Twenty years of fighting your battles
Jessica Gorst-williams explains why readers continue to turn to her for help in an era of email, Facebook and Twitter
This year has marked the 20th anniversary of the Jessica Investigates column. Over those two decades disgruntled consumers have benefited from an explosion in new electronic channels, such as email and social media, through which they can complain about organisations that have let them down.
Jessica Investigates and its sister column on Sundays, however, continue to require readers to send an actual letter and, judging by the size of my postbag, there is still plenty of demand for columns that work in this way.
So why do columns such as mine still work in the internet age? For one thing, not accepting email complaints eliminates most knee-jerk requests along the lines of “this happened this morning and I want you to take the matter up now”. Issues need to have been aired thoroughly with the organisation concerned before I become involved. This gives the columns more credibility and helps me to achieve more meaningful results.
In any case, it is not a good idea to email correspondence that may contain financial details because email is not particularly secure.
What did readers complain about most?
Topping the leaderboard this year are the energy companies. Often complaints revolve around incorrect bills or, when people are switching to another firm, a failure to release funds that have been overpaid, usually by direct debit. There was also a range of disparate issues involving telecoms companies.
Bureaucracy, often purportedly to comply with “money laundering rules” and “fraud prevention measures”, has been a particular bugbear. Sometimes proof of identity, and any amount of additional paperwork, were asked for time and again despite evidence that what was being demanded had already been provided or that it was irrelevant to the case.
Among those caught up in this way was AF of Cheshire. HSBC issued him with a 65-day notice of closure of a trust account following a bereavement. He had done his best to comply with its paperwork requirements but only my involvement saved the situation.
Jacqueline Dudley was similarly let down over documents allegedly required from her twin sister, a dementia sufferer for whom she had power of attorney. HSBC wanted the documents to comply with tax laws in America, with which her sister had no association. The bank repeatedly asked for information that had already been sent. Others caught out by overzealous bureaucracy were reluctant to give too much away. Often this was because of the prevalence of fraud.
Caught by fraudsters
Scams reported included those where callers pretended to be from the victim’s bank in order to extract personal and financial details. Some victims had engaged directly with “phishing” emails, while others had been tripped up after an account on a legitimate website such as ebay had been taken over by a fraudster.
‘Issues need to have been aired thoroughly before I become involved’
Anything unusual, or a change to an account number, should be viewed with suspicion.
Knowing how fraudsters operate is important. For example, legitimate accounts, often belonging to students or vulnerable elderly people, are increasingly being used to receive stolen money. The fraudster then convinces the account holder – sometimes called the “mule” – that the money has been paid in unintentionally and persuades them to send the funds on in a way that enables the fraudster to access them untraced. Other “mule” accounts have been set up because of slack banking procedures. Some fraud victims whose cases I took up did get their money back. Barclays reimbursed CS of London after a fraudster had acquired some personal details. The bank had ignored the issue for six months by the time CS wrote to me.
Others I tried hard for but failed. Among them was Corinna Dean, a single mother on a tight budget. She had been hurrying to a funeral when a fraudster posing as a Santander employee phoned and elicited enough information to steal £800 from her account. Barclays, which crops up in this sort of case far too often, was the recipient bank.
Life-changing sums gained
Major achievements for the column included the reinstating by Reassure of £35,000 of life assurance for 91-year-old NB of Yorkshire. The value had fallen to nil in 2010. Reassure admitted the fact it had not reviewed the policy over the years prevented NB making informed decisions.
PB of Derbyshire’s St James’s Place “whole of life” policy was enhanced after it had not been managed well and assurances had not been abided by. I persuaded the firm to revert the policy to terms that had prevailed in 2004 so that £16,701 was refunded for the enhancement of premiums paid after that. Future annual premiums were reduced by £2,013, with £500 given for goodwill. The cover was reinstated to £132,845, some £20,000 more than previously.
AF of Wiltshire had paid £4,845 in the Nineties into an old-fashioned plan. Discontinuance charges had whittled the value down to £945. Taking into account the personal reasons that had led AF to stop paying into the policy, St James’s Place paid £9,801, which is what the plan would have been worth without the charges. It added £500 for goodwill.
Readers ignored
Among the providers that failed to act on what their customer was telling them was Nationwide Building Society. It had assigned the address of a nearby empty house to Allan and Janet Lambert’s accounts.
Lloyds Bank had incorrectly alleged that SO of East Yorkshire was registered in Romania for tax purposes. A bank official had wrongly inputted Romania’s international dialling code in front of SO’S telephone number.
Churchill Insurance blamed Angela Wright for causing an accident in a car that had nothing to do with her. At last, with my involvement, it acknowledged that, in a clerical error, it had substituted an “N” for “M” in its record of the number plate.
Julia Gerzon was one of the readers whose application for a credit card was inexplicably turned down. Hers was with the Post Office.
A case that particularly resonated concerned Abby Boyle’s late mother’s £975 Axa home insurance premium. She had been paying this sum for a small flat. Later, when it was empty, her executors were able to cover it elsewhere for £256.
Among missing funds retrieved was SM of Herts’ £10,000 or so from a pension that Aegon at last located.
Often a dispute is resolved by acquiring a recording or transcript of a telephone call. One reader was scammed out of £1,330 for a camera he thought he had bought on Amazon Marketplace.
He explained that Amazon had wrongly told him to deal directly with the seller. It was only after listening, at my suggestion, to two recordings of calls that Amazon reversed a previous decision and paid up.
Seeing a story in print can change a provider’s perspective. CE of Warwick’s daughter’s laptop was buried when a building collapsed and so could not be produced to show that it was broken.
Despite my earlier efforts to get Currys PC World to reimburse her under its care plan it agreed to do so only after publication.
Some people don’t help themselves. One person wrote in recently that he had been held on the phone for 20 minutes and given up as he had better things to do.
So it was over to me. Another wanted to know whether his travel insurance would cover an eventuality but had not even read the 12 pages of terms and conditions, which clearly showed it wouldn’t.
Where are we now?
Too many people working in financial services are demoralised, often because they are not appreciated. The power to improve their lot, and thereby the lot of consumers, lies as ever at the top.