Hope this is the right place to post. I wonder if anyone can give me any advice to help put my elderly neighbour's mind at rest? Our neighbour (we live in Scotland) has had DLA including High Rate mobility (he has a car) for more than 20 years after a serious accident at work caused severe back problems. He's had a long running dispute with another neighbour (trees) and this man has been telling people he has taken pictures of him carrying a heavy bag of pet food into the pet shop -he visits it often- and has passed the pictures on to the authorities to make sure he loses his benefits. Our disabled friend walks with a stick, has had his front garden tarmacced so he doesn't have to walk far to his car.As well as the back injury has diabetes and is having treatment for malignent melanoma. He takes a cocktail of drugs, is often in horrendous pain and has been prescribed morphine. It does seem unlikely that after a lifetime award the renewal form was coincidence and he's convinced it's not, he would have carried the bag-he always wants to help out and was probably in bed for days after, but surely people with a disability have good and bad days? I wouldn't have thought if he was being investigated they could use photos taken by a member of the public but he beleives they can in Scotland? Any help would be much appreciated he's making himself ill with worry. Many thanks, Carol

I'm hoping somebody can give me a little advice on this one. I have no idea on where to go with it. The basics are this. We took out a breakdown policy with Green Flag 2 years ago. I'm 90% sure, they sent the renewal through the post last year and i paid it online. This year, renewal time arrives and it slipped my mind to do it. The policy expired at the end of August 2012. (We had forgotten when exactly it expired during the next part). In September my step dad took the van up to Blackpool and whilst there, the wiper motor failed. It was lashing down with rain, so obviously he called Green Flag. They sent a guy out to have a look at it. The guy arrives and diagnosed a failed wiper motor. He says he will have to have the van recovered to the nearest garage and from there we can arrange to have it fixed. My step dad refused this as it would have taken at least 24hrs for the garage to get the part in and requested to be towed back home with the van as we can get it fixed cheaper by the garage next door to us. He was advised that there would be a charge for the trip per mile. He agreed at the side of the road to pay £108.00 to be recovered. My step dad was recovered, we thought nothing more of the matter. I picked up a reminder from Green Flag in October which was dated September, asking for payment or the policy would be cancelled. I immediately called & gave them my apologies for the oversight and offered full payment. I was abruptly told that as we had not responded within 7 days of the letter dated in September that the policy had been cancelled and if i wanted to have a policy i would have to go through to sales and get a new quote. Not particularly happy with how she had spoken to me, i asked her why if we where members did we pay to be recovered from Blackpool and what we where paying for?. She was quite rude again and i told her to forget it and that i will give RAC a call. So i called RAC and took out a new policy for 3 vehicles and paid it in full. Today we have received a letter from Green Flag, demanding £168.00 for this years policy. I called them to explain that we had cancelled the policy due to what had gone on and they have stated that, 2 years ago we took out the policy online and there was a small tick box for auto renewing our policy. We had to remove the tick from the box if we didn't want Green Flag to automatically renew our policy every year (which includes taking payment in full from the bank). We changed banks earlier in the year so the account they tried taking the money from was closed. The lady i spoke to is demanding the money or it will be passed to a debt collector? I really don't want to pay this out of principal. Surely if the policy had expired and they couldn't take the money out of the bank that should be the end of it?. The lady i spoke to when i tried to pay them in October told me that the policy had been cancelled?. I also find it quite underhand that they would have a tick box for you to "opt out" of automatically renewing the policy and that it should be the other way round, you should have to tick the box to "opt in". Can anyone help? Sorry for the massive post Lee

I bought a new house 2 year's back and held onto the old one for a couple of years. I had a claim for a water leak which was a expensive fix for them. Both places the Insurance was through same company and under my name. Couple of weeks back I got renewal through for only one property. I am guessing they don't want to insure the older house as it had a claim. My question is that the premium for new house is the same as it was last year. Do I need to call the and point out the fact that I had a claim last year on the other policy? Or will they know this all ready?

hi its my first post i rang tax credits today about my award notice from july. i renewd in july but still not recieved it. i asked why i still not recieved it they said its being processed . can any one tell me if ime being invstigated. im pretty sure i not done anything doddgy but i worried as hell please help.

