Rip Off Britain (2009) s07e03 Episode Script
Series 7, Episode 3
1 We asked you to tell us what's left you feeling ripped off and you contacted us in your thousands.
You've told us about the companies you think get it wrong and the customer service that simply isn't up to scratch.
If I walk in somewhere and they treat me badly, then I walk and I will never go in again.
You've asked us to track down the scammers who stole your money and investigate the extra charges that you say are unfair.
You pay for a service and you expect it to be the service that you paid for.
And when you've lost out but no-one else is to blame, you've come to us to stop others falling into the same trap.
As a customer, you've got to be more savvy in terms of what you're buying and make sure that it's something that you want or need, not something that they're trying to trick you into getting.
So whether it's a blatant rip-off or a genuine mistake, we're here to find out why you're out of pocket and what you can do about it.
Your stories, your money -- this is Rip-Off Britain.
Hello and thanks for joining us once again as we get our teeth into quite a mix of really shocking stories today that involve all those serious problems with everyday things, like phones, bills, car parks -- issues that affect pretty much every one of us, but which, when something goes wrong, can have a really frustrating and soul-destroying impact on your life.
And that's certainly true with one of the cases we'll be investigating today.
Imagine discovering you've been overcharged for something and not just for a few months or even a year, but for decades.
You'd definitely want some of your money back, wouldn't you? But the company involved doesn't see things at all the same way.
Perhaps that's no surprise -- this programme is Rip-Off Britain, after all, but as we unravel not just that particular story, but other cases where people have been left feeling totally frustrated with the charges or problems they've been saddled with and, I must say, through no fault of their own, we'll have unmissable tips to make sure you don't find yourself in the same boat.
Coming up, the locals in uproar over a car park where even if you've bought a ticket, you may still be hit with a penalty charge.
It shouldn't have even happened in the first place and they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.
And why unexpected charges on one of Britain's bestselling phones could leave you with a not-so-smiley face.
It was like £100 and I was like, "Jade, what have you done?" Now, until recently, we'd probably have said that it was the energy companies that had the most complicated bills, but with the regulator, Ofgem, now telling them to make their costs easier to understand, perhaps the rather dubious honour of having the most complex bills and impenetrable charges should pass to the providers of yet another essential utility.
And, in the first instance, that would have to be water.
Now, if you've never really taken a close look at your water bill, well, it may be a very good idea to do it now because here's a story about a charge that was made by a water company which, in this case, turned out to be totally unnecessary.
This is the village of Crick in Northamptonshire.
It's a close community, where everyone looks out for one another.
- Hi, Jean! - Hi, Jean! - When there's news, it travels fast and currently there is one topic of conversation on everyone's lips.
Do you think we shall hear any more about the water? Speaking to the Daventry councillor, she seemed a bit optimistic about it.
The problem started back in the autumn of 2014 when rumours began that some residents may well have been paying unnecessarily for part of their water bill.
It wasn't long before the whole village took an interest in the discussion.
There should be a liaison between the council and the water authorities, really.
Well, I would have thought so, yeah, because we're exhausting all our outlets, really, aren't we? Jean Garner has lived in her home for 48 years and keeps a close eye on her finances.
The hydrangeas have come on this week, haven't they? They have, yeah.
I am quite meticulous with bills.
I check them, I check back statements and I suppose it arises from the days when I had a young family and money was tight and it's something that I've always done to make sure that all bills and accounts are correct.
So Jean was surprised to learn from one of her neighbours that, for 30 years, she may have been wrongly billed by her provider Severn Trent Water for a service that she isn't getting.
In this village, we pay two lots of water bill -- we pay Anglia Water for the water supply and we pay Severn Trent for wastage, and the new neighbours that we were in conversation with said that they didn't pay Severn Trent.
So when we looked into it further, we found out that the bill for Severn Trent was for stormwater collection.
Jean, along with 14 other residents on the estate, was paying around £60 a year for this stormwater collection, which is a charge levied by water companies when their drains filter the rainwater into the sewers.
But what worried Jean after she'd made further inquiries was that some of her neighbours weren't paying this charge at all so she wanted to know why SHE was.
The neighbours told me, "We don't pay Severn Trent any charges.
"Our stormwater goes into a soakaway.
" So my neighbour and I, we got together and discussed this and decided that we shouldn't probably be paying either.
So Jean contacted Severn Trent Water and asked them to investigate.
And an engineer came out and tested the water and found that it didn't go into the sewer, it went into a soakaway and he said, "You shouldn't be paying any bills to Severn Trent.
" The engineer discovered that when Jean's house was built in the 1960s, it had what's called a soakaway installed, which means rainwater soaks back into the garden.
It also means that the water companies don't deal with the rainwater so don't need to charge for it, which in turn means that Jean was paying Severn Trent Water unnecessarily for the last 30 years.
Since at least the 1980s, we've been paying Severn Trent £60-£70 a year.
This is for a service that we are not receiving.
But, when Jean contacted Severn Trent Water, she found their response something of a wash-out, to say the least.
They told us that they were only going to refund six months and they sent us a cheque for £31 something.
We felt really aggrieved.
Next, Jean and her neighbour contacted other households on the estate to break it to them that they too could well be paying for rainwater drainage when they simply didn't have to.
And very soon, there were plenty of people with a story to tell.
It's £60 a year, isn't it, the payment for the removal of surface water, yes? I paid £30 last year.
Noel has been living here for 32 years and, like Jean, it turns out that he too has been paying a charge to Severn Trent Water.
I was only alerted of the situation in 2014.
What's baffling the residents is the difference in the size of the refunds that Severn Trent Water has offered each of them.
- They gave me a partial refund.
- 20-odd quid, I got back.
- Oh, I got more than you! - It's not the amount, it's the principle.
They've been charging us for a service that they have not provided.
But although the residents may feel short-changed, Severn Trent Water is simply following the advice of the regulator Ofwat, who recommended that rebates should, as a minimum, go back at least one year.
Even so, there are some water companies who do go further than this.
Northumbrian Water, for example, has paid rebates dating back to 2001, a year after Ofwat first ruled that companies should offer rebates to customers who are being unfairly treated.
And this approach is something that the Consumer Council For Water sees as best practice.
For properties more than 14 years old, it is up to the customer to come forward.
Because water companies don't necessarily know which customers are not connected, the regulator didn't require companies to go back further than the current year in refunding charges.
However, we are aware now that about half of the water companies are now going back further than the current year.
We think that's good practice and we're pressing other companies to follow suit.
Indeed, if Severn Trent followed this best practice and gave Jean a rebate dating back to 2001, then she would be due back around £806.
'When they told us we were only going to get six months back, 'we thought that was an absolute insult.
' We wrote and told them we weren't satisfied, but they were adamant they weren't going to pay any more.
When we contacted Severn Trent Water about this, the company told us that when the water industry was privatised, the local authority in Jean's area hadn't passed over any sewer records.
As a result, Severn Trent said it simply hadn't known which houses had a soakaway system.
It says it relies on customers themselves to pass on this information, a fact which, it points out, is included on its water bills.
As for the backdated refund to which Jean believes she is entitled, Severn Trent didn't shift on this, telling us that it had refunded Jean in line with its agreement with the regulator Ofwat.
So we asked Ofwat whether it really considers that to be fair, given the sums of money Jean and her neighbours may have overpaid, and its position was clear.
It considers the one-year rebate to be a minimum standard and says it has encouraged water companies to Ofwat told us that more than half of companies have responded to customers' concerns on this issue.
It says water companies should be proactive about investigating neighbouring properties when a rebate is applied to find out if they too are paying for a service they are not receiving.
All of which means it may be worth you checking your water bill too, in case you're paying for something you don't need.
And while Jean is at least pleased that she will no longer be paying that additional charge, she is frustrated that, for all the years that she did, she was effectively putting her money down the drain.
We were all hoping for a bigger refund.
To receive a refund of £31 is really an insult.
We expected a much bigger refund.
