I sold an item on Etsy sent with myhermes and my customer didn’t receive it. The item was posted on December 11th but the buyer didn’t inform me they had not received until January 15th. I informed myhermes who said that they could not locate the parcel but would not pay compensation as I informed them after 28 days. The item is worth £20 so within the standard compensation rate. their terms state: You must notify us in writing of any claim for Loss or Damage or Late Delivery within 28 days of the date of the relevant Order. If you fail to do so, we will not be liable to you for it, except where you are able to prove that it was not possible for you to notify us of your claim in writing within this time limit. I offered as proof that I could not notify them as my buyer had not informed me of the loss. They have refused this as proof stating that proof is only where the sender has been hospitalised?! I’ve asked them to clarify the proof term and direct me to where this is written in their terms but they can’t provide this. I’d appreciate some help with moving forward with this please. Are they within their rights to refuse compensation and put a 28 day limit on informing them of a lost parcel? Can they refuse as proof the fact that I was not informed of the loss by my customer before the 28 day period?

Hi, I'm looking for general advice and a heads up on what the outcome might be of my issues with nPower, based on the experience of people who know better! I've lived in my current (rented) property for almost 4 years in that time I've lived with 5 different flatmates; flatmate A from August 2013 to March 2014; flatmate B from March 2014 to September 2014; flatmate C from September 2014 to March 2015; flatmate D from March 2015 to February 2016 and flatmate E has been with me since February (2016). The gas/electric bills have always been in my flatmate's name and we'd been with nPower for both gas and electricity up 'til March 2015 when we tried to switch. The electricity switch went fine, but we were told that nPower were objecting to the gas account move. I phoned nPower and asked what was going on, knowing that flatmate D had submitted a final meter reading before moving out. nPower told me that they did not supply gas to the property and could not find any gas account linked to my address. They recommended I phoned the National Grid to find out who was supplying me, which I did and they too said it seemed that nobody was supplying me (which was odd because I was getting gas). I checked again with nPower who insisted it was not them and was unable to make any progress. We received no gas bills up until October 2015, when I received 13 months' worth of estimated gas bills from nPower, totalling more than £500, along with a letter 'welcoming' me to nPower. This was all in my name, for the first time, when I logged into the account online, there was a new account for me, as well as the old account which would have been in flatmate D's name both attributed to me. I made an initial payment of £155.32, knowing that we were liable for some of the money and set about speaking to nPower to clarify what was going on and to get accurate bills. Within a month of this, nPower has passed my details on Richburns debt collection agency who sent me a letter stating their intention to seek a warrant to enter my property. At this stage, I'd logged an official complaint to nPower and understood that my account was on hold and as such, the collections process should have been paused. I sent Richburns a letter stating this and highlighting the customer service and billing issues it was well publicised that nPower were guilty of, they replied to tell me that they'd passed the matter back to nPower. Following this, I received a letter from nPower again threatening to seek a warrant and also to place a default on my credit record. At this point (25/01/16) I phoned the customer service team who assured me there was a hold on the account and no further bills would be issued until we understood what was going on and that the threats would not be carried out as there was a complaint logged. After this I received a bill and I made a second phone call, seeking an update (01/02/16), where I was told that there was indeed a hold (until 31/05/16) and the bill shouldn't have been issued, as the matter had been passed to the 'specialist' billing team who could generate an accurate bill. I was told that everything would be investigated and I'd receive an email to confirm everything, and to disregard the bill. No such email materialised and the bill wasn't reversed, as promised. I heard nothing and chased with another phone call on 05/02/16 when I was told that the complaint had been closed on 25/01/16. At this point I discovered nPower had raised 3 different complaint numbers and muddled everything up - the one complaint was closed , that all issues were all consolidated into one. After being given the correct complaint number, I was asked why I was disputing the bill. Prior to this call I'd done some reading and come across the backbilling policy that nPower were signed up to and knew that some of the bill should not have been chased I raised this, and explained that I was seeking an accurate bill as opposed to ridiculous estimates (we had given a meter reading to bring everything up to date 02/02/16). The guy on the phone said as far as he could see, I'd been contacted to say everything had been investigated. This had not happened; no letter, no emails, no missed calls. He went on to say there was an accurate bill which had been recently generated, which I logged into my online account and saw, but I'd had no email to alert me to it before this phone call. At this point the bill had ballooned to £625 with costs from debt collection visits and calls. I again raised the fact that it was not accurate as they needed to remove the 'backbilled' amount and he said they'd investigate to write off that one month. I told him that I wanted to go away and check that this latest bill was indeed accurate, given that I'd only just seen it and that I wanted the charges removed because they should never have passed the account to collections, which he did actually do after the call; crediting that £57.50 to the account. He said he'd get the backbilling team to investigate the outstanding amount and come back to me with an up-to-date bill. During this phone call I said I'd be seeking compensation given their failing to bill me for over a yea r and then seeking 13 months' of bills in one go, as well as their abysmal customer service given that Id had to do so much chasing and been kept so misinformed. The guy said he'd note that I was seeking compensation but warned that I couldn't claim for phone calls/time; just the backbilling and the customer service. He asked if I had an amount in mind and I said I'd wait to see what they offered. I heard nothing from nPower for the next two weeks and having given the compensation some real thought, I sent an email to nPower informing them that I was seeking £400 compensation. The email was as follows: To whom it may concern, On Friday 5th February, having spent 40 minutes on hold, I spent 20 minutes speaking to Sam, one of you customer service advisors, seeking an update on billing issues with my gas account (ref. XYZ). Sam assured me that he'd add a 'miscellaneous credit' to my account to reimburse me for fees relating to debt collection agencies - who should never have been approached. This has now happened. He also said he'd pass my account onto the back-billing team to remove a bill from September 2014, which was only actually billed in October 2015, and that I'd receive a new bill taking this into account. I am still awaiting any update on this, some 15 days later. I also made Sam aware that I would be seeking compensation for the total lack of customer service I'd received and for the fact that I'd been billed 13 months' worth of bills in October 2015, having received nothing for over a year and despite me trying to make payments. Sam asked if I had a figure in mind and I said I would wait to hear from you. Having heard nothing, and having spent time over the past two weeks reflecting on the impact of this saga on me, I am now writing to inform you that I seek £400 total in compensation, for the reasons outlined below. I expect a prompt response outlining what is going on with my account and when and how I should expect to receive compensation from you. Yours faithfully, MY NAME 1. Billing delays Your website states: We will provide compensation to any customer who we incorrectly back billed from July 2010 to 31st December 2015, to a value not less than £100 per customer We will provide compensation to any customer currently affected by late invoice for 12 months or more as at 31st December 2015, to a value not less than £100 per customer I received 13 months' of bills (from September 2014 to October 2015) and an immediate demand for payment in October 2015 having received no bills, and even being told Npower didn't supply my gas, throughout that period. Given that I meet both your criteria for redress, I am seeking compensation from Npower for billing delays. TOTAL SOUGHT FOR BILLING DELAYS: £100 2. General customer service My issue was not resolved within 10 working days as per your complaints policy [here I included a link to their complaints policy page] to-date it has actually taken more than 90 days since first contact and I have not been informed of progress throughout; rather I’ve sent 2 letters, countless emails and made 3 phone calls (spending more than an hour on hold) to chase updates and unfulfilled promises Such chaos has there been around my account, that even when I've tried to make payments in the past year, I was told I was not on your system and had no gas account with you; I was not receiving bills and it was impossible to make any payment given there being no account according to your team You state [here I included a link to their page which details what they're doing as of the latest December 2015 issue] We will identify and repay any customer who we incorrectly back billed from July 2010 to 31st December 2015 and yet I had to point this issue out to you; you did not identify any issues with my account until I raised the back-bill in my phone call with Sam on 05/02/2016 - in fact you were still seeking payment for the out-of-date bill at that point, contravening the Energy UK guidelines which you signed up to You raised multiple complaints (X, Y and Z) and made no