Recently me and my wife renewed our Photo Licences via the post office service, as our 10 years were up. The wife's new licence was received within 10 days but not mine. I have received a letter from the DVLA stating that the photo licence and paper licence were from two different issues ie. 77A and 77B. I remembered about eight years ago I misplaced my licences, left in an old locker at work, and ended up having to get them replaced. A few years later the old licences were handed back to me and I ended up with two sets. Since then I've hired many cars here and abroad and somehow must have got the two sets mixed up. I have yet again misplaced one set, for the life of me I don't know what I have done with them, and sent a mixed set to the DVLA. My question is, will they try and fine me for not returning/destroying my first set when I found them or do you think it's just proceedure?. I have to let them know with an explanation. Should I just tell them that when I found them I must have destroyed the wrong set by accident? By the way, there are and have never been any conviction points added at any time. Am I worrying about nothing? Thanks for reading Chelsea Blue

I am now resident in Australia ,have a clean Aus drivers licence and want to buy a car in UK rather than Rent. The UK insurance co's are gougers when it comes to premiums. To get a reasonable rate i need a UK licence . I have my expired licence which exp 1974 . Is it possible to get it renewed without all the rigmarole of a new test? After all, I can drive on my Australian Licence. I cant find any answer in DVLA nor email contact address Appreciate any advice. I travel Sept 1 2012

No renewal notice, suddenly the policy docs came in. I had never been happy with them... details were incorrect. I have taken out a new policy and they have taken one instalment.. been going for 4 days. I really don't want anything to do with them. What can I do?

Hi there, I've been stupidly careless and am now desperately worried about renewing our tax credits for the current year! I called TC back in August to let them know that I'd given up my office job to become f-t self-employed and that my twin daughters had stopped going to nursery. I gave them my new estimated income for the year which was a lot lower than previously due to being a fairly new business etc. Shortly after, our payments went up by quite a lot which I presumed was due to our change in circumstances. I'm now going through all the paperwork to complete our renewal for this year and seen that they'd set my husbands salary to £0, instead of the £20k I notified them of! I glanced over the award notice when it came at the time, but didn't notice the error All this means that the tax credits we've been receiving have been based solely on my salary and estimated income from self-employment i.e. only about £5k!! I received a letter from B&C Compliance Operations saying they were doing a random check on childcare which is fine and correct, but I also need to complete my annual declaration by 28 June which is now obviously going to be much higher than what our actual earnings were. I'm worried sick about what all this is going to mean. I'm struggling a bit with my business at the moment due to my daughters' change in sleep/behaviour and being on a long waiting list for council childcare. I should hopefully get a place for them come August which will mean my ability to earn will increase, but meanwhile I am paying my share of the bills out of my tax credits payments. I accept that I'll need to pay back the overpayment, but am scared that all payments will be stopped until it's all paid back. I'm expecting our earnings for the current year to be around £23k combined. Anyway, after that long rambling post, please can anyone give me a likely indication to the outcome of all this? Has this happened to anyone before? I see that TC get round mistakes they've made by saying that we should check their work so I'm guessing I won't be able to argue it at all? In short, PLEASE HELP ME I'm so scared!!

Hi, not really sure which forum this would belong in so hoping that somebody can move it for me once posted. basically my problem is this, last year I joined up to one of the many local golf clubs, paying for this by way of monthly direct debit (april 2011 - april 2012) this was fine, but come the start of a new year, I decided that i wouldn't continue as I didnt want to be tied to one club, and to be fair, I'm not currently playing enough to warrant paying £60/month. This month, my mortgage bounced, and as I was sure i had funds in there, i checked my account, only to discover that the club were still taking for membership. I called them earlier today, and it turns out that in their t&c (which I signed but as is so often the case, didn't read) they automatically renew the membership, unless i tell them not to, they have agreed to cancel the agreement, but refuse to refund money which in my opinion, they have conned me out of! can they do this, as I feel this to be completely wrong, and if I were to take this further, would the t&c stand up in court, as in my opinion, I don't think that the small print is read by most people (unless it's just me ) Would appreciate any help on this one, cheers, S.