Now, as I well know, parking can be an absolute pain.
Finding a space is bad enough.
Once you've manage that and succeeded in squeezing yourself into it, there is the next step -- dealing with the ticket machine from hell, the one that has to give you the ticket you need to avoid a hefty penalty charge.
Now, when you get one of those, it's only human nature to feel you didn't really deserve it.
But when it comes to the ticket machines in one particular car park, there seem to be an awful lot of people upset by charges they say were thoroughly unfair.
So you find a space in the car park, you've parked your car within the lines.
Perfect! What could possibly go wrong? Well, in this car park in Stockport, it seems quite a lot, at least according to a catalogue of complaints we've heard about the ticket machines.
They've been accused of being a little, shall we say, unpredictable, landing hundreds of drivers with hefty charges and uniting thousands of locals in a campaign to get things resolved.
It's so frustrating, that you've done nothing wrong, and it just makes you feel so angry.
Why do we have these insidious charges in Stockport? Something needs to be done.
It's an adult version of a schoolyard bully.
Among those who have come a costly cropper after parking at the Stockport Peel Centre is Tony Bryan.
He fell foul of one of the machines in February 2013, after coming to pick up a repaired computer.
I paid £1.
I entered a car registration by mistake, I entered my wife's car registration number and immediately realised what I had done.
I pressed the delete button, the machine did nothing so I then entered my correct registration number, not my wife's car, pressed the print button and I received a ticket, which had a mixture of both the numbers on it.
Tony had paid the correct £1 fee and displayed the ticket that the machine had printed.
So, as far as he was concerned, it wasn't his fault that the machine hadn't accepted the correct registration number and he could clearly demonstrate an honest attempt to pay and display.
The principle is they want me to pay for the amount of time I'm going to be here and the ticket proves I have actually paid.
But, two weeks later, he received a parking charge notice for £100, which would be reduced to £60 if he paid within 14 days.
I was a bit confused at first so I e-mailed them back and said, "Well, I have paid and this is what happened, "this is why I've got the wrong number on.
" Excel Parking, who manage the car park, was adamant that it was Tony's responsibility to enter the correct car registration details for his displayed ticket to be valid.
Even so, after numerous e-mails and letters from Tony arguing his case, Excel, as a gesture of goodwill, offered to reduce the £100 charge to an administration fee of £10 so long as he paid within 14 days.
But for Tony, this still wasn't good enough.
I wrote back and said, "I have paid you £1 "and I'm paying you no more for 15 minutes' parking.
"I refuse to pay any more money.
" With Tony digging his heels in, Excel threatened to take him to court if he didn't pay up so Tony decided to appeal through POPLA, the organisation that deals with appeals for parking on private land in England and Wales, but it took a year for Popla to respond and, when they did, they sided with the parking company.
I was absolutely disgusted.
I'd just spent a year thinking somebody's maybe on my side, somebody's looking at it fairly and we'll have some justice here.
Excel was now free to pursue Tony in court for the unpaid fine.
But Tony has a holiday home in France and he informed Excel he'd be out of the country for five months so any court date would need to be on his return.
Despite this, Excel pressed ahead with a court date and in his absence, a county court judgment was found against him.
I refused to pay it because I'm determined they'll receive no more money from me.
On his return, Tony says he successfully appealed the judgment after representing himself in court.
Even though his own legal costs exceeded the cost of the fine, for Tony it was all a matter of principle.
Nonetheless the threat of the original parking charge still looms over him unresolved.
Thanks in part to the publicity that Tony's case has generated other Stockport drivers who claim they've encountered similar problems at the same car park have come forward.
To date more than 2,500 people have signed a petition against disproportionate charges and bullying behaviour by the company.
It was student Leanne Patsays who started the petition.
I felt if just one person would get the ball rolling and maybe something positive could come out of it.
Like Tony, Leanne insists she made an honest attempt to pay and display, nonetheless her appeal was rejected.
I was absolutely gobsmacked.
Didn't have the money to pay and I'd paid and displayed, why should I pay a parking fine? Leanne has received letters from Excel threatening her with court action, but she took legal advice and was told parking charges on private land such as this one aren't always legally enforceable because if you can demonstrate that the fee demanded is unfair or disproportionate, and you're prepared to go to court to show this, you don't have to pay up.
We spoke to three other Stockport motorists -- all similarly peeved at the way they've been treated and all determined not to pay their charges.
I'm quite willing to go to court to fight this because I legally bought a ticket and I feel they are illegally trying to obtain money out of me.
It should be against the law.
I strongly oppose to paying it because I don't feel I've done anything wrong.
It's just something I could do without in my life at the moment.
I don't intend to pay the fine and I am prepared to go to court because I believe I've done nothing wrong.
But other drivers haven't felt so bullish.
Rose Crawford Round fell foul of the same ticketing machine.
If you don't pay your parking ticket then you risk being fined, you expect that.
When you've paid it, you don't expect to be fined.
It's daylight robbery.
But rather than fight the charge, Rose felt she had no choice but to pay up.
I felt I was backed into a corner, I had to pay it.
When we put the claims of our Stockport motorists to Excel parking the company told us the Peel Centre has 14 pay and display machines which will But it says the number of these is extremely negligible.
While that might be no consolation .
.
all faults within the remit of its two permanent onsite attendants are remedied as soon as possible The company points out that a substantial upgrade of the machines was carried out a couple of years ago and that in the first five months of 2015 there were just 14 occasions when machine faults needed to be fixed.
And some of those were due to vandalism.
But it stressed the machines are fully serviced annually and .
.
as soon as it becomes aware of problems.
Excel also said that once Tony and Leanne had realised they had a problem, they could have phoned the helpline number displayed on the machine but chose not to do so and it said Tony didn't provide enough information to allow a court date to be arranged at a time he was in the country.
We also asked appeals body POPLA why they took a year to respond to Tony's case, which they agreed was regrettable, putting it down to a period of high demand due to They now deal with 3,000 cases a month, usually within 14 days.
But our inbox is full of complaints from people who feel they've been given a charge that's either disproportionate or unfair and in Stockport our drivers remain adamant they won't be paying up.
- I think it's absolutely ridiculous.
- Something's got to be done.
It shouldn't've even happened in the first place.
They shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.
Still to come on Rip-Off Britain, the homeowners who say mortgage lenders have made their homes unsellable.
They said, "If you were looking for a mortgage, I'd tell them to turn you down.
"I don't think this is marketable and I don't think it's desirable.
" This summer our Rip-Off Britain team was on the road again -- for two days only we opened our pop-up consumer advice shop in Nottingham.
The pop-up shop is ready for business and it's open, so come on in, everybody, yes.
Karen Jennings called in to see if there's anything she can do about a problem that's been going on for ten years.
So she's come to Trading Standards expert Sylvia Rook for advice.
My problem is a leaking conservatory.
It's leaked for ten years and I've over the years I've written many times to the company that built it and had no success getting the problem resolved.
What do you think, Sylvia? This is quite a sad story and I've had a chance to go through Karen's paperwork so I can see you kept trying to get it sorted.
The law says if you have a problem with a breach of contract -- in this case we're looking at the Supply of Goods and Services Act -- we're saying that work should be done with reasonable care and skill, which clearly it wasn't.
- You've got six years in which you can lay a claim.
- Right.
I saw from your notes that you did actually get some advice about writing a letter which was just before the time limit.
If you'd then taken them to court you'd have been able to take action and get your money back or money towards the repairs.
But, unfortunately, the law limits when you can take action.
- Right, yeah.
- Nobody advised you on that, that there was a time limit? Well, no, and I got to the point of taking it to court but because I've never done anything like that before I just didn't follow through on it.
You're not alone with that.
There's a lot of fear about taking court action.
all the information about how to take a small claim, it tells you the fee structure, what to do.
I could advise you to try it, but you're likely to be putting good money after bad because there are court fees and then the court might throw it out - because of the time taken.
- Right.
