I'm pretty sure it was a debit card not a credit card.

Hi I pre-ordered some goods from http://www.black-eagle.co.uk in Auguest last year. You could order the item at a discount with the promise that it would be delivered a few months later. Well the date passed and I emailed then and found out it wasn't made yet. I did this every few weeks or so. I March I got an email saying "We are working through the orders and have decided to cancel and refund due to the delays. You will receive an update in the day day or so." I didn't get anything. Then I get: "It seems we are not able to process refunds after so long a period. Therefore, we are offering Credit Vouchers that can be used on future orders. We will update all orders during the course of this week to confirm this." I said this wasn't legal nor acceptable and I got another email saying: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, we have cancelled this order. Due a change in our payment providers, we are unable to offer a refund against your order. Therefore, we can only offer you a Credit Voucher to be used against future orders. Please contact us prior to ordering so we can send you your voucher for the value of your refund." I complained saying I wanted the money immediatey and got: "Email me your bank account details and I will see if we can get this done for you over the next week or so. We are not able to do this 'immediately'. Our intention is only to try and offer a solution should customers wish to take an alternative product in the mean time. I can assure you we are not happy with the situation either." I said that a week or two isn't any good given they've had my money for most of a year and got "The problem we have is purely cash flow, as a result of the issues caused to us by the factory, hence the reasons why we are actually slow in being able to provide refunds. That is the reason we offered the voucher, which I hoped may be acceptable to most. So far, that has been the case as has the offer of an alternative when we get a reply. I am trying to help customers with alternative options, that is all." I called CAB and they said write giving them one week to pay up or risk legal action. I've done this but had no response to this or another email. So it seems they lied about the reasons why no goods or money has been forthcoming. Firstly it was down to the factory letting them down. Then it was a "change in payment providers" and now it's "cashflow". What's my next best step other than driving up there and extracting the money from them manually?

Thanks again for the information provided. Some of this is going to be very useful. I also appreciate the early posts being removed because frankly I was a bit shocked when I first read them. I'm not asking for validation of my needs in the context of other treatments or people's personal opinions. I'm asking specifically for consumer help. Feels like I went to the parking ticket forum and was told to pay up and shut up! Again, I'd appreciate it only those with actual advice would contribute. The other posts are unhelpful and pointless.

Thank you the last two posters. That's somewhere for me to start.

Me? As I said I've been paying tax for 25 years. How could I possibly be a new citizen? The surgeon told me this wouldn't have cropped up a year or so ago and differs from PCT to PCT. So it's new and location dependent. It's nothing to do with me or any other tax payer thinking they have a right to all and any treatment. I'm in pain all the time, I cannot run for a bus, I cannot do most exercise. A surgeon says I need an op.

Your personal views on NHS spending don't really constitute advice to be honest. If you can't help with consumer advice then please don't bother to chip in. For the record: The surgeon says I need it not me. They are operating for free on all those women who's breast implants might be dodgy despite lack of evidence of harm and the fact that they had them done for cosmetic purposed. In the hospital my wife gave birth to my last child, she was, according to the nurse, the only UK resident in the entire post-natal ward. The other 9 women had in her words "turned up from god knows where to have their baby's here" So don't tell me it's about me being able to run vs people dying of cancer! So the NHS is now only providing treatment for "life threatening" illnesses? That is clearly not remotely true.

Last year I went to the doctors because of pain in my low abdomen on my left side. I was eventually referred to a consultant surgeon who instantly diagnosed an inguinal hernia. He said I needed surgery and went about setting this up. I heard back from his secretary saying they'd done their end and were now referring it to the funding body. Then this week I get a call from my doctor telling me that they will not be operating because the NHS doesn't pay for such operations any more. Apparently it's not affecting my life enough. The hernia means I cannot run and so I asked my doc "so you're telling me, at 43, that I will never run again. Her only answer, after a significant pause was that I should try swimming instead! I can't do that either because of a shoulder injury that they've also haven't treated properly yet. I cannot afford the money to get it done privately. Is there anything I can do about this? It seems insane that I've being paying money into the NHS for 25 years yet I cannot have an operation that they tell me I need.

Cheers If it turns out to be privately owned, then what?

Here is a closeup of a sign. [url=http://picasaweb.google.com/NeilandEmma/ClampingScene/photo#5063224605993144674][/url] http://picasaweb.google.com/NeilandEmma/ClampingScene/photo#5063224605993144674 I photographed all the signs I could see so there are not others that don't appear in my web album. As you can see, the only outward facing sign that appears to relate to the road rather than the parking bay is to the left of the property on the fence at a c. chest height. As it happens that sign was obscured by a white van at the time so I didn't see that. But it doesn't appear to cover the part of the road I was parked on anyway.

