Monthly Archives: December 2011
Scam warnings over festive season
Trading Standards Warnings(for Blackpool and Fylde residents)
21 December 2011
Cold Weather Warnings & Current Scams
Cold calling for property repairs during bad weather
Lancashire residents are to be warned not to do business with doorstep callers who may offer to carry out repairs to property after the spell of bad weather. A lady in the Lytham St Annes area recently paid £6,000 for some roof repairs when in fact no work had been carried out.
As usual, the advice is to only use reputable trades people, rather than cold callers who may not give correct details. For help in finding a trader to carry out property repairs, contact Help Direct on 0303 333 1111 or go to www.safetrader.org.uk.
Telesales for security systems
Currently Preston and Broughton areas are reporting receiving telephone calls from a business offering to fit security alarms, falsely claiming to be working with the Police. The business will make an appointment to call at your home.
Trading Standards advice is to say no to such sales visits, which can often use high pressure selling techniques to get you to sign up. Telesales calls can be significantly reduced by joining the Telephone Preference Service, to register for this free service ring 0845 0700707.
Energy prepayment cards
Reports have been received of door to door sales of half price energy pre payment cards for household meters. Do not be tempted to buy these over the doorstep – they will not work and you will have to pay again for the legitimate card.
Unsolicited shower fitting
Lancashire residents are receiving a card through their doors advising their shower fitting is on the way, if you do not want it please contact us within 10 days with your name and address details. This is a legitimate company, the shower fitting is free but Trading Standards advice is beware of who you pass your personal details onto.
Please also be aware you are under no duty to return any unsolicited goods received and you do not have to pay for them.
Unsolicited energy saving devices
Householders throughout the country are receiving telesales calls claiming to be their energy supplier or working in partnership with them, offering a plug in device which they say can save them 40 per cent off their energy bills. The device costs £99.
Trading Standards have had a number of the items tested which not only fail to satisfy electrical safety but do not deliver any tangible energy savings.
Hong Kong Bank Scam
This banking scam is still doing the rounds, currently in Lytham St Annes and Ormskirk. The personally addressed letter explains that a client with the same name as the recipient has died and left $6.8 million unclaimed.
Hiu Au-Yeung suggests that the recipient could receive 50% of this sum, just for providing their details so that the money can be transferred out of Hong Kong . The letter asks for no money or details at this point but similar scams rely on asking for money to pay for administrative details and using the victim’s bank details to steal from their account.
Earlier this month, Trading Standards warned of a similar scam involving a letter purporting to be from Pan Wang Ong, from the Hung Kai Finance Company in Hong Kong .
Refer any complaints to Lancashire Trading Standards Service, Room D21, County Hall, Preston, Lancs PR1 3NU via Consumer Direct tel 08454 040506.
Filed under notyetavet
Truth behind the Winter Payment fuel subsidy
Npower fined £2m over complaints 31October 2011
Npowerhas been fined £2m by the energy regulator for failing to handle complaintsproperly.
Ofgemhanded down the fine after investigations found that npower had failed torecord all the required details of complaints receieved and failed to providecustomers whose compalints it could not resolve with some key details about theredress service provide by the Energy Ombudsman.
Theprovider also failed in some respects to put in place adequate policies andprocesses for dealing with complaints in an efficient and timely manner,according to the regulator. Ofgem says npower has addressed and remedied allthe breaches of the regulations identified.
The movecomes after the regulator fined British Gas £2.5m in July this year for breachof the same regulations. Ofgem has also revealed it is investigating the way inwhich EDF Energy handles complaints.
A spokesperson for npower says a small number of processes were not correctlyadhered to.
He says: “Ofgem is now satisfied that all problems have been rectified and weare fully compliant with our obligations to our customers. We have zerotolerance for this type of issue and we’ll continue to work hard to make sureour customers are put first.”
A spokesperson for npower says a small number of processes were not correctlyadhered to.
He says: “Ofgem is now satisfied that all problems have been rectified and weare fully compliant with our obligations to our customers. We have zerotolerance for this type of issue and we’ll continue to work hard to make sureour customers are put first.”