There is a possibility of trying your house insurance.
Have you tried it? - No.
- That's not limited, it depends what the policy says.
- Right.
I think that is your best option because you can say what has happened and the insurance might cover the cost of repair which would be an ideal outcome.
Yeah.
I'll have a look at that.
- We wish you luck and a damp-free future with your conservatory! - I hope so.
- Thank you very much.
- Thank you.
Outside in the shopping centre, finance expert Sarah Pennells was keen to find out just how savvy you are when it comes to using your credit card.
Why do you use a credit card? Saves me carrying a lot of money in my purse.
I keep all the records and check it off.
If I'm concerned where the money has gone, I phone up and they tell me.
How long have you had a credit card? Many years, I can't remember how long, when they first started, I think, yes.
I mean, having lived through the War, you watch your pennies.
Do you choose a credit card that gives you any kind of rewards or? Yes, of course I do.
So you make sure you get rewarded for your spending and you pay it off every month? Yes.
I haven't got the same card, I change according to what they give me.
- Sarah, she's doing all the right things, isn't she? - Absolutely, Joyce has got it nailed here.
Credit cards can be brilliant if you use them in the right way like Joyce does, because they give you valuable consumer protection.
You get up to seven or eight weeks interest free, as long as you pay it off in full every single month.
The only problem is if they either encourage you to spend more money than you have or if you get behind with your payments and end up paying the interest.
The issue of using cards abroad, tell us about that, because it isn't quite as straightforward.
You travel around, Europe and elsewhere? The world! So do you use your credit card for shopping when you're out there? I'm very careful about that.
So you don't use them abroad when you go shopping.
That's one thing that catches people out, there are two rules about using your credit card abroad, firstly, check the fees because they do vary widely.
Some charge very little fees, some charge loads of fees, and never, never, never use your credit card to take money out abroad.
Cos not only are they very chunky fees, but you pay interest from day one, even if you pay your balance off in full.
But why am I telling Joyce this? She knows it anyway.
- She's wonderful.
- You've got to be.
I think you ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Say no more, say no more.
61% of us in the UK own one of these -- a smartphone.
Choosing one of them and getting yourself on the right tariff can seem pretty complicated.
The people in our next story settled on a Samsung S4 but little did they know that a key setting on the handset would leave them with sky-high bills and worse still, both the manufacturer and the phone provider knew that the problem existed.
We're often told that it's good to talk but many of us prefer the convenience of sending a simple text message.
In 2013, in the UK, we sent a staggering 145 billion of them.
But some of the people texting on one of the world's most popular smartphones have found that those messages have ended up costing a lot more than they'd bargained for, thanks to the addition of a little extra touch to show how they were feeling.
The Samsung Galaxy S range has sold more than 200 million phones since its launch in 2010 and the Galaxy S4 alone sold more than 10 million in its first month of sale.
One proud owner is 20-year-old Jade Cochrane.
She switched to a Galaxy S4 when her old mobile phone contract came to an end and decided she wanted something, well, a bit smarter.
My phone battery was draining out so I didn't want to be paying for a phone that wasn't working right so I thought I was due for an upgrade.
All my friends were, like, showing me what they can do on their phones and stuff.
I was like, "I want to do that.
" The contract Jade took was a pay-monthly two-year deal with the provider EE.
As part of the plan, she got her dream phone plus 600 minutes of calls and unlimited texts, all for £30.
99 a month.
Every time I go to get a mobile, I make sure I get unlimited texts because I text all the time.
Luckily for Jade, it's her mum Paula who pays for the phone each month from her own bank account.
I've always been quite happy to pay her bill.
She's never abused the fact that I pay for it and I pay direct debit.
She's usually very careful.
It's always been a steady amount of money we spend on it so I've got no reason to mistrust her so that was fine.
Or at least it was until November 2014 when Paula received a bill from EE for £100.
92p.
I was like that, "Jade! What've you done? "You must've went over your minutes because it's unlimited texts "so it couldn't have been your texting.
" I've never experienced anything like that before.
I did contribute money to pay the bill to my mum because it was my fault.
Baffled as to why the bill was so high, Paula called EE for an explanation.
She was horrified to be told that the next month's bill in December was going to be an even bigger one -- a whopping £448.
97p.
I was really shocked cos I thought no way for a mobile phone bill.
That is absolutely ridiculous.
EE told Paula that the reason the bills were so high was because of the number of picture messages being sent from Jade's phone.
Jade didn't think she was sending any.
I already knew if you sent a picture it did cost money so that's why I didn't intend to do that, I never sent a picture through a text.
But as they struggled to work out what was going on, things got worse.
Not only had EE taken almost £450 from Paula's account in December, but when she went to her bank in January, she discovered they'd taken another £486.
Paula couldn't understand what was going on.
How could Jade keep running up such vast bills when she swore blind she wasn't sending any pictures? Well, it turned out she was.
These little things.
And although Jade didn't realise it, on the Galaxy S4 they came at a price.
They're called emoticons, but if like me you don't really use them, luckily our technology expert David McClelland can shed some light.
An emoticon is a little smiley face, or unhappy face, created out of punctuation marks, letters and numbers.
We use them in texts, instant messaging and even e-mails.
Because we use them all over the place we just assume they'll be free to send.
But the problem is when handsets have been turning these emoticons into pictures, these picture messages aren't included in people's bundles.
They can cost up to 40 pence per message to send and that's the problem that many people have been experiencing.
A number of handsets have been implicated in this issue.
A lot of them do seem to be Samsung.
These phones by default will translate an SMS message into a more expensive MMS message.
Other handset manufacturers have been implicated too, but Samsung seems to be the main handset that people are having issues with.
And it was Jade's Samsung phone which was behind her high bills.
Every time she sent an emoticon, Jade's mobile company would charge her 40 pence per message because her handset was translating these text messages as picture messages.
Now Jade, and much less her mother Paula, had no idea that these emoticons came at a cost, which in this case, thanks to the number Jade had sent, already totalled £943.
07.
Paula rang EE again to protest and the company offered her £100 back as a goodwill gesture, but Paula refused because she wanted to get all the extra charges back.
I says, "Well, I'm not accepting £100," I says, "because that is a ridiculous," I says, "amount of money for a mobile phone bill.
" I know that my mum's obviously hurting by the fact that all this money's gone and it brought the whole family down, to be honest.
The one piece of good news was that when Paula went to visit her local EE store, staff reset the phone so that sending emoticons would no longer show up as picture messages and therefore preventing Jade from racking up more of those extra charges.
It was a surprisingly simple fix and one that plenty of other Galaxy S4 owners may wish that they'd known about too, because if they'd sent an emoticon on any of these phones manufactured before April 2014, they'd most likely have been charged in exactly the same way as Jade and Paula.
To stop that, all that was needed to be done was to go into the phone settings, then click on Input mode and then finally select the Unicode option.
But for Jade and Paula that solution came too late and although the problem was now solved, because bills are backdated, by the end of the month, one final huge bill, this time for over £253, hit the doormat.
It shouldn't be allowed and I feel quite I feel as though I've been robbed of my money.
But when we contacted EE, the company pointed out that Paula's monthly itemised bills did highlight the extra charges, making it clear they were messages not included in her mobile phone plan.
EE also told us they'd sent a series of text messages to the phone warning the phone usage was higher than usual which could result in higher than normal charges and they stressed it's the handset, not mobile networks like them, which converts emoticons into picture messages.
So they're working with the phone manufacturer Samsung to ensure this won't happen automatically in the future.
And it seems that's been successful, because while Samsung reiterated that only phones made before 2014 had been affected by this and said that users would have had a warning when emoticons were converted to a picture message, it also told us that this issue has been fully resolved and that now all Samsung smartphones classify emoticons as SMS messages.
But Jade and Paula remain unhappy that they've had to stump up nearly £1,200 and that if the phone had been set up differently they'd never have needed to pay, and they've got some advice for anyone else thinking of upgrading their phone.
