Rip Off Britain (2009) s07e09 Episode Script
Series 7, Episode 9
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 is not up to scratch.
If you're paying for good service, you expect a good service and a good product, whatever it may be.
At the end of the day, we expect value for money.
You've asked us to track down the scammers who stole your money and investigate the extra charges you say are unfair.
The wool is being pulled over our eyes.
I don't think we get a fair price.
I think they should always put the customer first.
And when you've lost out but nobody else is to blame, you've come to us to stop others falling into the same trap.
- And no-one could sort that out for you over 10 years? - No-one has.
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 welcome once again to Rip-Off Britain, where as ever, the team has been going through all the letters and e-mails that you have very kindly sent on a really quite extraordinary range of subjects.
What they all have in common of course is that somewhere along the line, things have not gone the way you thought they would or should, leaving you feeling short-changed or disappointed with the service that you have received.
So as we investigate some of your stories today, we're going to be pushing for answers on exactly what it was that went wrong.
And we will also have plenty of unmissable advice so if you find yourself in a similar situation to the people we are about to meet, you will have a much better idea on what to do next.
Coming up, a new twist to the passport websites that aren't what they seem.
Court action if you don't pay up.
I couldn't sleep at nights.
Somebody coming round at whatever time to knock on my door to demand this money I believe I don't owe.
And first the trains don't run on time, but now it seems even the refunds will be delayed.
I am paying well over £5,000 a year to travel and I think that I deserve that money back and it should be coming back a lot quicker than what it is.
When you're moving into any sort of new home, one of the things that probably all of us would consider to be pretty essential is that there is a phone line.
And for most people, getting connected these days is easier than ever with almost an endless choice of providers.
But there are still parts of the UK and not necessarily isolated ones either, where residents have been unable to get any sort of phone line that works and for some of them, that is more than just an annoyance.
It's a problem that could have really serious implications.
Phoning a friend for a natter, checking your e-mails or even calling for help in an emergency.
However we use it, we usually take our phone line for granted.
Yet while technological advances like broadband and Wi-Fi get most of us connected more quickly and easily than ever before, the people who live in these three houses in Somerset all suffer from the same problem.
They haven't got a phone line.
So no calls, no internet and no idea of when or if that will change.
Stuart Warne and his family moved in in October 2014 and as a satisfied BT customer on and off for 20 years, Stuart had no reason to think sorting his phone line would be an issue.
We just phoned BT up to say we were moving address.
They said not a problem and it would take one to two weeks.
Whoever your phone supplier is, most line connections and installations in the UK are done by BT Openreach, which is part of the BT Group but operates independently.
You don't have a contract with them but they are the ones responsible for the wires and cables that connect the country.
So a week or so after the family moved in, it was a BT Openreach engineer that visited Stuart's newbuild home to connect his phone and broadband.
But on arrival, the engineer told Stuart he wouldn't be able to connect anything and that damage to the underground phone lines in the area made it impossible until repairs had been done.
The engineer turned up.
Couldn't get it working.
He went the other end of town, checked that, said there was a fault there.
So he couldn't connect me.
Stuart was told the same thing in a follow-up visit and on subsequent calls.
Over the next few months, he says he was given different information as to when the necessary repairs might be done and that the phone line could be finally installed.
Every time we phoned them we were getting passed from pillar to post.
And all the while, as an existing BT customer, he was paying a monthly direct debit for a broadband and telephone service that he simply didn't have.
We said we would just cancel our direct debit and they said, "Don't do that.
It won't be much longer.
" So they have still been taking our direct debits for phone line and internet.
After further complaints, B eventually refunded Stuart £179 for the direct debits that he had continued to pay.
But when we filmed, seven months after moving in, he still had no phone line.
The Smart TV he bought for their new home obviously couldn't connect to the internet.
And not being able to get online has also had an impact on son Joe.
I think it's unfair because I can't talk to my friends.
I can't play on my PlayStation with my mates either.
I can't do my homework online or anything.