SarahHarrison, Ofgem’s senior partner for sustainable development, says: “Consumershave a right to expect that energy companies will comply with the standards. Npowerfailed to do so and although it took remedial action, it has incurred a penaltyfor failing consumers.
“Energysuppliers now have a golden opportunity to convince consumers that they can betrusted, by getting behind Ofgem’s sweeping reforms for the retail market. Thisis the quickest way of restoring consumer trust in an industry badly tarnishedby poor supplier behaviour.”
Npower, in receipt ofinformation from Government departments reference the subsidy of tax payers moneytowards Winter Fuel costs, sit glibly at the end of the telephone line and donot address the concerns of customers whose bills they increased by 30%. What is so insidious is that Npower alreadyknows which of their customer’s bills they were going to increase. That 30% increase is then explained in aletter to the distressed customer as an act of overwhelming charity to thecustomer in that subsidy to a select few.
Not a word oftruth. Npower will be paid twice and thetax payer picks up the convoluted arithmetic formula that will see theelectrical supply companies profits swell at the expense of everyone. Like windpower being a viable source ofelectrical generation, just pure propaganda.
Filed under notareargunner
Another warning on bailiffs
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Bailiffs to increase debtors’ fees as councils seek cut of profit
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Harrow council expects to raise £1m by making bailiffs hand over 8% of their fees. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian
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Increasing numbers of households struggling with debts such as unpaid council tax will face the extra burden of rising fees levied on them by bailiffs after moves by councils to make more money from debt collection companies, according to bailiffs and advocates for vulnerable debtors.
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The north-west London borough of Harrow expects to make £1m by making bailiffs hand over 8% of their fees. Other councils, under pressure to cope with austerity-driven cutbacks, are understood to be considering similar profit-sharing arrangements.
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The move has been condemned by bailiff companies and by advocates for debt relief, who claim that it will lead to bailiffs pushing up fees and pursuing vulnerable people even more vociferously in an effort to maintain profits.
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“It’s going to create the level of competition that I don’t believe should be created in an industry that has to deal with vulnerable people,” said Jamie Waller, a bailiff and the founder of the JBW Group.
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John Kruse, a leading expert on bailiff law in the UK, who also works for Citizens Advice in east London, agreed that the financial burden would be shouldered by vulnerable debtors. “What some of the more image-aware members of the sector are saying is that if bailiffs are asked to pay money to councils then that has to come from somewhere and the way it is going to be produced will be by bailiffs upping the fees that they are charging or being more aggressive about the way they chase people,” he said. “The amounts that they collect at the moment are fees that they are allowed to collect by statute. That’s their profit, so if the council is saying, ‘We want to cut that profit now,’ then it’s either a case of the bailiffs making less money, which is unlikely, or they collect more money one way or another.”
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In this latesteconomic climate – brought about by poor Lieber governance – the burden on themost disadvantaged will increase exponentially as councils seek more ways ofparting people with their money.
There are too many factors for one simple articleto cover, but I shall try.
The case of vulnerability has been brushed underthe legal carpet by everyone except victims and their families. BlackpoolMagistrates courts pay lip service to combating what is fraud by aknowledgeable group of perpetual social claimants, rather than address theirlegal obligation and “duty of care” to real vulnerable people caughtin the debtors trap. Charles Dickens would have had to work for a thousandyears to write stories that cover the atrocities perpetrated by bailiffs onbehalf of our dysfunctional legal system.
For Andy Miller, whose birthday should have beenon the 24th of December, but who died when bailiffs ignored his fraildisposition after he had suffered a stroke and heart attack just weeks earlier.
There are too many factors for one simple articleto cover, but I shall try.
The case of vulnerability has been brushed underthe legal carpet by everyone except victims and their families. BlackpoolMagistrates courts pay lip service to combating what is fraud by aknowledgeable group of perpetual social claimants, rather than address theirlegal obligation and “duty of care” to real vulnerable people caughtin the debtors trap. Charles Dickens would have had to work for a thousandyears to write stories that cover the atrocities perpetrated by bailiffs onbehalf of our dysfunctional legal system.
