This topic was closed on 03/08/19. If you have a problem which is similar to the issues raised in this topic, then please start a new thread and you will get help and support there. If you would like to post up some information which is relevant to this particular topic then please flag the issue up to the site team and the thread will be reopened. - Consumer Action Group

This topic was closed on 03/06/19. If you have a problem which is similar to the issues raised in this topic, then please start a new thread and you will get help and support there. If you would like to post up some information which is relevant to this particular topic then please flag the issue up to the site team and the thread will be reopened. - Consumer Action Group

This evening we just had a visit from a debt collection agency looking for the home- owner i.e. our landlord. He is behind with his mortgage payments and is facing repossession. Also this is not just the start of the procedure but it’s following up a previous court order that he has failed to honour. This is the first we were aware of any financial problems our landlord is having. The debt collector was actually very helpful and felt sorry for us, she has said that first of all we should go to the court and state an interest in the property. Secondly we should go to the council and inform them of a series of problems we have with the house and try to get the council to force the landlord into paying for the repairs. At the moment we are not on a council housing list, and by complaining and trying to get the council to sort the problems as our landlord in incapable this could fast track us up the housing list. The basic problems we have with the house are: 1 The mains electric was condemned and given a prohibition notice due to poor wiring, an almost total lack of earth and a fault to earth on the down stairs rings main causing it to be run as a radial circuit and only allowing us to use 15 amp rather than a full 30 amp. 2 The bathroom has serious damp problems since he dug up the sewer pipe to the toilet from outside of the house and failed to do a correct job, leaving us with a sizable hole under our house. 3 Not one single window has been fitted correctly and we now have cold draughts around every window frame due to cracks and big gaps in between the window frames and walls. 4 We have no landlord certificate on anything in the property. We even had to fit our own smoke detector. 5 I also have doubts if the gas boiler and cooker where fitted by a corgi registered fitter, as the manuals for both have not been filled out in the correct places for guarantee purposes. At the moment I am out of work waiting for physiotherapy on a shoulder injury and am receiving benefits to pay my rent. Where do we stand as far as making sure we know when we will have to move out of the property? Also does anyone know how we stand with the council and getting housed by them?

if i was to continue using bt as my provider then i would have to pay bt to connect a line to the house as well as the connection at the exchange. i didnt ask how much this would cost in total. the fact of the matter is i moved to a house with a cable line connected and no bt line and also the house isnt my house its rented so i could have paid bt a lot of money to connect a line to a house that i could possibly be living in for only 6 months. im my opinion bt are trying to enforce a monopoly by saying you must have them provide me services. if bt had a line to the property then i would have bt services stil to this day. also as a side note in my old house bt was the only provider of any telecom to the property as cable hadnt been laid in the street and no other phone provider could offer me a phone line. BT have cornered the market in some areas so people have zero choice in who they use as a service provider so they have managed a monopoly in that area. why should they be allowed to enforce a monopoly by law ?

I have had a BT account for years but last year I upgraded and changed my phone and broadband package and was told I would have to take out a new 12-month contract for both. Earlier this year I had to move house and we moved in to a rented property with Virgin cable connected and no BT line running from the telegraph pole to our house. When I moved I phoned BT and asked to cancel the services but was told that as I took a new contract out less than 6 months prior I would have to pay for the full term on both phone and broadband. I disputed this at the time over the telephone with BT and told them that as I had virgin cable fitted to a rented house why would I get that removed and get BT to fit a new line to the house and wait up to 1 month to resume broadband services. BT was adamant that I would have to pay for the full 12 months contract and it was not their fault that the new property did not have a BT line connected. I paid BT the full amount for any usage up to the day I moved out and line/internet rental charges for the rest of the month. However I did not pay any money towards the rest of the contract, as I believe that the terms and conditions are unfair. I now have Westcroft debt collectors sending mail to a care of address I left with BT to forward receipts for the payments I made over the phone. Not only have Westcroft been sending mail to this care of address they have even managed to acquire the phone number of the property and have been phoning them asking to speak to me about this debt. I fully intend to pursue this through the county court system if need be but I would greatly appreciate any advice on the best way to go about resolving this. If anyone has prior experience dealing with this situation then please let me know the outcome.

a major problem with bonus schemes is they are not covered the same way as wages. a bonus is exactly that and it is up t the company how they pay you this . it can also be changed as and when a company wishes unlike wages wich are covered slightly better under law. i have fallen foul of these so called bonus schemes where i lost out on £300 per month in an old job. after contacting TGU i was filled in on all the law and regs surrounding this. the only thing that they cant do with a bonus is take it away once you have been given it, a transport company i worked for used to do minus figures to your bonus if you missed out on certtain things and after talking to the TGU i got this reversed.

