KATIE MORLEY INVESTIGATES

If a company has let you down, our consumer champion is here to fight your corner

LETTER OF THE WEEK My husband died and now I’m about to lose my home

You are my last hope of saving my family home of 22 years. In 1998 my husband took out an interest-only mortgage with Abbey National, now Santander. The broker, Vale Estates, also sold us life insurance, which was with Zurich Life, now ReAssure, to pay off the mortgage in case anything happened to us.

In January 2018 my husband died unexpectedly. He was just 54. I am absolutely lost without him. I am living off benefits as I suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and depression, among other ailments that prevent me working. Some days I can barely leave the house.

ReAssure is refusing to honour our life insurance, which was supposed to provide a £56,000 payout if my husband died. This is because the policy was for a repayment mortgage, but my husband had an interest-only one. I don’t know if this was down to incompetence or mis-selling.

ReAssure has paid me £19,000, which it has calculated as if my husband had a repayment mortgage. But this is not enough to cover the £56,000 left on the mortgage. As I can’t afford to make payments myself, I face losing my home.

I have contacted the Financial Services Compensation Scheme but it can’t help because the policy was sold before it existed. The Financial Ombudsman can’t help because Vale Estates is no longer in business, and Citizens Advice can’t help either. I even contacted my MP who offered to speak to Santander, which has been a nightmare to deal with since my husband died. As it stands I am so behind with the repayments that Santander is going to repossess my home.

When I have to move into a rented flat I doubt the landlord will allow my two dogs to come too. They are both old and one of them barks so much he would prove difficult to rehome, so he may have to be euthanised.

KF, MANCHESTER

I was very sorry to hear of your husband’s untimely passing, which by the sounds of it has absolutely knocked you for six. You have complex health issues and are still crippled with grief, leaving you in no fit state to fight what looks to me like a clear case of mis-selling.

Documents from the point of sale show that this so-called mortgage expert at Vale Estates must have been totally clueless. He sold you a life insurance policy that was inappropriate for you and your husband’s needs. Your husband was taking out an interest-only mortgage,

Write to Katie Morley, Telegraph Money, The Daily Telegraph, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT

Please do not send original documents. Include an address, phone number and separate notes addressed to all organisations authorising them to talk to Katie. For full terms see p3 or visit telegraph.co.uk/go/ consumerchampion. You can also email kminvestigates@ telegraph.co.uk which is where the debt level stays the same over the term. Yet this life insurance was for someone taking out a repayment mortgage, where the debt shrinks to zero. It is scandalous that such a fatal error was processed without being spotted.

Unfortunately Vale Estates ceased to exist years ago, so the only obvious route to redress was to take your complaint to ReAssure, the insurance provider. It told me that Vale Estates was a tied representative of another insurer called Friends Provident for “various periods” between 1989 and 1998, when your policy was sold. In due course Friends Provident became Friends Life, which was later taken over by Britain’s biggest insurer, Aviva. So it started to look like the buck might sit not with ReAssure, but Aviva. Aviva swiftly launched an investigation into your case.

My investigation was taking longer than I’d hoped, and with every day that passed I became more worried about you. When I phoned to check you were OK, you were tearfully packing boxes with your belongings. I was grateful when Santander put your potential repossession on ice while I worked on your behalf, giving us a little breathing space. But behind the scenes I was growing increasingly frustrated as I had reached an impasse.

Aviva said it wasn’t sure if Friends Provident had been tied to Vale Estates at the time of sale after all, as their corporate relationship ended at around the same time. The truth is this all happened so long ago that no one can be sure of the timings. Aviva pointed out that a broker tied to Friends Provident should not have been selling Zurich Life policies, suggesting Vale was either independent or tied to Zurich Life when you bought the policy. So was the buck back with ReAssure? It wasn’t clear.

Quite honestly I had reached the end of my tether with multimillionpound companies playing hot

My mates and I pitched in and bought a Starbucks gift card for another friend’s birthday. We loaded it with £100, but he was only able to use it once before it was blocked. Starbucks’s customer care told him they couldn’t help as he wasn’t the original purchaser of the card.

I rang Starbucks to give it the account details that I had set up. I was told that the information would be passed to its fraud team, and that I would be emailed with an update. After that the card was closed permanently. I asked for an explanation and a refund but have received no reply.

Starbucks gift card was mysteriously blocked

HP, LONDON

How awkward that this card, which you generously gave to your friend as a gift, has now been frozen on suspicion that fraud has occurred. Starbucks has been cagey about exactly why the card was blocked. It said that when “unusual” activity is detected on a gift card, it deactivates it, and works with the account holder to issue a full reimbursement.

Quite what it found suspicious about your friend using the card to buy coffee remains a mystery. It has now put the remaining money back on the card so you can all move on. However, it hasn’t made up for the hassle and embarrassment created by what should have been the simplest of birthday presents.

A Starbucks spokesman said: “We have robust processes in place to safeguard our customers’ accounts.”