contact to let me know anything had been resolved (even if it your ‘resolution’ was just consolidating two complaints into one), leading to total confusion and delaying communication with customer services about my issues A pitiful level of care and attention has been given to my communications as is evident in your reply dated 20/01/2016 , when the copying and pasting of my email was blatant (you failed to replace ‘my’ with ‘your’) and you mis-spelled basic information such as the address [i copied and highlighted the errors here] All of the above suggests my issues have been handled with nowhere near the level of care and importance they should have been, especially given your repeated promises to the Ombudsman that you will handle and resolve complaints more effectively. TOTAL SOUGHT FOR ABYSMAL CUSTOMER SERVICE: £150 3. Inconvenience and stress Such was the stress of this episode, and particularly the threat of entry to my property from Richburns (acting on Npower’s behalf) to seek a disputed debt, I spent several months taking high value items including a MacBook computer and family heirlooms including jewellery to work everyday to avoid them being taken away in my absence I have experienced serious anxiety, triggering asthma which I have not suffered from since childhood, which has massively impacted by wellbeing and quality of day-to-day life TOTAL SOUGHT FOR INCONVENIENCE AND STRESS: £50 4. Failure to uphold the Data Protection Act and unnecessarily passing my details into Richburns Debt Collection agency The Data Protection Act of 1998 states that: Personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date In passing inaccurate data on me on to Richburns and wrongly seeking payment for a disputed debt, I believe you contravened this act and risked damage to my reputation I am aware that following intervention by The Guardian's Consumer Champions, [here I inserted a link to a Guardian Consumer Champion's article] you previously awarded £100 in compensation to a customer who wrongfully received a visit from a debt collection agency acting on your instruction and I expect the same in this instance TOTAL SOUGHT FOR MISHANDLING OF DATA: £100 TOTAL SOUGHT FOR ALL OF THE ABOVE: £400.​ The week after this, I logged into my online account and saw lots of 'transfers' and 'reversed bills' applied, making my balance £0. I submitted a meter reading and it became approx. £19. As expected, nPower failed to reply to my email within the 7 working days they state they will. I received a voicemail from a different customer service team member on 01/03/16 asking me to call back, which I did today, speaking to someone who had no idea what was going on. He informed me that the backbilling team had sent the query back to them because they weren't sure which account the questions were around; but I only have one (gas) account with nPower! He agreed this was odd but explained that they wanted to just credit the account with £60 to save the backbilling team investigating, but hadn't done so yet because of the 'goodwill gesture' of £400 that I was seeking. He explained he could do the £60 reversal for the backbilling and give me a goodwill gesture of £30, to which my response was 'Are you joking?!'. He claimed it was a reasonable amount. I told him that the nPower website states that in response to the latest (December 2015) issues with the Ombudsman, any customer still affected by backbilling would receive no less than £100 in compensation, and he told me he wasn't aware of it but could offer £40 to make it £100. I told him this would not do, because the backbilling is seperate to the compensation; as I understand it they CANNOT charge me for that month that they billed me for some 13 months later. Any compensation I seek should be seperate to this. I also highlighted the issues I'd experienced (he hadn't read the LONG email i sent) and explained why I was seeking £400; it not being some random amount I'd plucked out of thin air. He said he'd log that I wouldn't accept the £40 and that now the matter would be passed on to Stage 2 for the complaint to be reviewed and I stressed that they need to look at my email again. As I understand it, the bill is going back to the backilling team to figure out what needs to be written off and I have to wait to hear regarding my complaint. I also asked him why my account went back to £0 and he said it was because they'd credited payments from old accounts to the new account so it was up to date. I presume he refers to payments flatmate C and/or D made before they stopped billing us. Is it not ridiculous that they've just figured out we might not even owe them anything!? I'm still not clear whether we do or don't, because billing is still on hold given the lock from the complaint. I'm utterly exhausted with all this. All I want is some fair compensation, and the mess to be resolved so that I can switch suppliers. As I understand it, there's every chance that Stage 2 will involve another laughable offer and then it'll likely go to deadlock and I'll need to complain to the Ombudsman. I guess I'm looking for advice - have I done everything I need to? What else can I do at this point? Also should I expect to have to go to the Ombudsman? Any help very much appreciated. Thank you!

