Reminiscing about the way things used to be…

Remember when you used to pop a first class letter in the post box and assume it would get to its destination the following day? The days when you even dared to believe that a second-class letter would get there within a day too if you were lucky? Oh how things have changed…

Now you pop a letter in the post and the delivery date is more of a lottery. If you are lucky a first class letter will arrive within a couple of days and second class??? Who knows?

This is in stark contrast to the claims about performance made by the Royal Mail (or whatever they call themselves these days)…

True story to prove the point…

I applied for a new credit card to replace my current Tesco Visa Card (see Tesco Personal Finance and forethought… now there’s an oxymoron!) The application was duly accepted and a credit agreement sent out to me for signing. This agreement was sent by First Class post and took 5 days to get to me.

I signed the agreement and sent it back the following day only to receive a second agreement in the post a couple of weeks later (which took 3 days to arrive first class).

When I contacted the credit card company I found out that the second agreement had been sent out when they failed to receive the first one back (it actually took over a week to get there).

It transpires that the reason credit card companies say 7 to 10 days for a replacement card has nothing to do with making the cards but actually the time it takes Royal Mail to deliver them!

I wonder if this is why Royal Mail is talking about doing away with second-class post? Nothing to do with their ability to deliver second class post quickly but more to do with the fact that they deliver first class post in second class times maybe?

It’s a shame Royal Mail management has lost sight of the fact that they are there to deliver post rather than to make as much money as possible?

Oh well, off to post another letter I guess.

That toothless old Lion…

I am of course talking about the Financial Services Authority.

Why am I saying this? Well I noticed today on www.thisismoney.co.uk that the FSA have been told that the fine they imposed upon Legal and General for miss selling endowment policies was probably unfair and will probably be reduced.

I have to admit that I am not sure of all the facts here but the news does stick in the craw a little as I was miss sold an endowment policy by Legal and General in 1990 and they have basically held two fingers up to me with my complaint.

Lets get one fact straight here; Legal and General (as with most other Life Assurance service providers) were guilty of miss selling endowment policies, of that there can be no doubt. Unfortunately they o hide behind small print for their defence.

And if you complain and get nowhere, you are supposed to turn to the FSA as a final means of arbitration. The problem here is the fact that the FSA seem powerless to actually do anything about this miss selling fiasco either through a lack of teeth or a lack of will.

So if those who are supposed to help you either can’t or won’t help out, that are you supposed to do?

The endowment injustice…

In the early 90’s I bought a house. There is nothing unusual there; neither is there anything unusual with the fact that I took out an endowment mortgage at the time too. After all, endowment mortgages were all the rage, combining slightly lower repayment rates with life assurance that guaranteed to pay your mortgage off if anything happened to you.

At the time of buying my house I was directed towards the “independent financial advisor” who worked at the estate agents for some mortgage advice. The advisor duly gave his advice recommending a step down mortgage with Britannia Building Society (with whom the estate agents had strong links) and an endowment policy with Legal and General.

Around this time, endowment policies had started getting a bit of bad press so I asked what I thought were pertinent questions, naively believing that the answers were actually worth anything.

The advisor went to great pains to point out the potential returns on my investment, which were forecast to give me an excess of around £15k when my mortgage was paid off. Yes this was the highest forecast return but this figure was concentrated on and when questioned what the likelihood of this return being achieved was, the financial advisor assured me that this return was not only achievable but should really be regarded as the lowest return I should expect.

How could I go wrong? So I bought the policy. What I didn’t realise at the time was that the “Independent” financial advisor was actually a Legal and General employee!

Anyway by 1988 I have got my self my own PC and I start putting my endowment details onto a spreadsheet. Once I’d done this it quickly becomes apparent that there is no way on gods green earth that the bonuses paid on my policy since day one were going to allow me to repay my mortgage at the end of the term, let alone give me an excess!

I contacted Legal and General about this and they initially played the problem down saying that it would all be OK in the end as they pay a large termination bonus. When I pointed out to them that this bonus would, in all probability, have to be equal to all previous bonuses for the mortgage to be repaid they agreed to review the performance of my plan for me. This they duly did and surprise, surprise, they came back and told me that the plan would not repay my mortgage for me!

In fact, if you look at the bonuses paid on my policy it was never on target to pay off my mortgage!

As you can imagine, I feel a little aggrieved at this. After all, I had taken the advisors advice in good faith (he was the expert when all said and done, not me) only to find out that it was a crock of sh1t (sorry).

I have since spent many a happy hour arguing the toss with Legal and General about whether the advice given to me by their employee was any good at all. So far their only response has been to say that they have reviewed the paperwork associated with my file and everything is in order. They usually throw in a couple of red herrings and then say that they were “not present at the time of the sale” and thus “cannot comment on what may or may not have been said”. Obviously it is exactly what was said that forms the basis of the complaint and thus this response is totally unacceptable to my mind.