at the end of the day an employer must pay you for the hours youhave done. though beware i was caught out in similar circumstances. when i was 19 i worked for a garage as a mechanic we had clocking in cards, i was also told that any work i do that can be billed to a customer would need to have a job card filled out. i was spending an hour or so a day doing yard jobs for the company (not billed to customers) and clearing the workshop up. after i left i was paid £250 short and contested this. as the company used job cards to show work done and not the clocking in machine i was unable to claim back his extra money owed

for some reason the broadband with bt takes longer to be cut of than the phone. bt have caught me out before with cutting my phone of. i rented my flat to a friend and never canc the phone or change the name over and he was late paying and i got cut of. when i moved back to the flat bt told me they would put a £50 call limit on my account. no problem until you realise they dont inform you that you are close to this limit and they dont always updte the web site info. i ended up getting outgouing calls barred and also lost my job at the time. to sort this out caused me no end of problems and it was about 8 weeks of no phone untill i had paid them and sorted out reconection charges. through out all of this time i still had bt broadband working fine

and for an update last night my wife got an electric shock. lucky it was only a small one but if that had been my 5yr old daughter then it might have been different. after testing the light socket i found it was live and it seems the electrician has bypassed the earth leak trip all together so now the earth for the house is live and tyhis includeds the central heating pipes and my washing machine/dish washer

they give no choice but to use a handling company. the problem i see is that every employer on paye pays your tax and ni without charging you for this so why should they be allowed to farm out the tax payments at a fee i have no control over

recently my wife and i rented a 3/4 bed house for a 6 month rental and paid the full amount in advance. the landlord has the house on the market and we are having estate agents showing people the house once or twice a week. the house has just been renovated and the owner has cut every single corner to finish the job. to start with the house looked lovely but on closer inspection we have found that the problems in the house are to many to be listed. within 2 days of moving in our toilet blocked and as i was unable to unblock it i contacted the landlord. he said he would sort it and 3 days later he still hadnt. we have 4 kids and having our only toilet blocked was causing so many problems that in the end i called out a drain company to try and fix it. they came round and after looking decided they needed to come back the next day. then after they came back they had problems with the sewer and had to arainge to come back in another 2 days on a saturday morning so they could have access to neighbours property. well to cut a long story short 5 days after first calling out the drain company they got a camera down the pipe and found that the shody builders had dumped concrete down the pipe. they was unable to do any more as to fix the problem the floor in the bathroom needed digging up and a new sewer pipe had to be fitted. in all this time i had zero contact with my landlord even though i had been to his house and left sveral answer machine and text messages. the work for the drain cost me £350. also from day 1 i had been asking the landlord to get a glazer out and bead our downstairs windows as the only thing holding the glass in place was double sided sticky tape. after i had paid out the cash to try and fix the drain the estate agent rang to ask if he could bring people round to view the house. due to being out of pocket i told him that no one was allowed round until our landlord had fixed the windows and the drain. 3 days after this the landlord came round with his east european builders and dug from out side under the footings and some how managed to replace the pipe, he also got a glazer out to fix the windows. it still took another week for him to give me a cheque to cover my expenses. i have had to pay out of my own pocket for the washing machine and dishwasher to be plumbed in and i have done various jobs around the house. he has said he is fine with me doing smll jobs and to cover myself i have photos of before and after to show the work was needed and done correctly. 3 days ago our electric started tripping out. i contacted him after it had tripped 3 times in one day. then today it tripped and we couldnt get any power on the downstairs ring main. i rang him at lunch time and left a message saying the problem had got worse. after unplugging every plug socket to make sure it no fault of my own i tried several times to contact him and in the end he switched off his phone without answering it once. i visited his house and spoke to his wife with no joy either. eventualy at 530 pm he called me to say he was sorry but as he was out of town he couldnt come round to look at the problem until tomorow afternoon. after an argument he said he would call out an emergency electrician to fix the problem. its had a temp job done and we have been told it needs the wiring checked out and could well take a full day to trace the fault. my question is do i have any grounds for compensation for the problems we have had so far and what sort of position would i be in when more problems with the house crop up? it takes upto 3 days of phone calls and text messages for him to contact me and the stress from all the problems is causing my wife lots of illness. am i just stuck with this or can i do any thing to get things rolling faster in future ?

