Hi all, I became the guarantor on an "assured shorthold tenancy". The contract states that it runs from the twenty eighth day of February 2009 to and including the twenty seventh day of February 2010. This to me looked solid as a rock, however the landlord has now sent a letter advising he wishes to move back in at the end of August, this is 6months into the contract and the notice has been served now. It does state in special tenancy conditions that the landlord may give 2 months notice in accordance with section 21 of the housing act 1988. I am wondering if it was really worth signing a 12month contract if it can be ended so easily by the landlord after 6months? My friends also paid over £900 for credit checking to get the property would this be re-imbursed? They do not have enough to put a deposit down on a new property, is there any provision for this ? Or can they only get there deposit back once they have vacated the property? I never imagined the law would be so skewed towards the landlord. I'm phoning shelter tomorrow as this has agitated me, but i was hoping that someone might be able to quickly answer this.

To be honest I fore-see myself leaving at some point in the year due to lack of payrise that this has caused. You are completely correct 14minutes 59seconds overtime is completely unpaid. I am tempted to take this further I've got 14 days from Monday to respond to there findings although I haven't fully made up my mind.

Ok so got the results of my grievance. The wallboards are synchronised to a big system in Edinburgh. My employer believes that it is reasonable that I log in before my start-time to ensure no lateness. Overtime will still be paid in blocks no less than 15 minutes. We are expected to sign into all bank systems before our start time. Do I actually have a legal leg to stand on or should I just give up now? I got a poor rating because of those seconds and it has cost me around a 1k payrise. I think I'm going to leave the company.

Hi all, I have recently changed role and site within a big company both are call-centre roles. The new site seems to be very strict. I have been into a performance review and was pulled up on 15 instances of lateness. My contracted start time is 9am. I signed into my phone when the clock hit 9am. This was considered late as the phones report a sign in time of 09:00:05 making me in this instance 5 seconds late. I always turn up to work 10-15minutes early to sign onto all of my systems before the start time and often finish 5-6minutes late because I get stuck on a call. I have been informed that this is not paid overtime because: Overtime after your finish time is only paid once 15 minutes has elapsed. We have also signed an agreement to say we will be ready at our start time, my employer counts this as signed into all systems and logged onto the phone before 9am. My contract states that overtime will be paid but puts no specific time quantity onto this. Can an employer discipline you over seconds of lateness despite having to sign into systems before your contracted start time? Could I ask for my overtime to be calculated in the same way as lateness? Where does the law stand on these points as on average I lose at least an hours pay coming in early and my performance grade is going to be effected by so many instances of lateness in seconds. My employer has said that if I take this further they may remove our 10minute morning and afternoon breaks. We work in a callcentre and thus are sat at our desks all day in front of a monitor. My employer advised me we are not entitled to screen breaks as we can look away from the monitor and talk to colleagues. Is this correct? Apologies if this sounds a little petty but any help would be greatfully appreciated as I cannot find anything on the net to help.

Hi all, I posted a while back and thought I'd get back in touch. Started the court action on 14/08/06 for around £1500 (including interest). Just before AQ was due got an offer for half the amount and sent back a counter offer of the full amount minus 50p per charge. Have now given in AQ and am awaiting a court date. Have not heard anything from DLA Piper since I rejected there offer. To everyone I made the massive mistake of not stating 8% interest (from date of filing claim) thinking it wouldnt add up to that much I was wrong and would recommend everyone adds it in. Although I'm gonna try and chat up the judge to including it. Thanks, Phildini

I know that this sounds crazy/money grabbing and is probably flawed on several levels, however: While banking with Abbey they unlawfully charged me £140 meaning that I could not pay my car insurance that month. Thus this meant that I could no longer use the car to visit my girlfriend and also I then needed to catch taxis to and from supermarkets etc.. Would this be a valid claim at all or is this total rubbish Apologies if this is a waste of time but Shabbey really peed me off at the time and still do over there excessive drain on my meagre resources

Hi everyone, I'm terrible at posting things in general so apologies from the start. I phoned Abbey on the 6th of June to order my bank statements from the account that I opened in 2004. I am still waiting for these statements and dearly wish that I had not ordered them over the phone. I have suddenly realised that this has given me no comeback what so ever legally and has also given them freedom to send me the statements in there own time-scale. I have waged war with the Abbey complaints team via the phone, as I'm an ex-call centre manager I can be an extremely unhappy customer . This will hopefully mean that I will not have to wait much longer for the fob-off machine that is ShAbbey to send my statements but certainly there is no guarantee on this front. I will be taking an Access Request into my local branch on Monday (Derby Massive) and I deeply regret trusting the advisor who told me the request would take a maximum of 6 weeks over the phone. I would recommend to anyone else to not bother phoning and asking for there statements but instead to immediately take a letter into your local branch with payment. Hopefully I'll have some happier news in my next post.