I am a simply man and I expect to get what I pay for. After all, when someone sells me something and makes rash claims about it I’m afraid that I expect these claims to be upheld. It seems that this is not the case with the Financial Services sector in this country.

Yes, at the time of the sale it was pointed out that there was the potential for my endowment not to perform as predicted but this was very much played down by the advisor. As I said above, he even went as far as to assure me that I really should be viewing the higher forecast as the minimum I can expect at maturity!

Anyhow, the upshot of all this is that Legal and General have basically held two fingers up to me (and thousands like me). They ripped us off with endowment policies that were never on course to perform as said and alas there is nothing you can do about it other than bend over and take it like a man!

And the moral of this story? Trust no one, especially anyone associated with the financial services industry. They make simple things far more complicated than they need to be in order to hide pitfalls and small print and when it all goes wrong they’ll stand there with two fingers raised and dare you to do something about it.

Me, I’m cutting ties with Legal and General at the first available opportunity and won’t go back!

Snow...

Snow…

I came out this morning to a slight dusting of snow on my car. As I left the Park and Ride car park it started to snow a quite heavily and this got me thinking about driving in the snow. So here are my top tips for driving in the snow…

1. Lights, Camera… OK, just lights would be a start. They may not help you see any better but believe me, they help other road users see you. It’s a little disconcerting to have a silver Mondeo materialise out of the gloom 10 yards away just as you start to pull out of a junction!

2. Viewing the world through a 3” wide slit may make you feel like a Panzer commander, but you are not driving around in 50 tons of steel and are likely to suffer a bit when you fail to see another road user. The pedestrian you don’t see, on the other hand, will probably suffer pretty much the same effect however!

3. Not only is a good idea to clear ALL your windows of snow, but clearing your bonnet can be a good idea too. This prevents you suddenly getting blinded when the sheet of snow that has been sitting on a layer of melted water suddenly flies up and covers your windscreen just as the pedestrian starts to cross the road in front of you!

4. Not only is it a good idea to clear ALL your windows and your bonnet, it is also a good idea to clean all the rest of the snow of your car too. I admit that this will probably be of little benefit to you, but it does prevent the cyclist you have just gone hooning past getting a face full of snow as a section the size of a small principality gets dislodged by the pot hole you hit as a result of swerving to avoid the cyclist you didn’t see due to the tank slit of a windscreen misting up!

5. ABS doesn’t work people!!!! ABS only works when one wheel keeps turning. If you lock all four wheels at once in the snow, your ABS system thinks you have stopped and rather inconsiderately, allows you to slide into the stationary traffic in front of you. Don’t rely on ABS, its not big and its not clever! Learn to break in the snow!!

6. It’s cold, wet and slippery out there! Why not slow it down and leave a bigger gap?

7. The best way to tackle a slippery hill is not to stop at the bottom and then try to crawl up it, I can assure you that gravity will win that battle. Instead why not have a bit of confidence in your abilities and drive up the hill steadily without spinning the wheels? If you keep moving so can everyone behind you.

8. Wheel spin my impress the girlies… when you are about 12, but it’s not the best method for getting traction in the snow. If you start to slide why not pause for a second rather than flooring the throttle? If you are sliding the chances are that gravity is winning and losing all traction really will not help your cause!

In all seriousness, the secret to driving in the sow is to be smooth and gentle. You need to be confident in what you do and a little thought and consideration for everyone else on the road will make everyone’s life easier.

Have fun driving home…

The American Crusades…

One item in the news that caught my eye yesterday, was the revelation that the USA has Special Forces operating inside Iran…

If this proves to be the case is anyone really surprised?

Since America invaded Iraq (I’m sorry, but I’ve never been a fan of this war) they have been sabre rattling at other countries in the area (Iran and Syria being the most noticeable).

For a while now I have thought that these actions bear a striking resemblance to the actions that preceded the Iraqi invasion. A lot of sabre rattling and attempts to undermine national opinion of the regime by making false claims about WMD etc. before finally losing patience with democracy and using force.

To my eyes, this is now what the USA is doing to Iran. We have constant claims of a nuclear capability despite Iran appearing to bend over backwards to prove these claims false. Meanwhile work goes on behind the scenes in preparation for an assault.

I do believe that Hans Blix was never going to turn up any evidence of WMD in Iraq (as the American’s have subsequently proven). He was allowed to go about his business however, as a distraction while the USA freed up sufficient resources from other areas (Afghanistan).

The USA always intended to invade Iraq and I am sure they fully intend to invade Iran and/or Syria in the near future too and anything Iran do to placate the Americans will fall on deaf ears as minds have already been made up on the matter!

The real question is why are they doing this? Is it really for the oil or is it simply a modern day crusade to persuade these heretics to live the American dream?