I have to stay back after school or do it during my break or lunch or something.
And with mobile reception in the area unreliable, Stuart has more serious concerns as well.
I worry about not having the phone because I am diabetic and if you have to phone an ambulance here, it's pretty hard to get a reception.
Next door, Chris Driver and his family have similar problems and there is a big reason for them why not being connected is a real concern.
The phone line is actually the most important part for us because of Tristan, our middle child.
We think he has ataxic cerebral palsy, which means we have a lot of health professionals that we need to be in contact with on a regular basis.
Like Stuart, Chris had expected his phone line would be connected soon after they moved in.
This was essential because they quickly found out that the mobile signal in the area was limited.
In fact, the only spot in the house where they can get a decent mobile signal is up against the front kitchen window and even then what typically happens is that they can hear the people to whom they're speaking but the other end of the call can't hear them.
This is probably the only place in the house where you get any signal.
It's not a lot and when we do, it's normally you can't hear anybody anyway.
It just breaks up like we are in a tunnel.
When Chris contacted BT, he says he too was told that the connection itself should only take a couple of weeks to resolve but that the underground cabling in the area needed to be fixed first.
It's been seven months so I don't believe they are even doing anything to try and rectify the problem at all.
Adding to both families' frustration is the difficulty in finding out exactly what is going on.
You can't call BT Openreach direct so all calls or contact has to go through your service provider, whether that is BT, Sky or Talk Talk.
And that can make it tricky to get either the latest information or a straight answer.
Communication is key and we're not being communicated to.
Especially when you are expecting people to do their job.
We provide the information that there's a problem and you pay a lot of money to these companies for their services.
When they are not even providing that, it's quite frustrating.
The third house on the street did get connected by Openreach via overhead wires.
But Chris and Stuart were told that no such lines were available to help them.
- Have you heard anything from BT? - Not recently.
The last time I spoke to them was a couple of months ago but I keep getting these texts through.
The fourth of every month, you can guarantee the exact same text message comes through saying, "We're doing what we can.
" I'm fed up with it.
I'm absolutely fed up with it.
When we had to phone the ambulance for Tristan at Christmas, I had to stand on the main road.
So I had no idea what was going on with him inside the house but he was in a really bad way.
There are plenty of other new homes across the country that have been left without phones and internet.
Openreach has had complaints of long waiting times for connection on estates in places as varied as Cumbria, Hertfordshire, Hampshire, Kent, Chester and more.
Communications regulator Ofcom told us it wants that to improve and that it is closely monitoring Openreach's performance.
While it accepts "some jobs inevitably take longer than others", it has put in place strict rules meaning that the majority of new lines now have to be installed within 12 working days.
And when we contacted BT about Stuart and Chris' frustrations, there was at last good news and a great result.
The company told us it was "sorry for the delay in connecting residents", which it blamed on some of its cables being "damaged by another utility company working in the area" and a footpath above those cables needing to be resurfaced before they could be fixed.
But the company's engineers have worked around the clock to get the job completed.
The line has now been connected and both Stuart and Chris can now get phone and broadband services.
BT said it'll be giving both families some sort of compensatory gesture to apologise.
But though all of that is good news, Chris and Stuart remain frustrated that until coming to us, they had to wait so long.
When you're talking about a provider that actually allows communication, that's their pitch, communication, connecting to other people, but they can't connect to their customers and that's a real problem.
Last year, a backlog of half a million applications at the Passport Office forced some travellers to cancel or even reorganise their travel plans, so it's totally understandable that if you're applying for those vital documents, you might be tempted to use a service that promises to have everything sorted out within a specific timeframe.
But as we've reported before, not all of the companies that you're going to find online, offering to help with passport applications, are necessarily doing quite what you expect.
And now, we've been hearing complaints about one site in particular, where signing up could cost you a lot more than you bargain for.
You've booked your flights, your hotel, packed your swimwear and got your sun cream.
You think you're all set for that dream holiday for which you've been saving for the past year, until, that is, you realise that your passport is out of date.