Hi im not sure how I stand here and maybe someone might be able to point me in the right direction. Being self employed I am registered with CIS for tax payments and contractors are required by law to pay a % of my wages to the tax man. this is not a problem when I subcontract as the contractors pay CIS for me. the problem I have is when I need to use an agency to cover any gaps I might have in work. It seems that all the agencies use a 3rd party company called the Guild to pay any CIS payments. The Guild charges 8.33% of any payment for a handling fee and the agencies all say they will not pay me direct nor will they pay my CIS payments direct so I dont seem to have a choice but to pay for this service. My problem is twofold A. 8.33% is a very large chunck of wages just to do a payment on mybehalf. B. I am in effect being forced to use a second accounting service on top of the payments i would need to make for my year end books. Are these agencies allowed to stipulate you need to have one of these handling companies and are these companies justified (allowed) to charge as high a rate as 8.33% ?

not long been back from my honeymoon which i booked with thomson for a trip out to bulgaria. the first problem was the coach trans to resort we had no rep on the coach but was told our hotel was the second hotel, at the second hotel as we were getting of the coach we noticed it was the wrong hotel. luckily we noticed this as it was almost 1 am and could have caused some probs. we got to our hotel and was shown our room with 2 single beds. next day we was in reception looking for details on where we could find our rep only to find out our hotel didnt have a rep only a 45 min visit at 5pm. luckily thursdays are intro day and our rep came into the hotel and gave what can only be discribed as the worste intro ive ever had to a resort, it lasted all of 5 mins and at the end we was told if any of the trips in a brochure he handed round took our fancy then let him know. my wife and i decided to go on a luxury yacht trip costing £100. we signed up and the rep left. the night before our trip we had a call from reception saying our "trip no more have a nice lay in" no call from our rep. the next day i checked with reception before going out to find out if we had any messages from our rep or a refund but nothing, we cut our day short to get back to hotel early to catch the rep only to find out he hadnt turned up at the hotel that day. i phoned the thomson mobile number to ask for my money back and was told it would be sorted next day but still nothing and still no sign of the rep. next day i phoned the mobile again and got a promise of a visit at 8pm by our rep to give me a refund. next night i waited 45 mins in reception for the rep but he didnt turn up so i had to phone yet again to be fobbed of again so after getting the uk head office number and threatening police involvement i was told i would get my refund the next day at 12. this was the time we were due to check out of the hotel. this time our rep turned up but he didnt apologise just handed me money over 280 lev which is a closed currencey so we had to spend it that day or lose on the transaction costs back to sterling. in total it took 4 days and £40 to get a refund of my money and only after pulling the thomson manager up at the airport did we get some sort of apology over it. at the airport instead of having the odd complaint about food you normaly listen to, over half the people where moaning about thomson for one reason or another and a lot of them where serious complaints. the long and short of it is dont spend your money on a poor company who dont care what happens to you after they have your money

last week my other half paid a chq into my branch and was told it would be cleared today wed 26/07/06. as we are getting married in just under 3 weeks and still ahve lots to pay for the wedding i booked today of work. i checked my balance last night and had £xxx balance and £yyy available. this morn before going out shopping i rechecked balance to find i had £xxx balance and available, so chq cleared of we go. i spent a few quid in shops then went into branch to draw £500 over counter straight from branch i went to a jewelers to buy something and had a security check on my card no probs until i am declined. i went into branch and girl on counter said cant see a prob lots of funds here ill get a manager for you to go over account, new girl comes and says no prob so we complain and of she goes to come back 10 mins later saying sorry your chq hasnt cleared i told her she was wrong and so she got the branch manager to see me who also said chq hasnt cleared. i informed her that according to cash point it had. she then left us for 10 mins to look into it and came back addamant that chq wouldnt clear until over night tonight. we left her office and tried to check balance on cash machine in bank, it gave my card back saying cant do this request please contact card issuers. i checked a second machine to have same problem. we then demanded to see the manager again but lo and behold she is busy and cat see us but we are assured that she couldnt stop me from viewing my balanmce and it was a temp glitch in system. 2 hours later the glitch was fixed and it seems my chq has now not been cleared. i have just sent an email asking for disclosure under the dpa of interventions to try and find out what has happened is this the banks way of upsetting me after i took them to court for bank charges owed to me

he wouldnt accept a bank transfere and will only give out a mail box addresse in center of london so there is no actual way of contacting him. i agree that work needs doing to decorate the hallways and also the windows and doors into the block are in need or replacing and if shown how much money it will cost me for the work then i will pay him. the main point is that he seems to have imposed penalties on me for non payment of ground rent. even though i have tried to pay him the amount in question would be 100 pounds and not the 800 + he has claimed in a letter he has written about me. from what i have read on thgese forums and researched on the net he has no legal right to impose his own penalty charges and if he wanted to impose them then he would need a court order. i have not recieved any mail from him in relation to any monies owing and have not recieved any court summons in relation to this. therefore as he cant impose penalties himself under english law they dont exist and he has basicaly lied about me to a 3rd party in writting, this should be covered under the libel laws we have. has anyone here had any experiance in a matter similar to this ?