STRAIGHT TO THE POINT

I RECEIVED an email out of the blue offering me a free pension review. It says new government rules mean I can access my pension from the age of 55. Should I trust it? K. H., Leamington Spa. IGNorE any unsolicited emails, texts or calls offering free pension advice as they are likely to be scams. If you need advice and are over 50, you can ask for a free appointment with Pension wise, an independent service funded by the Government. Visit pensionwise.gov.uk or call 0800 138 3944. I HAVE a five-year fixed-rate mortgage with TSB. Recently, it increased my payments by £5 a month. How can it do this if my repayments are fixed? L. P., Inverness. YoU are right — when you have a fixedrate mortgage your monthly repayments stay the same for the length of your deal. TSB says it increased your repayments because you took a payment holiday and would have owed £3,000 when your mortgage ended. It says it discussed this with you, but is willing to talk over other ways you could clear the debt. ON MY EE mobile phone bill there are a number of expensive calls to my boiler company. Each has two different amounts, an access charge and a service charge. What do these mean, and who is getting my money? R. K., London. THE access charge goes to your mobile phone firm. For you, an EE pay monthly customer, this is 50p a minute. The service charge is set by the firm you are calling and is capped at 7p a minute. AFTER my husband died on August 1, a friend told me I could claim a bereavement benefit worth £2,500. But when my son rang up, he was told this benefit was no longer available. S. F., by email. THAT’S not strictly true. There is a Bereavement Support Payment which is a £2,500 lump sum, followed by 18 monthly payments of £100 (or £3,500 and monthly payments of £350 for those with children under the age of 20 in fulltime education).

This payment was introduced in April. However, it is available only for people under state pension age, so unfortunately you’re not eligible. Under the old system, there was a payment available of £2,000, but you’d have qualified only if your husband wasn’t entitled to the state pension when he died.