And as many of you have found out, going online to renew a passport can easily lead to complications that you didn't expect.
28-year-old software engineer Alex Yates relies on his passport for his job.
My passport is absolutely essential to my line of work.
I do need to be able to travel.
In the last month, I've been to Germany, Austria, Ireland, Italy.
But in September of 2014, Alex noticed that his passport would shortly expire, and with plenty of work trips planned, he wanted a new one as soon as possible, so he logged on to what he assumed was the official UK passport website, where he saw an option for a fast-track service that would mean he'd be able to get his passport within a week.
I didn't want there to be any risk about me not having my passport at some point in time and not being able to get on a business trip to the States.
So, Alex entered his bank details on to the site, selecting the option for an on-the-day appointment.
Shortly afterwards, he received an e-mail from British Passport Services, saying they were pleased to confirm his upcoming appointment at his nearest Passport Office in Peterborough, for which he owed them £117.
60.
Now, Alex had assumed that cost also included the price of his passport, and it was only when he rang the Passport Office to confirm his appointment that he discovered that wasn't the case at all.
Far from booking his appointment with the Passport Office direct, the website he'd used belonged to an entirely separate company, British Passport Services.
I spoke to a lady there who said that the appointment had been booked by a third party and that it didn't include the passport fee.
The £117.
60 charge he was being asked to pay by British Passport Services was purely that company's fee for arranging the face-to-face appointment.
To actually get his passport, he'd still need to pay the official £128 charge that the UK government has for its premium same-day service.
At this point, I realised that what I'd paid was a price that was similar to the price of actually getting the passport, similar enough that when I saw the price, I was like, "Yeah, that's about right.
" But all that had done was just book me an appointment.
Alex was horrified to discover that the government offers these appointments free of charge, so he called British Passport Services to let them know that he decided to cancel the appointment that they'd booked and make his own instead.
I explained that I thought it was misrepresented on the site.
The person on the end of the phone got very angry and he said that I legally had to pay them, that I'd signed a contract and that I was backing out of a contract, that he insinuated that I was a very bad person for doing that, which wasn't very nice.
Looking again at the website, Alex could see that in the small print, there was a clause stating that there is a non-refundable charge for arranging an appointment.
The website does also make clear that British Passport Services is not affiliated to Her Majesty's Passport Office.
But the person he was speaking to now told him that unless he paid what they said was due, he would be charged more money every time they contacted him, be it by e-mail, text or phone.
The things that they're charging for are just ridiculous! Erm they're laughable when you actually look at it.
But the company continued to send him both texts and e-mails saying he had no choice but to pay up and reiterating that the longer he delayed paying up, the more he was going to be charged.
So, what I've got here is a few letters that British Passport Services sent me.
This first one, it lists all the charges here that I've been charged for, so, for example, use of the online booking form -- £10.
E-mail and letter confirmation -- a further £10, so I've been charged £20 pre-VAT just for using their online booking form and them sending me a confirmation letter.
Three months later, a letter arrived threatening him with legal action if he didn't pay and it was no idle threat.
Alex received a County Court claim for the money that British Passport Services insisted he owed them.
This is the actual claim form that's been issued to me.
It lists me as a defendant, which just seeing my name underneath "defendant" wasn't nice.
Still refusing to pay, Alex set up an online forum to see if anyone else had had a similar experience.
It soon became clear that British Passport Services had a number of other customers who weren't happy about the charges that they were being asked to pay.
Among them, Linda Tomlinson from Essex.
She'd gone online to apply for a passport for her then 13-year-old daughter, Sophia, ahead of a holiday to Egypt and, just like Alex, had thought that she was dealing with the official UK government website.
Looking on the site with British flags and people sitting at desks and a picture of a passport, it was very well done and very convincing.
It was only when Linda was on the payment page that alarm bells rang.
It didn't quite tally with her previous experience of buying a passport, so she immediately closed the page.
She went on to get Sophia's passport through the Post Office's check-and-send service instead and the family went off on their holiday.