Read up on your technology.
If you're going to buy a device, nowadays, the technology is getting so advanced, make sure you do research on it before you buy it.
Well, you can't help sympathising with Jade and Paula about the money they've lost and if you've got a different phone, don't think you don't need to worry about unexpected extra charges.
There's a whole raft of ways that some smartphones can be -- shall we say? -- a little too smart for their own good? Now, it's fair to say that most of us would view our homes as being our biggest asset in life, so if and when you come to sell it, not only do you hope that you're going to make money on it, but you also hope that you won't have any difficulties or problems in selling it on.
However, we've been hearing from a number of people who fear that selling their homes has become nigh on impossible, not because nobody wants to buy them, but instead because they say that mortgages are being refused on the basis of what their houses are actually made of and it seems that that's especially the case on one particular estate in London, so I thought I'd go along to find out more.
So distinctive is the design of this eye-catching piece of 1960s architecture that it's classified as a listed building.
And while it may not be to everybody's taste, to the tightknit community that live here, it's a piece of heaven amidst the hustle and bustle of north London.
The flats are fantastic, brilliantly laid out, spacious, light.
What I liked about the place was that the architecture is unusual for London.
I love it here.
It's the best place I've ever lived, so it's Love it.
Traditionally, whenever flats on the Alexandra & Ainsworth Estates have come up for sale, estate agents have absolutely no problems generating interest from potential buyers.
But now there's trouble in paradise.
Now whatever the plus points are on this estate, lenders are refusing to offer mortgages against these properties.
So it means that when it comes to the time to sell up and move on, well, it's not going to be easy.
These homes fall into the category of what's known as non-standard or non-traditional construction.
And they're not alone in that.
The UK has plenty of properties that for various reasons are classed that way because of unusual design or materials.
But, these days, with some lenders perhaps being even more cautious, it can lead to problems, as Kate Cordon has discovered.
She's lived on the estate since 2008.
And what appeals to you about it? The space is really good, the light in the house is amazing and it's a crazy upside-down house -- we have all our bedrooms on the ground floor where you don't need the good light, moving up to our living room upstairs with a large roof terrace where it's just bright and sunny the whole time.
'Now we're not saying it's perfect, and over the years, 'this estate did have instances of antisocial behaviour.
'None of that, however, put off buyers.
'But since the property crash in 2007, 'estate agents in the area say they have seen a real reluctance 'by mortgage lenders to loan on these properties, 'so unless it's a cash purchase, they now struggle to sell.
'Kate became aware that things had changed 'when, in 2013, she wanted to renegotiate her existing loan.
' Did you have to really talk the mortgage people into giving you the mortgage? Yep, they tried to turn us down on affordability, they tried to turn us down on the construction type and it took a bit of arguing.
They've got a lot of misconceptions about this place.
There's a difference between the cast concrete and uncast, and how long it would actually last and But there's been quite a few reports commissioned on it to say that it's a decent type of concrete, could be here in 200 years, and they really should give mortgages on it.
Now, that's an interesting point, because if you were one of the last people to get a mortgage, you know, prior to the crash, the financial crash, - how did you then get a remortgage? - We did it with the same people and I was here when the surveyor came over and I was really anxious because I knew no-one was getting mortgages on the estate and I was speaking to him about it and he said, "If you were looking for a mortgage, I would tell them to turn you down.
"I don't think this is marketable and I don't think it's desirable.
" So Kate was lucky.
If she'd been applying for a brand-new mortgage, rather than changing the one she already had, according to the surveyor, she most likely would have been turned down.
Kate and some of her fellow residents have been trying to find out if there's anything at all they can do to improve their chances of being able to sell their flats.
I notice that you have a couple of letters from property companies, so have you been writing to them about the saleability of the house? Yes, well, we know which companies have been selling the properties on the estate, so we approached some of the estate agents and said, "The surveyors are telling us these places aren't marketable, "they're not desirable, what is your view on it?" So we got a couple of letters from local people to say So it says, "These properties are extremely popular "and easily marketable.
The NW8 area is highly desirable.
There is "a high demand for these properties on the estate from cash buyers.
" It's clear from these letters that estate agents do have people who want to buy here, but none of that counts for anything if they can't get a mortgage signed off.
John McDavid is a local estate agent.
What reaction do you get when some of these flats go up for sale? A wholly positive one, so we advertise to cash buyers only.
One of the flats that we marketed last year, we had over 100 people trying to have a look at it.
Once you open it up to mortgage buyers, you're just going to get it in front of loads more people.
We've got huge demand, absolutely, yeah.
A lot of the time lenders will look at you as a buyer and say, "Yes, in theory, but we'll take the opinion of the surveyor.
" They just seem really reluctant to put their name to it.
What is it based on, on this estate? There's a stigma attached to the construction type -- prefab concrete panelling.
However, we know that this was all poured on site, which makes it a completely different beast.
The type of concrete used was incredibly reliable, so structurally here, there's nothing wrong.
It's important to understand that this isn't a problem that's attached purely to this estate.
In our office we have plenty of examples of ex-local-authority properties where the lenders simply will not lend out a mortgage against these buildings.
It's an issue right across the UK.
For example, in Haverhill in Suffolk, some homeowners can't sell their houses because of the properties' part-timber construction.
And we know there are people in Castleford in Yorkshire who say lenders will no longer agree mortgages on their homes because of their steel-frame construction.
In fact, the National Association of Estate Agents told us that all over the country lenders are refusing to give mortgages to perfectly suitable borrowers, simply because of the history or construction of the buildings they're trying to buy, and that's very frustrating for buyers, but, of course, even worse for the sellers, who fear that they'll never be able to move unless the situation changes.
Andrew Mortlake is the director of the independent mortgage brokers Coreco and has been in the industry for 21 years.
He says that for some lenders, construction is definitely a key factor.
What a lender doesn't want to do is to take on a property where there is a perceived risk.
It's very important that lenders don't just get the risk-weighting right on who they're lending to, but also on the types of properties they're lending to.
And in this era of more stringent lending criteria, lenders are more cautious than they used to be.
Most lenders these days do see non-standard properties as more of a riskier lending decision than the usual standard bricks and mortar.
But when we contacted the Council of Mortgage Lenders, it insisted that, in fact, lenders do often lend on properties of non-standard construction, pointing out that each lender will have their own policies based on a mix of risk factors, including construction types, location and, of course, the characteristics of the property, as well as the suitability of the loan applicants.
Back in north London, Kate hopes that when the time finally comes, the attitude of lenders to where she lives will have changed and that she will be able to sell her flat.
There's no real reason why these flats and houses should be restricted and particularly if they've bought them at a time when you could get a mortgage.
We don't need a massive choice in mortgages, we just need a couple of companies which are going to be able to offer mortgages for this estate.
Here at Rip-Off Britain, we're always ready to investigate more of your stories.
Well, you can write to us at .
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or you can send us an e-mail to The Rip-Off team is ready and waiting to investigate your stories.
Now whether it's parking or phone bills or paying for a really vital utility that we just can't manage without, it's clear that we can end up feeling short-changed or treated truly unfairly in every aspect of our lives and I must admit, I'm really astonished by some of the stories we've heard about today.
It's actually hard to see how some of the people we've heard from - could have acted any differently.
- Yes, I know, it is quite extraordinary, isn't it? And yet they have been stuck paying the price, when as far as they were concerned, that really should not be the case and the problems that eventually occurred really should have been flagged up an awful lot sooner.
But hopefully what has happened today is that you have picked up some really useful advice in case any of the same things ever happen to you and if you do find yourself losing out as a result, then please do let us know, because maybe it's something that we can look into on one of our upcoming programmes.
And we've plenty of those coming up over the next few months.
In fact, I'm happy to say our food and holiday series will be returning, so let us know if there's something on those topics that we can look into on your behalf.
But in the meantime, that's all we've got time for today.
Thanks to everyone who shared their stories with us and we'll see you back here very soon to investigate some more.
