with all of our other daily living expenses we are on an extremely tight budget and I'm finding it more and more difficult to survive. British Gas sounded very good and said they were cheaper than NPower but will they allow me to change suppliers if there's a £300 bill on my gas pre-payment meter? I'm becoming desperate! I did call NPower and said something must be wrong but they said the meter reading sound right, we dont have anything running longer than it should and I have become very strict on leaving lights on/standby etc but it's making no difference.

Hi all It's been a while since I had a consumer issue, but I'm back and I'm stressed! I was lured by the cheap tariffs and agreed over the phone to take out a contract with them. (Phone & Broadband) They asked for a new line fee of £69.99 which I paid using my visa debit card. (This was 14th Sept 2010) Over the next few days I spoke to friends and asked if they had any experience of TT and was horrified at the stories they told me. 4 days after I initially made the verbal agreement, I called them back and cancelled the contract. (This was 18th Sept 2010) TT asked why and I told them that they had a bad reputation for broadband issues (I'm a mature student and broadband is vital to me) They took it well and asked me to call back in 7 days as the £69.99 was held in limbo and it needed to be credited to TT before they could refund it to me. I gave them a little extra time and called back 14 days later (This was 2nd Oct 2010). TT said they couldn't refund that day as the system upgrades being done prevented refunds being made. They asked me to call back on the following monday. I called back on the monday and was told to ring back in 7 days! (This was 4th Oct 2010) I called back again (15th Oct 2010) and was informed that a refund would go into my bank account within 5 days. I kept an eye on my bank account, no payment arrived. I called back today (27th Oct 2010) and spent the best part of 2 hours either on hold or redialling following cut off from an India call centre. I also spoke to Cape Town who were more polite but equally clueless. The british call centres are equally clueless and resorted to just sending me through to depts that couldn't deal with refunds. I had been passed around 7 different depts and 3 different continents. I finally spoke to someone who admitted they had no idea how to put me through to the dept that does refunds, he actually read out the depts he could transfer me to and none of them were relevant. He then suggested that I ring Ofcom! He gave me the number and was very helpful and sympathetic. I spoke to Ofcom who took all the above info, they say I have to write to TT and give them 8 weeks to respond. They also mentioned Otelo (ombudsmen) and the next steps to take if the complaint letter isn't satisfied reasonably. My questions to Caggers are; 1) Can I expect reimbursement for the phone charge to the various 0870 numbers TT gave me to ring? I'm not talking minutes on the phone to them, I'm talking hours! They keep people on hold as long as possible! 2) Can I charge them a reasonable interest for withholding my money with no explanation?