But on their return, there was a nasty surprise waiting for them.
Linda had received a text message from British Passport Services informing her that she owed them £117.
60 for outstanding services.
Shocked, she called them immediately to find out what was going on.
I didn't understand who these people were, so I asked if I could speak to somebody else in the office, to which he told me I wasn't I was unable to and that there was nobody else, it was only him I could speak to.
He then became aggressive and told me that I had to pay this money and this debt needed to be paid otherwise court action would be taken.
Petrified that a debt collection agency would be knocking at her door, Linda began to panic.
I'm a single mum with two teenage daughters and my priority is to keep them safe and I didn't know really what to do.
I felt very anxious, worried and where would this end? I felt that I couldn't sleep at nights for somebody coming round at whatever time to knock on my door to demand this money I believe I don't owe.
Linda then started to receive letters similar to the ones that Alex got, including threats of court action.
When I was looking at the letters that they'd sent, they'd put a breakdown of their services that they'd offered to me or I'd agreed to.
Their services were completely outrageous.
What's more, when Linda spoke to the official Passport Office, she was told that British Passport Services had never even booked the appointment they were billing her for supposedly arranging.
There is no such thing as customer services with this company.
They set a list of what they believe are services that are non-existent and they add extra charges to services, again, that they haven't given, and to me, that isn't a professional company.
The charges Linda believes to be risible include £10 for directions to the office and £20 for access to a 24-hour helpline.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing for all the people caught out in this way is that they're being charged for a service that's completely unnecessary.
The official Passport Office will never charge for face-to-face appointments.
The only money you'll need to pay is the cost of issuing the passport itself, which may vary depending on how quickly you need it.
Several times before, we've reported on websites that you may think are the official place to get your passport, but in fact are no such thing.
I felt very angry and I felt that I'd been deceived by this company simply because the £72.
50 charge was exactly the same amount as the cost of a new passport.
The government has issued stark warnings about such sites, stressing that the only website you need to get a passport is their own, GOV.
UK.
Since we've filmed with him, Alex has had some good news.
He won his court case against British Passport Services.
His charges were cancelled and the company was ordered to pay him costs of £113.
48.
When we contacted British Passport Services, the company told us it's disappointed with the court's ruling.
It insisted that both Alex and Linda fully signed up to, received but then refused to pay for, the services it provided.
And it stressed that the website clearly states that it is separate from Her Majesty's Passport Office and looks completely different from the government site, pointing to research from the Advertising Standards Agency which found that 83% of users could tell the difference between official and commercial passport websites.
British Passport Services also maintained that all its charges are outlined clearly, pointing out that more than once during the booking process, customers are required to confirm that they understand them.
It went on to say that while the site does inform users that these charges can be avoided by using the government site, their services can save time and work when renewing a passport and it said staff are .
.
promising to look into the suggestion that its agents were aggressive.
But both Alex and Linda will make certain that the next time they're after a passport, it's only the official government site that they'll use.
If I'd perhaps taken a few more moments to look to clarify that it was a government site, then it wouldn't be this mess.
The website is a complete disgrace.
I wish I'd never clicked the link.
I'm properly annoyed at the amount of time I've wasted over this.
Still to come on Rip-Off Britain The aspiring actors cast as zombies in a new TV show but the real frights came when they didn't get paid.
I'll never work for him again.
I wouldn't have worked for him in the first place, if I'd have known.
For two days only, Nottingham was the location for our annual Rip-Off Britain pop-up event.
It was great to meet so many of you.
We had more experts, more advice and tackled more of your problems than ever before.
Carl Whitbread got a double whammy of help from our legal and technology experts Gary Rycroft and David McClelland after he lost most of his downloaded music from an online account and ran into trouble getting it back.
I contacted the company who referred me to another provider because they'd actually sold the service on to somebody else.
I sent them all the details of the transaction that I still kept and they came back to me saying we don't have any record of your transaction and, in fact, the date of the transaction predates our service purchase.
