Archive for the ‘ Rip off ’ Category

BT broadband cancellation

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Nearly 2 years ago I have decided to take BT Business Broadband package for my business as I thought that having it directly from BT might give me a better speed and service.

BT Business Broadband packages don’t come cheap – mine was £45.00 / month – so for that price you would expect something better than the maximum speed of up to 4MB.

After the first few months I have realised that Support is far from good – you still have to spend a lot of time in the queue waiting for someone to answer the phone.

The time has come and I’m moving to the new house and I need to have a broadband in the new place as well – so I call BT Business Support and what I’ve found out just by accident – simply because I asked, that if I’m moving the service over to the new address my contract is automatically renewed for another 24 months.

When I’ve found this out I have decided that even thou I have still 4 months left with my current contract I want to cancel it even thou I will have to pay for the next 4 months.

But guess what – even that wasn’t that easy – after about 10 minutes waiting for someone to pick up the phone on the other line … – anyway – have a listen to my conversation with the BT Cancellation department representative and find out for yourself.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Two days later…

I have just received the confirmation letter of my cancellation from BT and I’m really disappointed – have a look at what they’ve written:

“Thank your for your request to end your BT Business Total Broadband Option 3 service. Your service will stop on 26/08/2009.
We’ll send you a final bill soon. This will include:

  • charges for any remaining months of your controact term – if you’ve ended your service during your contrac
  • charges for 28 days after the date of your request plus a charge of £22 (ex VAT) – if you’ve ended your service after your contract term has finished, unless you’re switching to another provider using the standard migration process.

Please note: you’ll continue to be charged  for other services that you may have with us (e.g. Internet Security Pack, Internet Business Pack) unless you’ve asked us to stop these, too. If you wish to cancel these services, please call the relevant helpdesk.”

Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t that mean that if my contract has expired, they will charge me for not renewing it £22, and they will also charge me for another 28 days after the day I’ve requested to cancel my account.

Also – the thing about canceling separately all additional things they have given to me without asking for them – that’s just outrageous!!!

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NatWest additional (hidden) charges?

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Today I had to transfer some money from my business account to the supplier abroad.
The transfer was for £1300.00 and according to NatWest’s website, I should be chared £20.00 :
NatWest Sending money abroad.

However, this evening I’ve checked my account on-line and found out that NatWest charged me £28.50.

This wasn’t the first time I was sending payment to my suppliers abroad and the charge was always £20.00 -- today however it raised up to £28.50.

I have called NatWest, but all they could say was to go to my branch and ask them -- as if I didn’t have anything better to do.

NatWest charges their business customers for the account on the monthly basis -- clearly that’s not enough.

UK Banks and unlawful charges

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Banks and their Rip-Off interest rates

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Today I came across the article published on the telegraph.co.uk website about the banks being accused of ripping off customers by charging extortionate interest rates of up to 21% on personal loans.
You can read the entire article here: Rip-off interest rates on personal loans.

My favorite quote from this article is the money-saving expert Martin Lewis’s:

“If you walk into your bank for a loan without checking the market for the best deal you may as well have the words ‘rip me off’ tattooed across your forehead.”

The truth is that last year I had to take a loan to buy a new car – if I knew what’s just about to happen (with the Credit Crunch and all prices going down) I would most probably wait a little bit longer.

I’ve been with NatWest for several years now. My wife and I have personal accounts with them and our business account is also with them.
I blindly believed that because of this and because we are good customers (regular payments etc.) we can get a good interest rate on our new loan.

At the time they were advertising their loans at the interest rate of around 7% APR – which sounded extremely attractive.

Without thinking twice I’ve decided to apply and my loan request has been approved, but for some reason interest rate has jumped up to 15.9 % APR.

I needed the new car so I had to accept it, but one decision I’ve made after this, was that I will never go to NatWest asking for a loan again.

These days we have many options, there are price comparison websites – try them first and do not blindly believe that your bank is going to care about your interest – because they won’t. They are only interested in making profit and by becoming their client – you’re becoming their target.

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NatWest credit cards

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

A few months ago my NatWest Credit Card has expired and for some reason I wasn’t able to renew it.

I went to the bank to find out why, as all my accounts are paid on time, no major problems etc. and for some reason they’ve decliend to issue the new card.
Well – I wasn’t too worry about it as I didn’t use this card that much anyway, but a few weeks ago, when I wanted to close the account associated with this card over the phone, I’ve been told that my new card has been sent to me a couple of weeks ago.