Hi about 12 months ago I had "nudged" another car at a roundabout, there was no damage to either vehicle, the other party was clearly not [causing problems]- there has been no claim made. I did however have to inform our company insurance- it policy that even the most minor thing is declared! I renewed my personal policy about 1 month later, and was asked about claims etc, to which I answered non, as I did not really think this warranted a mention. I have now had to claim on my policy and am scared that my insurers find out about this and try to void my insurance or similar. Has anyone got any advice what to do? Do I leave it or do I fess up before it gets any worse? Many thanks

Hi, I am looking for some advice. I have just renewed my tax credits over the phone using exact income from P60's and have notified of 3 other changes at the same time. I am worried that my claim may be investigated again as last renewal, which I did by post, I used estimated income as I did not have the P60's at the time. When my second son was born last September, I rang them to inform them of the change and around a month later, received a letter staing that I had provided wrong income information for the previous year, even though I ticked estimate and still had time to give the proper ones. I then had my tax credits cut, making it very tight for income, so I returned to work early from maternity leave. I am worried that because of last year's investigation, the same will happen again, also because I made 3 changes in one go. Help, this is worrying me a lot and making em go through all sorts of scenarios in my head that I will be sent to prison etc. Thanks

just got a renewal from RAC today for an insane £5976 over a 1000 times more than the best quote i got online. Didn't hink much off it as it but re reading the letter they where going to automatically take payment with the card details i gave them when i first applied. So they where going to take neark £6K without my authorisation. Also they kept my card details stored on there system which is a breach of the payment card industries guidelines. If you currently with RAC then check and double check how muc they are charging you and make sure they are nt automatically take payment. I dont think RAC ahve done anything ilegal (altough i may be wrong) but they have certainley acted very poorly.

Hi all. I work in a commercial property for family. We do not use any Gas what so ever here however there is a meter installed on the premises. It may sound like a stupid question, but is it necessary for me to pay for gas if we don't use any in the first place? Can we not just state to our current Gas supplier, we do not want to renew our contract with you mr. Gas Supplier - and not enter into a contract of any sort with anybody..? Thanks in advance p.s. Apologies if this question has already been asked.

Help.. My tenancy is up for renewal for the property that I have been in for the last 12 month, I had an orginal contract for 12 months with a 6 month break clause. This is the first property that I have rented. The agency is putting my rent up by £15 per month and want me to pay a £100 renewal fee .. I've debated this and they have gone down to £75, I've asked them why I have to pay and what the fee includes, but after reading on this site i'm now sightly confused... I'm i right in thinking that if I do not renew, I go periodic which mean that I do nothing.. with no admin fee (put the downside is that my rent could go up at any time)?!? or are there other ways out of paying renewal fees? Any advise would be great.

Hi, we have recently signed a renewal to our 1 year tenancy agreement. In our original tenancy agreement we have the following break clause: "Mutual Break Clause It is hereby agreed that after Six months the Landlord or Tenant may be released from this Tenancy Agreement without prejudice to the rights and remedies of either party against the other in respect of any antecedent claims or breach of obligation set out herein subject to 2 (Two) calendar months clear written notice from the Landlord and 1 (one) calendar month clear written notice from the Tenant." When our initial 12 months was up, we signed a renewal of the original agreement stating the following: "The landlord and the Tenant takes a renewal of the original term within the agreement to commence on 08/09/2010 to end on 07/09/2011 at a rental of £X monthly and except as to the term and rent all other terms and conditions within the Agreement shall apply to this renewal. It is further agreed that the Tenant may at their option end and terminate the Tenancy by notifying the Landlord or the Landlords Agent in writing in which event the agreement shall cease and terminate one clear calnedar months after the date of delivery of such notice. Such notice may not be given until after 8 February 2011 The termination of the tenancy may not therefore take place before 7 March 2011 resulting in a minimum tenancy period of six calendar months This termination shall not affect any rights or liabilities which may have accrued under any other clause in this agreement." When I signed the renewal, I was nervous about the above terms, so asked via email whether we would still be able to terminate with one months notice under the break clause, and was in reply told that the notice period would still be one month. We have since given one months notice, to be told that we are bound until 7 March 2011 (which may or may not result in ongoing costs for us depending on when a new tenant is found). Because of the wording 'This termination shall not affect any rights or liabilities which may have accrued under any other clause in this agreement.' and the landlords email reassurance I was comfortable that the break clause still applied, but now am unsure. Does the renewal mean that the break clause is also reset (i.e require another 6 months)? Please help!