Whereabouts are you right now? Is that as far as you've been able to get? I was referred back to the original provider who then sent me back again.
- You're going round in circles.
- I'm going round in circles.
- Round a digital rabbit warren.
- Yep.
There's a particular, I guess challenge, with who owns music that you download.
- Gary, how does that bit work? - Yeah, that's right, David.
I think we're actually, in legal terms, sitting on a bit of digital time bomb, to be honest.
Unlike when you purchase a CD, you own something physical that's yours, when you download music, you don't actually own that asset.
You effectively are leasing it, you're listening to it under licence.
So you have never owned the music that you've downloaded.
You just had the right to listen to it.
It's a curious world where you buy something but you don't own it.
- Yes - That's what you're really saying.
I guess, ideally, you would make a backup of anything that you download.
Because, like Gary says, as soon as you download that, there's a licence there.
If you need to go back to that provider, depending on those terms and conditions, you may not be able to get that data back again.
So as soon as you download something, make a backup of it.
I think it would be worth you going back to your original contract with the original provider to see what exactly it was that you signed up to.
You obviously agreed to pay them a sum of money, what did they agree to give you in return? So you need to do a bit of homework.
I think you are going to have an uphill struggle because of this issue we're talking about, digital assets not being tangible but it's certainly worth you making a nuisance of yourself and going back to the original provider.
- Are you happy with that? - I am.
I've made a fuss already and I'll go back and make more fuss and say I've been in contact with Rip-Off Britain.
Outside in the heart of the shopping centre, we set up what we call our gripe area, where you came to vent your feelings about a whole host of consumer subjects.
A few months ago I was approached by a member of a charity organisation who asked if I'd like to make what I was told was a one-off donation to his charity and then I've looked into my account today and seen that I've been charged again.
It's not so much that it's an issue that I have a problem paying into the charity but I do think it's the kind of thing I should be told upfront about.
Recently I was double charged on my phone contract.
I thought this was really unfair because this had left me with no money for the rest of the month.
So I was really furious with this and they still have refused to refund me my money.
When you ring up a company and you get a phone menu where you press one, two and three All we want to do is to speak to a human being, that's all.
It's simple.
The people here in Nottingham, they've really responded and come in literally off the shopping centre with all sorts of fantastic stories, which are really great because it's given us the chance to give them advice which, as you know - And help other people.
- .
.
is brilliant for other people, isn't it? - Yeah.
Yes, I get quite a strong feeling that the people who watch us regularly are becoming quite savvy.
Actually, what's nice is we've had a lot of people come up to us to say how much they appreciate the programme because they've learnt so much from it.
So a pop-up shop like this is brilliant to get that.
Important question of the day, have you done any shopping yet, Julia? - Yes.
- What did you buy? - Ahem.
(Perfume.
) - I forgot mine.
- Smells very nice, dear.
Yeah, smells very nice! The perfumed Miss Somerville is about to go - and meet more members of the public.
- I think the word is waft.
Waft off on a cloud of perfume.
I don't know why she says she's only going to waft on her perfume, she wafts all the time, really.
Here's something that will be very familiar to a lot of you.
There's nothing worse than sitting at a train station, looking at your watch and knowing that you're going to be late, late, late.
Whether it's for work or pleasure, a late train can really be frustrating.
Train delays are more frequent, of course, than any of us would like and whilst many of you know how to complain, it appears that there are just as many delays in actually getting your money back and if you find yourself having to claim, say, around three times a week, like our next story, travelling anywhere is an utter nightmare.
Every day, 1.
4 million of us rely on the train to get to and from work.
But the numbers of complaints are increasing with the top of the list of gripes being, you've guessed it, delays.
It's claimed by some that as many as a third of trains failed to arrive on time in 2014 and that Britain's railway passengers are enduring the worst delays for four years.
Travelling by train in Britain is way more expensive than most places in Europe.
It's very complicated to get a good deal.
The thing that annoys me most is when I pay £55, or something, for a return trip and I end up standing up on the train because it's overcrowded.
