EE cut off my elderly parents and kept their £98 phone credit

IN 2014, I bought two mobile phones for my elderly parents on the Orange network (now EE), each with a £50 top-up. The phones were rarely used, but now neither of them works.

EE says that both numbers were disconnected because my parents hadn’t made a call or sent a text for six months. It’s refusing to refund their £98 unspent credit. H. J., Treorchy, Wales. AT firsT glance, your case looked straightforward. it is standard practice across the mobile industry for providers to deactivate your number if you fail to make a call or send a text for six months — and you lose any credit built up. Often, firms will pay this back if you ask, but issue refunds on a case-by-case basis.

in your case, only one of the phones you gave to your parents had been used over the past three years. it had £48.15 left on it when it was deactivated — and EE says it will refund you this amount.

But because the other mobile was never used, it was never ‘activated’. That means it never appeared on EE’s systems — so EE has no records on which to fall back.

When i suggested to EE it could simply refer back to the original sale and refund you the £50, it said this was impossible.

You bought the mobile phone through sainsbury’s. When you buy via a third party, the network provider only finds out when you start using the phone.

so EE says its hands are tied — it has no way of verifying that you bought the credit in the first place.

i’m afraid it seems you’ve fallen victim to the mad way the mobile industry works. i suggest calling this a bitter learning experience — and do remind your parents to make a text or phone call every six months at the very least. I EARN a small income from my savings on top of my pension. I’m confused about whether I need to pay tax on this during 2017/18. There are savings allowances — but I’m unclear how they work. Can you help? L. P., via email. iT’s complicated. first, you don’t have to pay any tax on the first £11,500 of your income, thanks to the tax-free personal allowance.

Then there are two rules that can also reduce your tax bill on savings income. These are the starting rate for savings and the personal savings allowance. Both vary depending on your total taxable income.

The starting rate for savings means that up to £5,000 of savings income will not suffer tax. You’ll get the full £5,000 band if your pension income is below or equal to £11,500. Above this level, every £1 you earn from your pension reduces the savings band by £1.

so, if you earn £15,000 a year from your pension, the tax-free savings band will be £1,500.

As a basic-rate payer, you’ll be entitled to a further £1,000 of tax-free savings income under the personal savings allowance.

Therefore, for 2017/18, you could receive up to £11,500 pension income, plus a further £5,000 savings income in the starting rate band that would not be taxed, plus a further £1,000 under the personal savings allowance.

And, of course, you don’t have to pay tax on interest from savings held in isAs. I HAVE just returned from a disastrous holiday to Turkey with my fiance, eight-year-old daughter and his parents.

When we boarded the easyJet flight, I put a folder of passports and visas in the overhead compartment above our seats. However, on landing, they had disappeared.

When I climbed onto the seat opposite to look for them, I fell and injured myself. The cabin crew called for medics, who took me off the plane to see if I needed stitches in my lip. Without the correct documentation, Turkish officials refused us entry. We felt intimidated, and they bundled us back to Britain on the same plane.

The crew were wonderful, and assured us we’d be given free flights and could choose when and where we wanted to go.

But since getting back, the airline has failed to follow through on this. I’ve been in and out of hospital with a suspected blood clot in my injured leg.

A flight voucher doesn’t seem like much to ask for. E. M., Staffordshire. HOW awful. What’s frustrating is that there is nobody to pin the blame on. The thief is long gone, the Turkish authorities were within their rights to refuse you entry and it’s not easyJet’s fault your passports were stolen.

But where easyJet falls down is in its communication. it says in this situation, it would usually rebook passengers for free on the earliest available flight back out to their destination after they’d replaced their travel papers.

This would have been a real pain, but you could have at least enjoyed the rest of your holiday.

However, you had to go to hospital for a suspected blood clot, so clearly couldn’t travel.

You say you were told by the crew that you would be able to rebook the flights to a destination of your choosing.

so it’s understandable that you were upset when this did not materialise.

The issue is that easyJet says it only offered seats on the next flight, as it usually would. And, despite your attempts at contacting the firm via social media, the issue was still not resolved nearly two months later.

The good news is that easyJet has changed its mind. A spokeswoman says: ‘As a gesture of goodwill, easyJet will provide a flight voucher to the original value of the family’s booking.’