I've taken my 1.5 year old sheepskin jacket to the American Dry Cleaning Company early in February. The lady who served me encouraged me to bring as many items as I could to take advantage of the discount they had in the shop. She also offered to become the member of the dry cleaners so i could get a further discount on dry cleaning service, which I did. She could not find the classification for my jacket leather type in the system and put the normal leather jacket instead of sheepskin in the system and on the receipt. There was a lot of other paper work and she filled in a lot of different forms and asked me to sign lots of them. She said it was just some formality and she needed me to sign it so she can send the items to the specialist for dry-cleaning. When I raised a question about the quality of their service for sheepskin type of leather she said that they send it off to the specialist and he is really good and they never had any issues with him and I should not worry. I've taken her word on that and left my jacket with them. Few weeks later it came back shrunk few sizes, lost color and shine, with disintegrated belt hooks and faded trimming on the button holes and around the edges. It looked horrible! I've refused to accept it and it was sent back to the specialist for investigation and repair. When it was returned few weeks later, it was in not much better condition and I've decided to file for the compensation. The shop assistant filled in the form and sent it to the head office. After not hearing from them for few weeks I called them and was told that it’s being assessed by the specialist and they will come back to me in few days time. I called a week later and was told that it's been repaired again and apparently looks amazing and I should go and collect it from the local shop in the next day. This is not what I was expecting as the jacket was already repaired once and I didn't accept it. Anyway, when I went to the shop to take a look, it turned out they forgot to send it. It's been 2 months since I've left my jacket for cleaning and it's almost April now, the timing it completely unreasonable and the jacket is ruined as far as I am concerned. I had a chat with the customer service person and also with the shop manager who completely refused to compensate me and said that he will only refund the cost of the cleaning, nothing else. He said that I've signed the form where I was warned about the risks and this relieves them of any responsibility for compensation. I've tried to explain that I was not given any copies of such document, and the shop assistant didn't explain in full detail what the forms I was signing were for. I was left under impression it was just to describe what type jacket it was as they had no sheepskin classification in their system and to describe the condition of the item. I feel like complete idiot for being duped like this as the lady who served me seemed so genuine and told me that I have nothing to worry about and the leather specialist they are working with is really good and never had any issues. Today I called the TSA (trading association) for help and they said that this particular company is not their member hence they can't help me. It's very strange as the company's website mentioned that they follow TSA service guidelines, etc... To make things worse, I also don't have a receipt for the jacket as it was bought for cash in a boutique shop abroad almost 1.5 years ago. I paid almost 1500 pounds for it but it never crossed my mind to keep the receipt for such long time. Please help me with some advice; I really don't know what to do now! Shall I go to the small claims court or try to write or talk to any other consumer rights organizations. I don't really know what my rights are in this case. Can I get at least some of the cost of the jacket? My heart bleeds to see that so much money was wasted. I've been saving for a year to buy a jacket like this and didn't get much time to wear it, and now I'll have to buy a new jacket (not as nice and definitely not as expensive) for the next winter. Thank you, Inna

The owner of Argos and Homebase has set aside £25m to compensate customers who were mis-sold payment protection insurance policies on household purchases ranging from televisions to kitchens. The charge, which equates to 25% of Home Retail's profits this year, relates to PPI cover offered to shoppers who bought goods on credit through its financial services arm. Although the store group has made similar provisions before, they were not made public as the amounts were thought too small to be material. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/mar/13/argos-homebase-compensate-sold-ppi-home-retail