The services are very, very poor.
Time-keeping is very, very poor and I need it to be reliable and it isn't.
Laura Baker is all too familiar with this picture.
She recently moved out of central London, where she works, to Worthing and now makes the daily commute by train.
It costs her more than £5,000 a year and is a typical journey for the million-plus commuters who pour into the capital by rail every day.
My train is at 6.
46am and then it's meant to get in to London Bridge at 8.
18am and then that gives me half an hour to get on the Tube to get to Canary Wharf, which is plenty of time, I need to be at work by nine.
But that doesn't happen.
Waiting for the train That never comes Laura's train operator is Southern, a company whose performance recently hit the headlines.
Its service into London from Brighton was identified as one of the UK's worst for delays.
Dubbed the "Train of Shame", the 7.
29 failed to get in on time on any occasion in 2014 and Laura's Southern service has suffered from frequent delays as well.
You can understand once in a blue moon something happens, obviously delays can happen, but when it's happening every single week, that's ridiculous.
Southern Railway is one of the main operators in the south-east, running between central London and the south coast seven days a week.
Last year it pulled in profits of £29.
3 million.
But its track record, I'm afraid, isn't so impressive.
Just over half of all Southern trains were late in the last 12 months.
Southern came 23rd out of 23 train operating companies for overall passenger satisfaction.
19th for value for money of price of ticket, last for punctuality and reliability and joint last for how well they dealt with delays.
It's complaints like these that have brought about some changes in the way that passengers are compensated for these frequent delays and cancellations.
Under the Delay Repay scheme, if you're delayed for anything more than 30 minutes, you can claim back a proportion of your ticket cost.
But since 2015, those refunds no longer have to be in vouchers.
You can now get your money by cheque or by bank transfer.
I'm late, I'm late For a very important date.
You claim through the train operator by filling out a form, either online or on paper.
And it's a process that Laura has become more than familiar with.
Since her move back in May she's made eight claims to Southern but she doesn't think it's the most user-friendly process, not least because of all the detailed information that you need to make a claim.
It's really time-consuming to actually put the claim in online, as well as to get your refund through.
It's just really frustrating.
Southern promises to deal with your claim within 20 days but Laura says her money often takes longer to come through and on top of all of that, she says she frequently has to chase up her claims by telephone.
The first month I started claiming I had eight refunds put in.
After a month, I hadn't even had the first one through.
I rang up customer services, they were like, "Oh, give it another week and ring back.
" And I was sitting there thinking, "Why do I need to keep ringing you, "when you haven't given me the service that I've paid for?" I wasn't happy with that.
The process of keeping a record of delays and cancellations in detail is so time-consuming that, perhaps inevitably, companies have sprung up online that, for a fee, will do the legwork for you.
Sarah Dolby runs one such service and is confident that the train operators could do more to make the Delay Repay scheme easier to use.
I don't think it's working at the moment because the operators have made it difficult and confusing for the customer to actually claim the compensation.
Sarah would like to see the system centralised and automated so that the money you are owed goes straight into your bank account.
The only people that can actually do anything about it are the operators themselves.
They need to actually change and apply a compensation scheme that is reasonable and appropriate to the customers and the consumers that are using the system.
As it stands, making a compensation claim puts the onus on passengers to come up with detailed information about the timings of their delays.
But there are ways that you can make that easier.
Sarah has agreed to show Laura two websites that do much of the legwork.
There are a couple of solutions and systems online that can assist you.
You can use a system provided by Realtime Trains but you need to know that you were on that train on that day at that time.
It will then present you the details back and then you still need to actually submit the claim.
But there's another free site that Sarah thinks it can pay to know about if you're making a claim.
This site is Raildar.
You can use this site to validate the information that you think you know based on the delay that you've just encountered.
If you look at this site it will let you know exactly how many minutes you were delayed for and the difference can be quite big in terms of the compensation.
Last year Southern paid £1,623,000 to passengers whose trains were delayed.