- Till then, from all of the team, bye-bye.
- Bye-bye.
- Bye-bye.
You've told us about the companies you think get it wrong and the customer service that simply isn't up to scratch.
If I walk in somewhere and they treat me badly, then I walk and I will never go in again.
You've asked us to track down the scammers who stole your money and investigate the extra charges that you say are unfair.
You pay for a service and you expect it to be the service that you paid for.
And when you've lost out but no-one else is to blame, you've come to us to stop others falling into the same trap.
As a customer, you've got to be more savvy in terms of what you're buying and make sure that it's something that you want or need, not something that they're trying to trick you into getting.
So whether it's a blatant rip-off or a genuine mistake, we're here to find out why you're out of pocket and what you can do about it.
Your stories, your money -- this is Rip-Off Britain.
Hello and thanks for joining us once again as we get our teeth into quite a mix of really shocking stories today that involve all those serious problems with everyday things, like phones, bills, car parks -- issues that affect pretty much every one of us, but which, when something goes wrong, can have a really frustrating and soul-destroying impact on your life.
And that's certainly true with one of the cases we'll be investigating today.
Imagine discovering you've been overcharged for something and not just for a few months or even a year, but for decades.
You'd definitely want some of your money back, wouldn't you? But the company involved doesn't see things at all the same way.
Perhaps that's no surprise -- this programme is Rip-Off Britain, after all, but as we unravel not just that particular story, but other cases where people have been left feeling totally frustrated with the charges or problems they've been saddled with and, I must say, through no fault of their own, we'll have unmissable tips to make sure you don't find yourself in the same boat.
Coming up, the locals in uproar over a car park where even if you've bought a ticket, you may still be hit with a penalty charge.
It shouldn't have even happened in the first place and they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.
And why unexpected charges on one of Britain's bestselling phones could leave you with a not-so-smiley face.
It was like £100 and I was like, "Jade, what have you done?" Now, until recently, we'd probably have said that it was the energy companies that had the most complicated bills, but with the regulator, Ofgem, now telling them to make their costs easier to understand, perhaps the rather dubious honour of having the most complex bills and impenetrable charges should pass to the providers of yet another essential utility.
And, in the first instance, that would have to be water.
Now, if you've never really taken a close look at your water bill, well, it may be a very good idea to do it now because here's a story about a charge that was made by a water company which, in this case, turned out to be totally unnecessary.
This is the village of Crick in Northamptonshire.
It's a close community, where everyone looks out for one another.
- Hi, Jean! - Hi, Jean! - When there's news, it travels fast and currently there is one topic of conversation on everyone's lips.
Do you think we shall hear any more about the water? Speaking to the Daventry councillor, she seemed a bit optimistic about it.
The problem started back in the autumn of 2014 when rumours began that some residents may well have been paying unnecessarily for part of their water bill.
It wasn't long before the whole village took an interest in the discussion.
There should be a liaison between the council and the water authorities, really.
Well, I would have thought so, yeah, because we're exhausting all our outlets, really, aren't we? Jean Garner has lived in her home for 48 years and keeps a close eye on her finances.
The hydrangeas have come on this week, haven't they? They have, yeah.
I am quite meticulous with bills.
I check them, I check back statements and I suppose it arises from the days when I had a young family and money was tight and it's something that I've always done to make sure that all bills and accounts are correct.
So Jean was surprised to learn from one of her neighbours that, for 30 years, she may have been wrongly billed by her provider Severn Trent Water for a service that she isn't getting.
In this village, we pay two lots of water bill -- we pay Anglia Water for the water supply and we pay Severn Trent for wastage, and the new neighbours that we were in conversation with said that they didn't pay Severn Trent.
So when we looked into it further, we found out that the bill for Severn Trent was for stormwater collection.
Jean, along with 14 other residents on the estate, was paying around £60 a year for this stormwater collection, which is a charge levied by water companies when their drains filter the rainwater into the sewers.
But what worried Jean after she'd made further inquiries was that some of her neighbours weren't paying this charge at all so she wanted to know why SHE was.
The neighbours told me, "We don't pay Severn Trent any charges.
"Our stormwater goes into a soakaway.
" So my neighbour and I, we got together and discussed this and decided that we shouldn't probably be paying either.
So Jean contacted Severn Trent Water and asked them to investigate.
And an engineer came out and tested the water and found that it didn't go into the sewer, it went into a soakaway and he said, "You shouldn't be paying any bills to Severn Trent.
" The engineer discovered that when Jean's house was built in the 1960s, it had what's called a soakaway installed, which means rainwater soaks back into the garden.
It also means that the water companies don't deal with the rainwater so don't need to charge for it, which in turn means that Jean was paying Severn Trent Water unnecessarily for the last 30 years.
Since at least the 1980s, we've been paying Severn Trent £60-£70 a year.
This is for a service that we are not receiving.
But, when Jean contacted Severn Trent Water, she found their response something of a wash-out, to say the least.
They told us that they were only going to refund six months and they sent us a cheque for £31 something.
We felt really aggrieved.
Next, Jean and her neighbour contacted other households on the estate to break it to them that they too could well be paying for rainwater drainage when they simply didn't have to.
And very soon, there were plenty of people with a story to tell.
It's £60 a year, isn't it, the payment for the removal of surface water, yes? I paid £30 last year.
Noel has been living here for 32 years and, like Jean, it turns out that he too has been paying a charge to Severn Trent Water.
I was only alerted of the situation in 2014.
What's baffling the residents is the difference in the size of the refunds that Severn Trent Water has offered each of them.
- They gave me a partial refund.
- 20-odd quid, I got back.
- Oh, I got more than you! - It's not the amount, it's the principle.
They've been charging us for a service that they have not provided.
But although the residents may feel short-changed, Severn Trent Water is simply following the advice of the regulator Ofwat, who recommended that rebates should, as a minimum, go back at least one year.
Even so, there are some water companies who do go further than this.
Northumbrian Water, for example, has paid rebates dating back to 2001, a year after Ofwat first ruled that companies should offer rebates to customers who are being unfairly treated.
And this approach is something that the Consumer Council For Water sees as best practice.
For properties more than 14 years old, it is up to the customer to come forward.
Because water companies don't necessarily know which customers are not connected, the regulator didn't require companies to go back further than the current year in refunding charges.
However, we are aware now that about half of the water companies are now going back further than the current year.
We think that's good practice and we're pressing other companies to follow suit.
Indeed, if Severn Trent followed this best practice and gave Jean a rebate dating back to 2001, then she would be due back around £806.
'When they told us we were only going to get six months back, 'we thought that was an absolute insult.
' We wrote and told them we weren't satisfied, but they were adamant they weren't going to pay any more.
When we contacted Severn Trent Water about this, the company told us that when the water industry was privatised, the local authority in Jean's area hadn't passed over any sewer records.
As a result, Severn Trent said it simply hadn't known which houses had a soakaway system.
It says it relies on customers themselves to pass on this information, a fact which, it points out, is included on its water bills.
As for the backdated refund to which Jean believes she is entitled, Severn Trent didn't shift on this, telling us that it had refunded Jean in line with its agreement with the regulator Ofwat.
So we asked Ofwat whether it really considers that to be fair, given the sums of money Jean and her neighbours may have overpaid, and its position was clear.
It considers the one-year rebate to be a minimum standard and says it has encouraged water companies to Ofwat told us that more than half of companies have responded to customers' concerns on this issue.
It says water companies should be proactive about investigating neighbouring properties when a rebate is applied to find out if they too are paying for a service they are not receiving.
All of which means it may be worth you checking your water bill too, in case you're paying for something you don't need.
And while Jean is at least pleased that she will no longer be paying that additional charge, she is frustrated that, for all the years that she did, she was effectively putting her money down the drain.
We were all hoping for a bigger refund.
To receive a refund of £31 is really an insult.
We expected a much bigger refund.
Now, as I well know, parking can be an absolute pain.
Finding a space is bad enough.