And more importantly for us Brits, will George Bush’s lapdog (Heir Blair) follow America blindly into this conflict too?
I can’t help but think that these actions do set a rather unpleasant precedent. If America doesn’t like your ruler (be it a Monarch, President, Prime Minister or other) they now simply go in and take you and your government out! They are big enough to do it, appear not to care about international law or world opinion and lets face it, who’s going to argue with them…

Tesco Personal Finance and forethought… now there’s an oxymoron!

Anyone who knows me will know that since November I have been having a few problems with my Tesco Visa Card.

The problems all kicked off on the 6th November when some benevolent tealeaf made 5 donations to UNESCO using my Tesco Visa Card. On the up side, at least they were donating to charity with it???

Anyway, Tesco Personal Finance thought these transactions were a little out of sorts and tried to contact me but alas had no success (I work during the day and they were contacting me at home). Apparently they did leave a message on my answer phone but as no message was received I am a little concerned as to whose phone they left the message on??

When I got my next statement I noticed several payments to UNESCO that were not down to me so I contacted Tesco Personal Finance to report it to them.

Now this is where it all starts to go horribly wrong…

When I contacted Tesco Personal Finance to report the fraudulent activity the person I spoke to was totally unaware that these transactions had already been flagged as possibly fraudulent by Tesco Personal Finance themselves.

I then waited two weeks before contacting TPF again (having heard nothing from them). At this point I was informed that my file had been passed to the fraud department for investigation and that I needed to write to them confirming that I was not responsible for the transactions. This I duly did on the 8th December.

About a week later I received a letter asking me to contact them as a matter of urgency, which I did believing this letter was in response to my last letter. Alas no, it transpires that this letter was actually produced following Tesco Personal Finances inability to contact me on the 6th and 10th November! Yes, it took them a month to write to me to let me know they were trying to contact me, despite the fact that I had contacted them 3 times since then (twice by phone and once by letter).

Once contact had been made TPF told me that there had been some fraudulent activity on my account (didn’t I just say that???) and that the account would have to be closed and a new card issued. Not a huge problem other than the fact that it was 9 days before Christmas!!! This was pointed out to them but alas, them’s the rules.

I eventually received my new card on the 5th January having endured a very lean Christmas.

So what is the point of this rant? Well I thought it was a good example of what can go wrong when different departments of an organisation don’t talk to each other and how a little forethought would have allowed me to buy Ruth a Christmas present…

TPF suspected on the 6th November that my account had been compromised and I contacted them to confirm this on the 22nd. Unfortunately due to what appears to be a breakdown in communications, no one realised this and nothing more was done for another month (or there abouts).

This delay was further aggravated by TPF’s insistence on sending all correspondence by second class post!

Had there not been a communication breakdown, a new card could have been ordered on the 22nd November. It would then have been ready to send out to me much earlier than was the case in the end.
Unfortunately I fear this experience is par for the course when dealing with financial institutions in this country.

Banks...

Can anyone explain to me why it takes British banks so long to clear electronically transferred funds?

On new years day my bank processed a standing order, transferring funds to another account. This is nothing unusual, as I make this transfer every month. My question is where did the money go from the 1st (when it was taken out of one account) until today (when it appeared in the other)?

In the good old days, when we used to give each other cheques, I understand that clearing funds used to take a while. After all, the cheques needed to be sorted by hand, transported to the clearinghouse, handed over and payment made. But surely all this is now done by computers over a secure network these days? And surely with modern computers these transactions should be almost instantaneous?

Given that I can go anywhere in the world and withdraw cash from an ATM machine and it will debited from my account instantly, why the delay in transferring funds?

Before anyone takes the time to try and come up with any explanation other than the fact that it is example of the banks profiteering, let me point out that I know the banks make a lot of money by investing this ‘limbo cash’ on the markets and so obviously they would like to be able to invest it for as long as possible.

I wonder if the British Public will ever wake up to the fact that we are constantly being ripped off by the banks and demand a change in these practices?
After all, wasn’t it the chairman of Barclays that said to the treasury select committee that he saw nothing wrong with making excessive profits from his customers?

My first entry...

OK, here goes with attempt 2....

As you can see, this is my first ever Blog entry. As a result I thought it might be a good idea to use this entry as a brief introduction to what my Blog will contain (I hope).

It is my intention to use this Blog to rant about those random things in life that wind me up. This is not a frequent occurrence as anyone who knows me will realise that I'm usually pretty laid back about life.

Occasionally however, things come along that seem to me to defy all logic and reason. I intent to pass comment on these subjects in the naive belief that one day someone will look at these postings and come to view them as the lone voice of reason when things get all political.

I will also probably rant from time to time about my three favourite companies (that's sarcasm for you), these companies being ntl, Dixons and BSi.
So there you have it. Let the Bloging commence...