Does that mean that some people are put off making a claim because the process is just too much faff and bother? Well, the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train operating companies in the UK, would say not.
It told us that compensation has become increasingly generous and easy to apply for, with £23 million paid out last year.
It said that passengers have already benefited from changes, allowing payments to be made in cash and that train operating companies are doing more to make passengers aware of the compensation available.
Meanwhile, Laura's train provider, Southern and Gatwick Express, pointed out that Laura has made several successful claims with them and stressed that the Delay Repay scheme is a much fairer compensation system than the previous one, which only allowed season ticket holders to claim and only when their ticket was due for renewal.
Southern acknowledged that in recent months, its performance had fallen below expected standards but puts this down to the rebuilding of London Bridge station.
It said that more than £50 million is now being invested in an improvement plan and has stressed that the performance of both Laura's commuter route and that notorious Brighton to London "Train of Shame" have now greatly improved.
Meanwhile, Laura is stuck with a train service that, as far as she's concerned, doesn't feel anything like good value for money.
I'm paying well over £5,000 a year to travel and I think that I deserve that money back and it should be coming back a lot quicker than what it is.
Next, for anyone who fancies working in the glamorous world of TV (Ha-ha!).
.
then the chance to work as an extra in a well-known series or even a movie is going to be too good to resist.
Agencies sign up aspiring actors with the promise that they can find them work as a so-called background artist.
So one day you could be sitting in the caff in Albert Square and the next in the waiting room of Holby City.
But no matter how much fun it is, you're still going to want to be paid for any work you do, which is why the people in our next case have been left feeling, well, extra short changed.
For many who are chasing the bright lights of Hollywood, one way to get your face on the silver screen and see if you've got what it takes to make it big is to get work as an extra.
You don't even need traditional film-star looks.
It doesn't matter what you look like, whether you're tall, short, fat, thin, they'll love you.
What's more, it can be a great way of supplementing your income and earning a bit of extra cash.
There are plenty of agencies eager to sign up hopefuls.
For a fee they'll find you work and make sure you get paid.
But we've been hearing about one agent in particular who, it seems, hasn't been playing by the rules and the people he's let down and not at all happy about it.
One of those is Steve Brunton, an experienced and highly versatile extra with hundreds of roles over the years.
I've got police outfits, all sorts of stuff, really.
There's motorcycling, I'm a part-qualified yachtsman, so if that that ever came up I can swim, obviously.
So broad is Steve's range that when he saw an advert online asking for actors who could play zombies in a new TV drama series, he knew that was something he could pull off.
So Steve sent off his details and within a few days, received confirmation that he'd got the job.
There was a few weeks' work, a few days a week over a period of a month.
The company Steve had signed up to work for, Zombie Extras, was run by a man called Johnny Lynch who, it seems, had made quite a reputation for himself in the industry but not an altogether good one.
I was told not to work with Johnny because he was a bit of a shark, really.
He didn't pay properly and he'd bumped a few people and I was a bit wary of him.
However, as he was keen to land the job, Steve decided to go ahead with it, although not without a discussion about the pay.
What about the money side of things -- did he spell out what you could expect to earn? Professional rates up to I mean it's £160 a day roughly but you get holiday money, you get early call money, you know, it can add up.
You can soon be getting £300 a day if you're there for long hours, overtime.
And sure enough, within ten days of finishing the job, Steve received his wages, £540.
So when he was asked back to do another job for the same company, he didn't hesitate to say yes.
I think we did some training day of zombie movement training, which was quite fun.
- What did that entail? - Walking around like a zombie.
It was movement training, basically.
They wanted us to walk in a certain way because, believe it or not, zombies are different.
I've never seen a zombie, does that surprise you? You get hungry zombies that are the flesh eating type, then you get the ones that drag their leg and make a noise and stuff.
So they wanted us to do a certain thing in a certain way.
Yeah, I mean, I had a great time, it was a great place to work.
But this time the filming didn't have such a happy ending.
Steve has been waiting since June 2014 to be paid and despite chasing Johnny Lynch and Zombie Extras for the money, he's still more than £540 out of pocket.