Once you've manage that and succeeded in squeezing yourself into it, there is the next step -- dealing with the ticket machine from hell, the one that has to give you the ticket you need to avoid a hefty penalty charge.
Now, when you get one of those, it's only human nature to feel you didn't really deserve it.
But when it comes to the ticket machines in one particular car park, there seem to be an awful lot of people upset by charges they say were thoroughly unfair.
So you find a space in the car park, you've parked your car within the lines.
Perfect! What could possibly go wrong? Well, in this car park in Stockport, it seems quite a lot, at least according to a catalogue of complaints we've heard about the ticket machines.
They've been accused of being a little, shall we say, unpredictable, landing hundreds of drivers with hefty charges and uniting thousands of locals in a campaign to get things resolved.
It's so frustrating, that you've done nothing wrong, and it just makes you feel so angry.
Why do we have these insidious charges in Stockport? Something needs to be done.
It's an adult version of a schoolyard bully.
Among those who have come a costly cropper after parking at the Stockport Peel Centre is Tony Bryan.
He fell foul of one of the machines in February 2013, after coming to pick up a repaired computer.
I paid £1.
I entered a car registration by mistake, I entered my wife's car registration number and immediately realised what I had done.
I pressed the delete button, the machine did nothing so I then entered my correct registration number, not my wife's car, pressed the print button and I received a ticket, which had a mixture of both the numbers on it.
Tony had paid the correct £1 fee and displayed the ticket that the machine had printed.
So, as far as he was concerned, it wasn't his fault that the machine hadn't accepted the correct registration number and he could clearly demonstrate an honest attempt to pay and display.
The principle is they want me to pay for the amount of time I'm going to be here and the ticket proves I have actually paid.
But, two weeks later, he received a parking charge notice for £100, which would be reduced to £60 if he paid within 14 days.
I was a bit confused at first so I e-mailed them back and said, "Well, I have paid and this is what happened, "this is why I've got the wrong number on.
" Excel Parking, who manage the car park, was adamant that it was Tony's responsibility to enter the correct car registration details for his displayed ticket to be valid.
Even so, after numerous e-mails and letters from Tony arguing his case, Excel, as a gesture of goodwill, offered to reduce the £100 charge to an administration fee of £10 so long as he paid within 14 days.
But for Tony, this still wasn't good enough.
I wrote back and said, "I have paid you £1 "and I'm paying you no more for 15 minutes' parking.
"I refuse to pay any more money.
" With Tony digging his heels in, Excel threatened to take him to court if he didn't pay up so Tony decided to appeal through POPLA, the organisation that deals with appeals for parking on private land in England and Wales, but it took a year for Popla to respond and, when they did, they sided with the parking company.
I was absolutely disgusted.
I'd just spent a year thinking somebody's maybe on my side, somebody's looking at it fairly and we'll have some justice here.
Excel was now free to pursue Tony in court for the unpaid fine.
But Tony has a holiday home in France and he informed Excel he'd be out of the country for five months so any court date would need to be on his return.
Despite this, Excel pressed ahead with a court date and in his absence, a county court judgment was found against him.
I refused to pay it because I'm determined they'll receive no more money from me.
On his return, Tony says he successfully appealed the judgment after representing himself in court.
Even though his own legal costs exceeded the cost of the fine, for Tony it was all a matter of principle.
Nonetheless the threat of the original parking charge still looms over him unresolved.
Thanks in part to the publicity that Tony's case has generated other Stockport drivers who claim they've encountered similar problems at the same car park have come forward.
To date more than 2,500 people have signed a petition against disproportionate charges and bullying behaviour by the company.
It was student Leanne Patsays who started the petition.
I felt if just one person would get the ball rolling and maybe something positive could come out of it.
Like Tony, Leanne insists she made an honest attempt to pay and display, nonetheless her appeal was rejected.
I was absolutely gobsmacked.
Didn't have the money to pay and I'd paid and displayed, why should I pay a parking fine? Leanne has received letters from Excel threatening her with court action, but she took legal advice and was told parking charges on private land such as this one aren't always legally enforceable because if you can demonstrate that the fee demanded is unfair or disproportionate, and you're prepared to go to court to show this, you don't have to pay up.
We spoke to three other Stockport motorists -- all similarly peeved at the way they've been treated and all determined not to pay their charges.
I'm quite willing to go to court to fight this because I legally bought a ticket and I feel they are illegally trying to obtain money out of me.
It should be against the law.
I strongly oppose to paying it because I don't feel I've done anything wrong.
It's just something I could do without in my life at the moment.
I don't intend to pay the fine and I am prepared to go to court because I believe I've done nothing wrong.
But other drivers haven't felt so bullish.
Rose Crawford Round fell foul of the same ticketing machine.
If you don't pay your parking ticket then you risk being fined, you expect that.
When you've paid it, you don't expect to be fined.
It's daylight robbery.
But rather than fight the charge, Rose felt she had no choice but to pay up.
I felt I was backed into a corner, I had to pay it.
When we put the claims of our Stockport motorists to Excel parking the company told us the Peel Centre has 14 pay and display machines which will But it says the number of these is extremely negligible.
While that might be no consolation .
.
all faults within the remit of its two permanent onsite attendants are remedied as soon as possible The company points out that a substantial upgrade of the machines was carried out a couple of years ago and that in the first five months of 2015 there were just 14 occasions when machine faults needed to be fixed.
And some of those were due to vandalism.
But it stressed the machines are fully serviced annually and .
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as soon as it becomes aware of problems.
Excel also said that once Tony and Leanne had realised they had a problem, they could have phoned the helpline number displayed on the machine but chose not to do so and it said Tony didn't provide enough information to allow a court date to be arranged at a time he was in the country.
We also asked appeals body POPLA why they took a year to respond to Tony's case, which they agreed was regrettable, putting it down to a period of high demand due to They now deal with 3,000 cases a month, usually within 14 days.
But our inbox is full of complaints from people who feel they've been given a charge that's either disproportionate or unfair and in Stockport our drivers remain adamant they won't be paying up.
- I think it's absolutely ridiculous.
- Something's got to be done.
It shouldn't've even happened in the first place.
They shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.
Still to come on Rip-Off Britain, the homeowners who say mortgage lenders have made their homes unsellable.
They said, "If you were looking for a mortgage, I'd tell them to turn you down.
"I don't think this is marketable and I don't think it's desirable.
" This summer our Rip-Off Britain team was on the road again -- for two days only we opened our pop-up consumer advice shop in Nottingham.
The pop-up shop is ready for business and it's open, so come on in, everybody, yes.
Karen Jennings called in to see if there's anything she can do about a problem that's been going on for ten years.
So she's come to Trading Standards expert Sylvia Rook for advice.
My problem is a leaking conservatory.
It's leaked for ten years and I've over the years I've written many times to the company that built it and had no success getting the problem resolved.
What do you think, Sylvia? This is quite a sad story and I've had a chance to go through Karen's paperwork so I can see you kept trying to get it sorted.
The law says if you have a problem with a breach of contract -- in this case we're looking at the Supply of Goods and Services Act -- we're saying that work should be done with reasonable care and skill, which clearly it wasn't.
- You've got six years in which you can lay a claim.
- Right.
I saw from your notes that you did actually get some advice about writing a letter which was just before the time limit.
If you'd then taken them to court you'd have been able to take action and get your money back or money towards the repairs.
But, unfortunately, the law limits when you can take action.
- Right, yeah.
- Nobody advised you on that, that there was a time limit? Well, no, and I got to the point of taking it to court but because I've never done anything like that before I just didn't follow through on it.
You're not alone with that.
There's a lot of fear about taking court action.
all the information about how to take a small claim, it tells you the fee structure, what to do.
I could advise you to try it, but you're likely to be putting good money after bad because there are court fees and then the court might throw it out - because of the time taken.
- Right.
There is a possibility of trying your house insurance.
Have you tried it? - No.
- That's not limited, it depends what the policy says.