There is a bit of drop curb. What if a few inches of my car was obstructing that? I don't have the photos of my car parked there but they do so I can't say for sure. I'm thinking that if someone parked their car in such a way that it partially obstructed the entrance to my home driveway, that I couldn't clap it, tow it miles away and demand £300 off them? Would I be right in thinking that my main case is the fact that it is, or certainly appears to be a public highway and that, plus the positioning of the signs, removes any reasonable assumption that I willingly and knowingly consented to the terms of those signs? What do you think about going after the shop keepers / land owners? How do I find out if the land is indeed theirs? Would it really matter anyway?

Here are some links to photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/NeilandEmma/Cl...922914605371554 My car was pretty much parked behind that BMW. As you can see cars are parked are on that extra road width delineated by the concrete strip. The property in question is between the white van and the BMW. You can see a white sign which is the clampers' sign. http://picasaweb.google.com/NeilandEmma/Cl...923253907787986 Here you can see the road edge where it meets the property and where the curb drops, ostensibly to allow access to those brick-paved parking bays. I didn't park in those bays but on the road to the right of the crumbling drop curb. http://picasaweb.google.com/NeilandEmma/Cl...923107878899906 I was behind where that BMW is now. You can see the one clampers sign on the wall to the top left of the blue shutter/door and just see another at the top of the picture on the right-hand wall perpendicular to the road. Here is the whole album of photos: Clamping Scene">Scene album Personally I don't see how any normal person could know that those signs apply to that stretch of road. Or am I being unreasonable?

Hi My car was towed away by a private clamping firm within minutes of me leaving the car and I was forced to cough up £300 to get it back from a pound miles away from the site. The situation is this: The road I parked on appears to be a public road. It is sign-posted by the local council and has official-looking yellow line etc on it. The road widens by the width of a car – like a layby where a number of shops back on to it. The yellow line continues to hug the curb along this stretch. This "layby area" is delineated from the rest of the road by a 5” strip of concrete set into the ground but the surface of the road is the same either side of it. I parked in this area behind a shop on what I believed to be a public highway. The shop has 4 or 5 parking bays (maybe 25 feet in total) in it’s “back yard” which is paved with bricks and enclosed by walls on 3 sides (not the side near the pavement, if that makes sense). The curb drops in the middle as it does in front of driveways you see commonly. I parked to one side of that dropped curb. So I was behind the shop, on the road, next to the curb. I don't think my carb was blocking the drop curb but it's possible a couple of inches of it were. On the ticket it states that the enforcement reasons were "No Permit" and "Causing Obstruction". There were clamper’s signs on the wall of the back of the shop facing the road but this is set back 15-23 feet from the curb behind the parking bays, and on the 2 walls perpendicular to this. I saw them and assumed they meant that you might be clamped were you to park in the parking bays obviously on the shop’s property. However my car was gone when I got back. I called the police thinking it was stolen. Before they arrived I noticed a man from the shop next door and asked him if he’d seen my car being taken. He said it was taken by clampers. He said that that entire layby type area was actually private land and the area extending about 8 foot from each shop was owned by the corresponding shop. Hence those signs applied not just to the parking bay but that section of road too. He said that many people got clamped and many complained but never got anywhere since the deeds of the shop made it clear and their cases were thrown out, however I notice that he uses the same firm so his opinion might well be "biased"! I assumed that I was parking on public property and that the signs did not apply to the area I parked in, otherwise I wouldn’t have parked there. The sign said the “fixed penalty” is £265, that unattended vehicles would be towed at a cost of £170 + £95 clamp fee + £35 a day (or part day) storage charge. So I had to drive to Heathrow and pay a shaven headed geezer in an M3 convertible with a Rotweiller in tow £300 cash through the bars of a fence to get my car back. On the receipt, which contains carbon-copied details from the screen ticket, it states two SIA numbers, one for the clamper and one for the releaser. I checked these numbers with the SIA. The clamper’s number does not check out. It is not a valid number. He supplied his name and signature. That name IS registered as a vehicle immobiliser but under a totally different SIA number. The SIA showed little interest in me telling them this stating “I don’t know much about the vehicle area, it’s all a bit murky”. The releaser's SIA number identifies him as a notorious clamper (in the words of the press) but not to the name he gave to me or uses on the phone. So it's possible that he is not registered but using his bosses number or that he is the boss and uses multiple names. Do I have a case re: the signage and private/public road uncertainty? The Vine v Waltham Forest [2000] EWCA Civ 106 (5 April 2000) judgement mentions " It was not intrinsically obvious, apart from signs, that the area where Mrs Vine parked was private property. It might have been part of the highway". That to me seem very similar to my case excpet that in my case the signs didn't help either. Can I use the SIA number issue to my advantage? Who do I contact now and what do I do? Any help much appreciated.