For Andy Miller, whose birthday should have beenon the 24th of December, but who died when bailiffs ignored his fraildisposition after he had suffered a stroke and heart attack just weeks earlier.
Filed under notareargunner
Thought Police strike again
It is alleged that a large group of homosexual MP’s are to raise the matter that sexy Terry has not, repeat not shagged any of them so they want him further charged with homophobic tendencies. It will give his colleagues wives a chance to establish reasonable alibis for the time that they were absent from team training in the Captains suite.
A legal spokesman said that that lots of people were on his back. No. Up it. Statements were poorly reported by Rusty Morgan who said his Old Paper had not paid for the illegal telephone interception and that the page three girl was definitely over 16 and was not having an affair with an ancient Man U striker.
Amplify’d from www.channel4.com
John Terry faces racism charge
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1l0r6
Filed under notareargunner
Argentina rattles Sabre again.
Just a gentle reminder of why hundreds of Brits died!
Amplify’d from politics.co.uk
Comment: The thuggery of Argentina’s Falklands claim
Argentina’s (mostly illusionary) economic resurgence has a disappointing side-effect. It prompts regular bouts of sabre-rattling over the Falklands Islands.
Its glamorous president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, is prone to issuing tetchy attacks on Britain, not least of all her insistence that the UK is “a crass colonial power in decline”. That last point is neither entirely false nor particularly interesting, but it is about 50 years out of date.
It’s been getting worse recently. British licensed fishing boats are being intercepted by Argentina. It announced last year that boats sailing to or from the Falkland, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands would require permission to pass through Argentine water.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1kzcl
Filed under notareargunner
Filed under notareargunner
Born Poor, Taxed to Death – unless you are…
“It is extremely disappointing that senior HMRC officials were not prepared to cooperate with our inquiry in a spirit of openness. We accept that there is a need for confidentiality to protect individual taxpayers, but this must not be used as a cloak to protect the department from scrutiny,” Ms Hodge added.
It is shameful that Ms Hodge forgets to tell her public that this is but a part of the legacy of ineptitude left by her Lieber government. Small wonder our grandchildren will have to pay for her administrative stupidity.
Amplify’d from www.politics.co.uk
UK Uncut vindicated? Commons report backs protest group
The public accounts committee (PAC) substantiated claims from UK Uncut, which campaigns against corporate tax avoidance, and suggested there are £25 billion of outstanding tax issues with big companies which Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has failed to deal with.
“This report is a damning indictment of HMRC and the way its senior officials handle tax disputes with large corporations,” PAC chair Margaret Hodge said.
“We uncovered both specific and systemic failures which must be addressed.”
The £25 billion bill alluded to in the report is bigger than the entire UK deficit in 2002 and only slightly below the £30 billion level in 2006.
The sum is equivalent to £1,000 for every British family or a cut of 6p from the basic rate of income tax.
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1kwlk
Filed under notareargunner
Oz also having trouble with Medi records
The whole issue of Medical recording of patients information is a political hot-potato in every country that has tried to install digital regimes. One main problem it the complete lack of security and then the human failings of the criminal who will make massive and invasive attempts to use our data to satisfy his greed.
In a country as vast as Australia the problem is acute but often, thankfully, becomes visible before any damage can be done. The unfortunate paradox is that it cost fortunes to remedy.
It ought to be a matter of interest for all Health Authorities to combine their collective wisdom and share their knowledge, or lack of it, openly with each other, for the benefit of everyone and not a selective few entrepreneurs or digital sharks.
Amplify’d from www.theaustralian.com.au
Time is running out on e-records, says GP body
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a1kvbu
Filed under notareargunner
Voice in a billion? Supporting the Cameron Islander
As an Island Race we have centuries of being alone. We thrived. Now, if the immigrants want us to become part of Greater Europe, they have a choice. Go and leave us Brits alone.
Filed under notyetavet
Res ipsa loquitur
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