- Right.
I think that is your best option because you can say what has happened and the insurance might cover the cost of repair which would be an ideal outcome.
Yeah.
I'll have a look at that.
- We wish you luck and a damp-free future with your conservatory! - I hope so.
- Thank you very much.
- Thank you.
Outside in the shopping centre, finance expert Sarah Pennells was keen to find out just how savvy you are when it comes to using your credit card.
Why do you use a credit card? Saves me carrying a lot of money in my purse.
I keep all the records and check it off.
If I'm concerned where the money has gone, I phone up and they tell me.
How long have you had a credit card? Many years, I can't remember how long, when they first started, I think, yes.
I mean, having lived through the War, you watch your pennies.
Do you choose a credit card that gives you any kind of rewards or? Yes, of course I do.
So you make sure you get rewarded for your spending and you pay it off every month? Yes.
I haven't got the same card, I change according to what they give me.
- Sarah, she's doing all the right things, isn't she? - Absolutely, Joyce has got it nailed here.
Credit cards can be brilliant if you use them in the right way like Joyce does, because they give you valuable consumer protection.
You get up to seven or eight weeks interest free, as long as you pay it off in full every single month.
The only problem is if they either encourage you to spend more money than you have or if you get behind with your payments and end up paying the interest.
The issue of using cards abroad, tell us about that, because it isn't quite as straightforward.
You travel around, Europe and elsewhere? The world! So do you use your credit card for shopping when you're out there? I'm very careful about that.
So you don't use them abroad when you go shopping.
That's one thing that catches people out, there are two rules about using your credit card abroad, firstly, check the fees because they do vary widely.
Some charge very little fees, some charge loads of fees, and never, never, never use your credit card to take money out abroad.
Cos not only are they very chunky fees, but you pay interest from day one, even if you pay your balance off in full.
But why am I telling Joyce this? She knows it anyway.
- She's wonderful.
- You've got to be.
I think you ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Say no more, say no more.
61% of us in the UK own one of these -- a smartphone.
Choosing one of them and getting yourself on the right tariff can seem pretty complicated.
The people in our next story settled on a Samsung S4 but little did they know that a key setting on the handset would leave them with sky-high bills and worse still, both the manufacturer and the phone provider knew that the problem existed.
We're often told that it's good to talk but many of us prefer the convenience of sending a simple text message.
In 2013, in the UK, we sent a staggering 145 billion of them.
But some of the people texting on one of the world's most popular smartphones have found that those messages have ended up costing a lot more than they'd bargained for, thanks to the addition of a little extra touch to show how they were feeling.
The Samsung Galaxy S range has sold more than 200 million phones since its launch in 2010 and the Galaxy S4 alone sold more than 10 million in its first month of sale.
One proud owner is 20-year-old Jade Cochrane.
She switched to a Galaxy S4 when her old mobile phone contract came to an end and decided she wanted something, well, a bit smarter.
My phone battery was draining out so I didn't want to be paying for a phone that wasn't working right so I thought I was due for an upgrade.
All my friends were, like, showing me what they can do on their phones and stuff.
I was like, "I want to do that.
" The contract Jade took was a pay-monthly two-year deal with the provider EE.
As part of the plan, she got her dream phone plus 600 minutes of calls and unlimited texts, all for £30.
99 a month.
Every time I go to get a mobile, I make sure I get unlimited texts because I text all the time.
Luckily for Jade, it's her mum Paula who pays for the phone each month from her own bank account.
I've always been quite happy to pay her bill.
She's never abused the fact that I pay for it and I pay direct debit.
She's usually very careful.
It's always been a steady amount of money we spend on it so I've got no reason to mistrust her so that was fine.
Or at least it was until November 2014 when Paula received a bill from EE for £100.
92p.
I was like that, "Jade! What've you done? "You must've went over your minutes because it's unlimited texts "so it couldn't have been your texting.
" I've never experienced anything like that before.
I did contribute money to pay the bill to my mum because it was my fault.
Baffled as to why the bill was so high, Paula called EE for an explanation.
She was horrified to be told that the next month's bill in December was going to be an even bigger one -- a whopping £448.
97p.
I was really shocked cos I thought no way for a mobile phone bill.
That is absolutely ridiculous.
EE told Paula that the reason the bills were so high was because of the number of picture messages being sent from Jade's phone.
Jade didn't think she was sending any.
I already knew if you sent a picture it did cost money so that's why I didn't intend to do that, I never sent a picture through a text.
But as they struggled to work out what was going on, things got worse.
Not only had EE taken almost £450 from Paula's account in December, but when she went to her bank in January, she discovered they'd taken another £486.
Paula couldn't understand what was going on.
How could Jade keep running up such vast bills when she swore blind she wasn't sending any pictures? Well, it turned out she was.
These little things.
And although Jade didn't realise it, on the Galaxy S4 they came at a price.
They're called emoticons, but if like me you don't really use them, luckily our technology expert David McClelland can shed some light.
An emoticon is a little smiley face, or unhappy face, created out of punctuation marks, letters and numbers.
We use them in texts, instant messaging and even e-mails.
Because we use them all over the place we just assume they'll be free to send.
But the problem is when handsets have been turning these emoticons into pictures, these picture messages aren't included in people's bundles.
They can cost up to 40 pence per message to send and that's the problem that many people have been experiencing.
A number of handsets have been implicated in this issue.
A lot of them do seem to be Samsung.
These phones by default will translate an SMS message into a more expensive MMS message.
Other handset manufacturers have been implicated too, but Samsung seems to be the main handset that people are having issues with.
And it was Jade's Samsung phone which was behind her high bills.
Every time she sent an emoticon, Jade's mobile company would charge her 40 pence per message because her handset was translating these text messages as picture messages.
Now Jade, and much less her mother Paula, had no idea that these emoticons came at a cost, which in this case, thanks to the number Jade had sent, already totalled £943.
07.
Paula rang EE again to protest and the company offered her £100 back as a goodwill gesture, but Paula refused because she wanted to get all the extra charges back.
I says, "Well, I'm not accepting £100," I says, "because that is a ridiculous," I says, "amount of money for a mobile phone bill.
" I know that my mum's obviously hurting by the fact that all this money's gone and it brought the whole family down, to be honest.
The one piece of good news was that when Paula went to visit her local EE store, staff reset the phone so that sending emoticons would no longer show up as picture messages and therefore preventing Jade from racking up more of those extra charges.
It was a surprisingly simple fix and one that plenty of other Galaxy S4 owners may wish that they'd known about too, because if they'd sent an emoticon on any of these phones manufactured before April 2014, they'd most likely have been charged in exactly the same way as Jade and Paula.
To stop that, all that was needed to be done was to go into the phone settings, then click on Input mode and then finally select the Unicode option.
But for Jade and Paula that solution came too late and although the problem was now solved, because bills are backdated, by the end of the month, one final huge bill, this time for over £253, hit the doormat.
It shouldn't be allowed and I feel quite I feel as though I've been robbed of my money.
But when we contacted EE, the company pointed out that Paula's monthly itemised bills did highlight the extra charges, making it clear they were messages not included in her mobile phone plan.
EE also told us they'd sent a series of text messages to the phone warning the phone usage was higher than usual which could result in higher than normal charges and they stressed it's the handset, not mobile networks like them, which converts emoticons into picture messages.
So they're working with the phone manufacturer Samsung to ensure this won't happen automatically in the future.
And it seems that's been successful, because while Samsung reiterated that only phones made before 2014 had been affected by this and said that users would have had a warning when emoticons were converted to a picture message, it also told us that this issue has been fully resolved and that now all Samsung smartphones classify emoticons as SMS messages.
But Jade and Paula remain unhappy that they've had to stump up nearly £1,200 and that if the phone had been set up differently they'd never have needed to pay, and they've got some advice for anyone else thinking of upgrading their phone.
Read up on your technology.
If you're going to buy a device, nowadays, the technology is getting so advanced, make sure you do research on it before you buy it.
