Fighting for your money

Currys charged me £800 for a contract I never realised I had – and is refusing to refund me

I am writing in desperation. I want to stop a direct debit I set up for a contract I took out in 2012 when I bought a laptop, but I cannot get a reply out of Currys PC World.

According to my bank statements I am still paying £7.50 a month. I could cancel the direct debit but, as I do not know the precise date of the end of the contract, I fear that if I do this Currys may say that I still owe it money. I have been unable to ascertain the finishing date of the contract after contacting the store where I bought it.

Since moving house I have not been able to trace the paperwork, but I am sure that I will have easily paid for it by now after about nine years. The company has not responded to my numerous letters. I am 82 years of age and simply do not know how to bring matters to a close. – RW, Bexhill-on-Sea

I was most concerned to read that you had been making these payments all these years, especially when I found out you had not realised that it was a service contract rather than a finance plan. This means that rather than paying for the laptop itself, as you thought, your £7.50 a month had been going towards a repair service that you didn’t even know you could use. Your monthly payments over the years have cost you in the region of £800.

Between you writing to me and me responding, you took a fall in your garden, which led to a hospital stay. Thankfully you are now back at home and recovering well. Meanwhile, your wife told me you had not used the HP laptop for several years and had never requested a repair.

I was not pleased to hear about this or about how your efforts to contact the company to sort out the mystery of the £ 7.50 monthly payment had come to nothing. It seems most likely that you had paid for the device in full in 2012, which makes me wonder how the service plan was sold to you at the time of purchase. But you now cannot remember the details and the original paperwork is lost.

The kind of contract you were landed with would cover repairs in limited circumstances, but wouldn’t include accidental damage or theft. It is a bit like an extended warranty, although that is an insurance policy that is usually set up for a fixed term and not open-ended like yours. Currys PC World calls it a “pay as you go care plan” and it told me it had no specific end date but could be cancelled at any time.

Companies are keen to encourage customers to sign up to such deals when they buy electrical goods as they provide a healthy income stream for years to come. The arrangement certainly proved to be lucrative for Currys in your case.

It is up to customers, Currys said, to cancel these plans when they no longer want them. But as happened with you, the regular payments can easily get overlooked, especially as you did not realise exactly what they were for.

After my intervention, Currys spoke to you directly and, on your request, cancelled the agreement. It told me you were not entitled to a refund, which made my blood boil. All it did was offer you £100 as a “goodwill” gesture, which you reluctantly accepted. I told Currys this was measly but it ignored me.

This payment has reduced the total you have inadvertently thrown away on the useless contract to £700.

I looked on the Currys website this week and found an HP laptop for £189. You could have bought three of these for what you spent on its care plan.

I asked Currys how often customers were reminded that they had these contracts in place. I was astounded to be told that only after five years does the company send out a letter to customers, which advises them that the “agreement is still valid”, to draw attention to its existence.

A spokesman added: “It is made clear at the point of sale and listed

Companies are keen to sign up customers to such deals as they bring in a healthy income

within the agreement paperwork that the service will continue on a monthly basis, unless cancelled by a customer.” Because you moved house you never saw your “reminder”.

Consumer experts warn against buying such extras. Martyn James of Resolver, an online consumer complaints service, said: “People already have protection under consumer rights laws that are just as good, if not better, and don’t cost anything.”

There are hundreds of thousands or even millions of deals – from service contracts to insurance policies – for long-gone things like phones and other gadgets lurking in people’s bank accounts. Mr James said: “The standard argument is that a firm should not be taking money for something that is no longer being used by an individual. Just as companies can argue that the customer should have noticed the payments being taken from their accounts, it should be clear to companies that the longer an agreement is in place, the less likely it is to be useful or applicable any more.”

DVLA copycat took £94 to renew licence

I recently needed to renew my photo driving licence. I went online, completed the form and thought no more about it until a few days later I noticed that £ 94 had been debited from my bank account and paid to “Licence Assist”. I had no idea that there were websites that mimicked the DVLA and then charged a huge fee, in this case £80, just to apply on your behalf.

To add insult to injury, I received an email from the company claiming that it could not complete my application online and I would have to go to a post office to do it instead. It offered to reimburse only the £14 cost of the new licence. Can you help? – SH, London

Believe it or not, these imitators are perfectly legal and use small print to justify their high charges for renewing a licence. Renewal through the official online channel costs just £14, or £17 at a post office. These copycats drive me round the bend as no one in their right mind would choose to pay such a large sum just to get someone to check an application. You can get checks carried out at the post office for £4.50 as part of a £21.50 driving licence renewal package.

These websites get away with it by offering so-called “extras” that few people need or want, while providing minimal detail on what these benefits are.

The button on the website you clicked on to renew your licence was the same racing green colour often seen on government websites. This adds an air of legitimacy to its services.

But the website you used is based in Tallinn, Estonia, which is another warning sign that it is not going to be the official website of a British organisation. The website you used (driverassistance- online. co.uk) states that it is not affiliated with the official DVLA service.

The firm told you, after you had given your debit card details, that it could not renew your licence because it was in your maiden name, meaning you would have to queue at the post office instead. I got in touch with its “customer services” and demanded a full refund on the basis that you had received no service whatsoever. It agreed to a 50pc refund, which I rejected. It then offered 85pc. I insisted that the only acceptable refund was 100pc. This game of ping pong ended when last week it finally credited you with the full £ 94. You told me you were delighted.

I urge all readers to be vigilant when they renew anything online, whether it is a driver’s licence, passport, TV licence or any other important document. Rip- off copycat websites often pay search engines to position their names above the normal search results, hoping to catch out individuals who are in a rush to complete such tasks. Always scroll down the list to find the real thing.