As you can imagine I was quite surprise, and I have explained to the NatWest Credit Card representative that my application for reneval has been declined just a few months ago. He couldn’t say why this has happened, but did try to make me stay with them oferring me some “Great Deals”.

I’m quite fed up with NatWest – a few weeks ago I was 2 days late with the payment on my credit card which had balance of £60.00 and they’ve charged me £12.00 for the late payment.

So even thou the NatWest representative was trying to convince me to stay, I said that I definitely want to cancel my account.

Today I’ve received the letter from NatWest confirming the closing of the credit account, however what I’ve found out is that even thou your card is cancelled, they can still charge you money if someone will request the money from them in the form of any recurring transactions (annual subscriptions or memberships ect).

Well, this means to me that even if I have cancelled my memberships, payments etc. and the company still keeps my Credit Card details, they still will be able to take money from me because NatWest simply won’t stop it.

Here’s what the letter says:

“Please make sure that any recurring transactions (e.g. annual subscriptions or memberships) are stopped with the relevant retailers, as we will have to continue to pay these until the authority has been cancelled by you.”

NatWest doesn’t seem to be very helpful here – do they?

This simply means that if someone has been taking money from you and the only way for you to cancel these payments is to cancel your credit card – than with NatWest it’s not going to solve the problem at all – as they will still allow the other party to take the money of your non-existing credit card.

Correct me if I’m wrong – but this is what I understand from this statement.

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Be Aware – list of the RIP-OFF companies in the UK

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

The list below contains the names of the companies which have rip their clients off – so that you are aware of what you can expect.
Check this list from time to time for new additions – and also, if you know of any companies which rip people off – feel free to list them here with some short description of your experience.

  • Tiscali – read and listen to the phone conversation here: Tiscali phone line and broadband
  • Top Choice – I’m not sure whether this company still exists – they ripped off a large number of people who have signed up with them. They were providing an on-line courses and I happen to be a victim myself – over £4000.00 loan and company has disappeared after 2 months. After 5 years I’m still paying off the loan.
  • SheriffRatings.com – read the story here: Four ninety nine – what does it mean?
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Four ninety nine – what does it mean?

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

Recently my sister was a victim of a quite clever scam which cost her quite a bit of money as you’ll soon find out.

The company is called SheriffRatings.com who has called her several times offering Google Package which basically mean that they create the entry for her business within their directory -- which by they way isn’t easy to find on google anyway.

After several times saying no to their offer, they said that they can offer it to her for only “four ninety nine” -- so to make sure they won’t call her again, she said OK -- if it’s only four ninety nine then ok.

So, what she’s done was to give them her card details plus the address etc (that’s right -- silly girl). Very soon she has realised what it really was.

A few days later she’s checked her account balance on-line -- and what she found out was that there was a payment made to SheriffRatings.com for £499.00. I don’t think I have to tell you how angry she was.

She’s send them an email asking what’s happend, she has even called them and afrer they’ve listened to the recorded conversation they said that the representative said four ninety nine which for them means 499 and that they wont refund the money.

I believe you could argue here, but for me four ninety nine clearly means £4.99 -- if I was about to suggest 499 then I would most probably say four nine nine -- but that’s what I would do and there’s no specific rule for the shortcuts I guess.

After that she went to the bank to tell them to stop any future payments to the SheriffRatings.com, however a week later she’s been charged another £233.83 and she’s found out about it first by receiving an email from them with the invoice for: Google 75 Tariff (75 Leads) + Yahoo + MS -- which she definitely didn’t order.

Again -- phone call, email, but no response. What she had to do was to close her bank account and open new one with other bank to prevent herself from the future charges as the bank didn’t seem to respond to her request.

Just to make sure that you won’t become a victim of this scam, here are the details of the rip off company taken from their invoice:

Sheriff Directories Ltd
Unit K302
Tower Bridge Business Complex
1 0 0 Clements Rd
London
SE16 4DG
VAT Reg No: 877162689

Their website address is: www.sheriffratings.com -- you can check for yourself -- and remember:

DO NOT GIVE YOUR DETAILS TO ANYONE OVER THE PHONE! -- especially when someone calls you, as it might be absolutely anyone.

New Credit Card Scam

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