Help us cancel phone deals our son forced his gran to take out

MY ESTRANGED bankrupt son forced his grandmother, who is 85, to buy four iPhone 6 Plus mobile contracts from three operators for him, his wife and two daughters as Christmas presents. At the time he was looking after her bank details.

After my daughter discovered he had also taken £5,400 out of his grandmother’s bank account, she now looks after her finances and has changed the bank account so he cannot get at it any more.

He promised to pay money every month to cover the phone costs, but he has not. My daughter contacted 02, Virgin and 3. Virgin was brilliant and cancelled the phone charges; 3 insisted the contract be paid up, which my daughter did at a huge cost.

However, O2, which supplied two of the mobiles, has insisted she pays £100 a month to the end of the contract.

The police suspect my son has committed fraud and are investigating.

J. H., by email. THERE we have it in a nutshell. The difference in customer service reflected in the reactions of three companies to the same problem. So, first of all, well done to Virgin for taking the right course of action without any pressing from me.

Once I called 3, it agreed to cancel and refund the contract, but insisted on retaining the value of the phone, arguing that it is in the possession of your son. O2 took a little longer to fall into line.

However, my hand was strengthened because you took the right course of action in making this a police matter.

On occasion, I have been contacted over similar issues when families have chosen not to involve the police. When a reader chooses to keep it a family matter, I see no reason why the company should not take the same attitude.

You were able to provide a crime number and once it had this, O2 was happy to refund all of the money and cancel the £100 per month contract.

So, back to 3. Presented with this evidence and the knowledge that O2 and Virgin had returned the money, 3 immediately raised a cheque to return all of the money, including the cost of the phone.

Cases like this can be very difficult, but I am glad you decided to contact the police, who are still investigating the matter.

It is not uncommon for grandparents to buy their grandchildren a phone, so salespeople in the shops would have had no reason to be suspicious. As O2 says, your mother passed its security checks.

But once the crime number was available and it was able to confirm fraudulent activity had occurred, it blocked the accounts.

MY HUSBAND passed away in February 2014. He had an American bank account and an English HSBC account due to dual nationality. Everything has been settled except the HSBC account in Buffalo, New York, which has $4,973.98 in it.

My solicitor and my HSBC branch in Spalding, Lincs, have tried in vain to collect the money on my behalf, but no reply has been forthcoming to their requests. Could you help as $3 is being deducted every month for sending a statement. I am the beneficiary and recently a new ATM card in his name has been delivered.

Mrs C. T., Lincs.

HSBC has offered its sincere condolences to you and says it is not its intention to cause any frustration or upset. It says that HSBC in the U.S. has written to your solicitor with a list of documents needed, but has not received a response.

The bank has written to you to clarify this and outlined the documents that are needed. Once these are received, it will pay the amount as a matter of urgency.

All of the monthly fees since April 2014, when it was made aware of your husband’s death, have been refunded.

However, as things stand, it seems that the problem might lie with your solicitor. You might wish to discuss their fees if it does turn out they failed to respond to HSBC’s request. IN 1990, my son and some friends went to America for a few months. During this time he went out with a young lady who became pregnant.

I put £50 into a Post Office account on September 4, 1994, for the baby. The young lady wanted to have it adopted.

It is 25 years later and we have not heard from her or the child. I have asked the Post Office if I can withdraw the cash, but it has refused. I have no idea where the money is as the Post Office sent me back the book marked ‘cancelled’.

Mrs J. B., London.

YOUR thoughtful gesture of attempting to set up a savings account for your grandchild has, I’m afraid, come to nothing.

You set up the account in your grandchild’s name, and by June 1998 it contained £159, including a further deposit and interest.

When I contacted National Savings & Investments, which runs this investment account, I received a fairly terse statement.

‘Under the regulations relating to NS&I products, we have a duty to our customers not to disclose information to anyone who is neither the holder nor their authorised or legal representative without the holder’s written consent except where the law requires us to do so or where the law permits and we consider it appropriate to do so.’

In other words, under the regulations they can only speak to the account holder. It does not matter that you put the money in, set up the account and hold the passbook. So it seems the government bank will hang on to your money and you will be making a contribution towards repaying the national debt.

You could take your case to the Financial Ombudsman, in which case common sense might prevail. The number to call is 0800 0234567; from a mobile it’s 0300 1239 123.