Well, you can't help sympathising with Jade and Paula about the money they've lost and if you've got a different phone, don't think you don't need to worry about unexpected extra charges.
There's a whole raft of ways that some smartphones can be -- shall we say? -- a little too smart for their own good? Now, it's fair to say that most of us would view our homes as being our biggest asset in life, so if and when you come to sell it, not only do you hope that you're going to make money on it, but you also hope that you won't have any difficulties or problems in selling it on.
However, we've been hearing from a number of people who fear that selling their homes has become nigh on impossible, not because nobody wants to buy them, but instead because they say that mortgages are being refused on the basis of what their houses are actually made of and it seems that that's especially the case on one particular estate in London, so I thought I'd go along to find out more.
So distinctive is the design of this eye-catching piece of 1960s architecture that it's classified as a listed building.
And while it may not be to everybody's taste, to the tightknit community that live here, it's a piece of heaven amidst the hustle and bustle of north London.
The flats are fantastic, brilliantly laid out, spacious, light.
What I liked about the place was that the architecture is unusual for London.
I love it here.
It's the best place I've ever lived, so it's Love it.
Traditionally, whenever flats on the Alexandra & Ainsworth Estates have come up for sale, estate agents have absolutely no problems generating interest from potential buyers.
But now there's trouble in paradise.
Now whatever the plus points are on this estate, lenders are refusing to offer mortgages against these properties.
So it means that when it comes to the time to sell up and move on, well, it's not going to be easy.
These homes fall into the category of what's known as non-standard or non-traditional construction.
And they're not alone in that.
The UK has plenty of properties that for various reasons are classed that way because of unusual design or materials.
But, these days, with some lenders perhaps being even more cautious, it can lead to problems, as Kate Cordon has discovered.
She's lived on the estate since 2008.
And what appeals to you about it? The space is really good, the light in the house is amazing and it's a crazy upside-down house -- we have all our bedrooms on the ground floor where you don't need the good light, moving up to our living room upstairs with a large roof terrace where it's just bright and sunny the whole time.
'Now we're not saying it's perfect, and over the years, 'this estate did have instances of antisocial behaviour.
'None of that, however, put off buyers.
'But since the property crash in 2007, 'estate agents in the area say they have seen a real reluctance 'by mortgage lenders to loan on these properties, 'so unless it's a cash purchase, they now struggle to sell.
'Kate became aware that things had changed 'when, in 2013, she wanted to renegotiate her existing loan.
' Did you have to really talk the mortgage people into giving you the mortgage? Yep, they tried to turn us down on affordability, they tried to turn us down on the construction type and it took a bit of arguing.
They've got a lot of misconceptions about this place.
There's a difference between the cast concrete and uncast, and how long it would actually last and But there's been quite a few reports commissioned on it to say that it's a decent type of concrete, could be here in 200 years, and they really should give mortgages on it.
Now, that's an interesting point, because if you were one of the last people to get a mortgage, you know, prior to the crash, the financial crash, - how did you then get a remortgage? - We did it with the same people and I was here when the surveyor came over and I was really anxious because I knew no-one was getting mortgages on the estate and I was speaking to him about it and he said, "If you were looking for a mortgage, I would tell them to turn you down.
"I don't think this is marketable and I don't think it's desirable.
" So Kate was lucky.
If she'd been applying for a brand-new mortgage, rather than changing the one she already had, according to the surveyor, she most likely would have been turned down.
Kate and some of her fellow residents have been trying to find out if there's anything at all they can do to improve their chances of being able to sell their flats.
I notice that you have a couple of letters from property companies, so have you been writing to them about the saleability of the house? Yes, well, we know which companies have been selling the properties on the estate, so we approached some of the estate agents and said, "The surveyors are telling us these places aren't marketable, "they're not desirable, what is your view on it?" So we got a couple of letters from local people to say So it says, "These properties are extremely popular "and easily marketable.
The NW8 area is highly desirable.
There is "a high demand for these properties on the estate from cash buyers.
" It's clear from these letters that estate agents do have people who want to buy here, but none of that counts for anything if they can't get a mortgage signed off.
John McDavid is a local estate agent.
What reaction do you get when some of these flats go up for sale? A wholly positive one, so we advertise to cash buyers only.
One of the flats that we marketed last year, we had over 100 people trying to have a look at it.
Once you open it up to mortgage buyers, you're just going to get it in front of loads more people.
We've got huge demand, absolutely, yeah.
A lot of the time lenders will look at you as a buyer and say, "Yes, in theory, but we'll take the opinion of the surveyor.
" They just seem really reluctant to put their name to it.
What is it based on, on this estate? There's a stigma attached to the construction type -- prefab concrete panelling.
However, we know that this was all poured on site, which makes it a completely different beast.
The type of concrete used was incredibly reliable, so structurally here, there's nothing wrong.
It's important to understand that this isn't a problem that's attached purely to this estate.
In our office we have plenty of examples of ex-local-authority properties where the lenders simply will not lend out a mortgage against these buildings.
It's an issue right across the UK.
For example, in Haverhill in Suffolk, some homeowners can't sell their houses because of the properties' part-timber construction.
And we know there are people in Castleford in Yorkshire who say lenders will no longer agree mortgages on their homes because of their steel-frame construction.
In fact, the National Association of Estate Agents told us that all over the country lenders are refusing to give mortgages to perfectly suitable borrowers, simply because of the history or construction of the buildings they're trying to buy, and that's very frustrating for buyers, but, of course, even worse for the sellers, who fear that they'll never be able to move unless the situation changes.
Andrew Mortlake is the director of the independent mortgage brokers Coreco and has been in the industry for 21 years.
He says that for some lenders, construction is definitely a key factor.
What a lender doesn't want to do is to take on a property where there is a perceived risk.
It's very important that lenders don't just get the risk-weighting right on who they're lending to, but also on the types of properties they're lending to.
And in this era of more stringent lending criteria, lenders are more cautious than they used to be.
Most lenders these days do see non-standard properties as more of a riskier lending decision than the usual standard bricks and mortar.
But when we contacted the Council of Mortgage Lenders, it insisted that, in fact, lenders do often lend on properties of non-standard construction, pointing out that each lender will have their own policies based on a mix of risk factors, including construction types, location and, of course, the characteristics of the property, as well as the suitability of the loan applicants.
Back in north London, Kate hopes that when the time finally comes, the attitude of lenders to where she lives will have changed and that she will be able to sell her flat.
There's no real reason why these flats and houses should be restricted and particularly if they've bought them at a time when you could get a mortgage.
We don't need a massive choice in mortgages, we just need a couple of companies which are going to be able to offer mortgages for this estate.
Here at Rip-Off Britain, we're always ready to investigate more of your stories.
Well, you can write to us at .
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or you can send us an e-mail to The Rip-Off team is ready and waiting to investigate your stories.
Now whether it's parking or phone bills or paying for a really vital utility that we just can't manage without, it's clear that we can end up feeling short-changed or treated truly unfairly in every aspect of our lives and I must admit, I'm really astonished by some of the stories we've heard about today.
It's actually hard to see how some of the people we've heard from - could have acted any differently.
- Yes, I know, it is quite extraordinary, isn't it? And yet they have been stuck paying the price, when as far as they were concerned, that really should not be the case and the problems that eventually occurred really should have been flagged up an awful lot sooner.
But hopefully what has happened today is that you have picked up some really useful advice in case any of the same things ever happen to you and if you do find yourself losing out as a result, then please do let us know, because maybe it's something that we can look into on one of our upcoming programmes.
And we've plenty of those coming up over the next few months.
In fact, I'm happy to say our food and holiday series will be returning, so let us know if there's something on those topics that we can look into on your behalf.
But in the meantime, that's all we've got time for today.
Thanks to everyone who shared their stories with us and we'll see you back here very soon to investigate some more.
- Till then, from all of the team, bye-bye.
- Bye-bye.
- Bye-bye.