I didn’t get the car policy I asked for

I returned from Spain after 12 years and wanted to insure a car. I am partially deaf and, when I contacted Swinton, the insurer, I said “yes” to everything that the young lady said.

I asked for third party, fire and theft cover. But when the policy arrived it was for fully comprehensive. This I refused.

I then received the year’s quote, which was £3,088. When I complained it was reduced to £2,707.

When I spoke to the telesales man I told him what I had initially asked for. He said the policy I was sent had been approved during the negotiations, which it hadn’t. MP, EAST OF ENGLAND

The price reflected your zero no-claims discount and that you had lived in Spain for the past 12 years.

You only wanted insurance that made you “legal” as you drive just 2,000 to 3,000 miles a year.

Your next-door neighbour is 80 and pays £314 for motor insurance. Your younger son, who is 40 and learnt to drive only six years ago, pays just over £300. You have extensive driving experience, including driving cars for a car sales company you worked for. After that you drove the community bus on a fulltime basis for 10 years.

You tried to cancel the policy bought through Swinton during the year you had it. However, you wrote to an address that Swinton no longer uses, although you recently received a communication apparently from that same address.

Somewhat surprisingly, there is no guarantee that a third party, fire and theft policy will be cheaper than comprehensive cover in the same circumstances.

Having listened to the phone call you had over this point, Swinton says it had clearly explained that its fully comprehensive policy was cheaper and you said you were fully aware of this and were happy to purchase fully comprehensive on that basis. It says the branch address issue was an unfortunate administrative error, for which it apologises.

When the year was up you found the same cover elsewhere for £700. Further to my involvement Swinton, as a gesture of goodwill, refunded £1,000. This is about half the difference between what you paid it and what you are paying now.

The firm apologised for “not providing the services our customers rightly expect”. had expected to receive a package containing figures and options for claiming my pension.

I had received a letter from my workplace’s human resources section informing me that I would get this information shortly after retiring. I got nothing.

After several weeks I rang Capita, the pension administrator, and was told that the package had been sent to me more than a month before I retired. I had never received it – and this did not tie up with what I had been told.

My final salary pension was supposed to pay £19,000 a year. I intended to buy an annuity with the £10,884 investment plan I also have with Capita.

I have spent hours on the phone being passed back and forth between people who cannot help. Capita seems incapable of understanding the importance of having no income from it. PM, CHESHIRE

You had been told that, as the investment plan was worth more than £10,000, you were obliged to find the annuity yourself. You duly filled in what seemed to be the appropriate form asking if you could take £1,000 in cash from the investment plan, thus reducing it to less than £10,000. You expected to receive a quote but heard nothing back.

Several weeks passed and you were told that Capita was waiting for you to return all the forms and details of your bank

account and so forth. You sent everything asked for and, having not heard back, rang two weeks later. For the first time you were told the arrangement you had proposed for the investment money was, after all, not viable.

You were then given further contradictory information by Capita. Although you were assured the matter was with the “escalations” team, yet again you did not hear back.

Only after my involvement was the investment element, which you had decided now to take in cash, paid.

Pension payments also began to be made, including the back payments. This came, as you say, four months and six days after