No recipe for success
I took out a loan to buy a new kitchen but the oven door shattered within three months. I went to the showroom but the firm had closed. I could make a claim on my home insurance but don’t see why I should as I think the installers are at fault. Is there anything I can do? Yes, if the kitchen is financed, the loan firm are jointly and severally liable to put things right. Speak to them directly. But if you took out a personal loan, an insurance claim is your only option. Collector Paul Cohen paid more than £500 for a carving made of mammoth ivory to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary.
But the 4in high memento was seized by UK Border Force, despite the ivory being thousands of years old and legal to import.
Paul, 74, called me after trying to get answers from the Home Office for 10 weeks.
He said: “I’m fed up. My anniversary was May 21.”
He bought the carving online from a Hong Kong firm using PayPal and it arrived in the UK on May 10.
But piano tuner Paul, of Dalrymple, Ayrshire, received a letter stating it had been seized.
He got on to Border Force who agreed mammoth ivory doesn’t have import controls. But he said: “They had to be satisfied it was made of mammoth tusk and not elephant and couldn’t forward it on to me until they had done that. They rarely answer my emails nor can I contact them by phone.”
I got on to the Home Office and Paul’s carving is now winging its way to him.
They said: “Ivory has to be checked by experts as the difference between legal and illegal ivory is not obvious to the untrained eye. We apologise for the time this has taken.
“The carving has been found not to originate from an endangered species and will be returned.”