And we've heard about plenty of other people who did work for Johnny Lynch and haven't been paid.
One of those is Jeremy from Croydon.
He says he's been owed £200 since 2014, as he explained when I gave him a call.
When he told you that he was going to pay you, did he spell out exactly how much money you would get? OK, so that's what you were expecting and what did you end up with? A quick look online reveals that Johnny Lynch has received decidedly mixed reviews for his performance.
There are some people saying I worked for him and everything was fine but, by and large, there's an awful lot of very abusive stuff, saying that they were ripped off or didn't get paid when they thought they should have been, or weren't paid as much as they thought they deserved.
On the whole, he doesn't come out of it very well, I'd say.
So it seems Johnny Lynch has become famous for all the wrong reasons.
We tried to contact him but had no response to our calls, letters or e-mails.
But BECTU, the union that looks after extras and supporting artists, says nonpayment is a problem it takes very seriously.
BECTU gets calls every week of every month of every year about people being exploited.
People who are film extras are the most vulnerable in our industry, - so it's very common for us.
- Do nonpayments happen quite a lot? We do get lots of cases and we're quite proactive in terms of chasing those monies up when we are actually contacted by individual union members.
But for anyone who's hoping to become an extra or actor in the TV and film industry, Spencer has a few pointers to keep in mind.
There are certain checks that they can do to safeguard in terms of whether the agency is legitimate or not.
They need to find out how long they've been established, they need to find out whether they're registered, they need to look on social media as well.
But the problem is there's no regulations around agencies at the moment that safeguards particular individuals.
And there's nothing to stop somebody who may have been shown to be at fault setting up again and doing it all over again? We see it all the time in terms of agencies mushrooming up, subsequently disappearing and then starting up again and there's nothing, in terms of the legislation, that we can do about it, or the government or anyone else, unfortunately.
As for Steve, he'll now be much more cautious about who he works for and he certainly doesn't plan on doing more jobs for Johnny Lynch.
I'll never work for him again.
I wouldn't have worked with him in the first place, if I'd have known.
Here at Rip-Off Britain, we're always ready to investigate more of your stories.
You can write to us at Or you can send us an e-mail to The Rip-Off team is ready and waiting to investigate your stories.
Well, don't forget you can find advice on all the stories we've featured today and a lot more on our website.
It's And, by the way, you'll also find on there a link to send us your own stories.
So do please keep them coming in because we love reading through them.
And it's by sharing your experiences with others that we can make sure that they don't end up feeling ripped-off as well.
But I'm afraid that's where we have to wind things down for today.
We will be back very soon with even more of your stories but, until then, thanks for joining us and from all the team here, - bye-bye.
- Bye.
- Goodbye.
You've told us about the companies you think get it wrong and the customer service that simply is not up to scratch.
If you're paying for good service, you expect a good service and a good product, whatever it may be.
At the end of the day, we expect value for money.
You've asked us to track down the scammers who stole your money and investigate the extra charges you say are unfair.
The wool is being pulled over our eyes.
I don't think we get a fair price.
I think they should always put the customer first.
And when you've lost out but nobody else is to blame, you've come to us to stop others falling into the same trap.
- And no-one could sort that out for you over 10 years? - No-one has.
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 welcome once again to Rip-Off Britain, where as ever, the team has been going through all the letters and e-mails that you have very kindly sent on a really quite extraordinary range of subjects.
What they all have in common of course is that somewhere along the line, things have not gone the way you thought they would or should, leaving you feeling short-changed or disappointed with the service that you have received.
So as we investigate some of your stories today, we're going to be pushing for answers on exactly what it was that went wrong.
And we will also have plenty of unmissable advice so if you find yourself in a similar situation to the people we are about to meet, you will have a much better idea on what to do next.
Coming up, a new twist to the passport websites that aren't what they seem.
Court action if you don't pay up.
I couldn't sleep at nights.
Somebody coming round at whatever time to knock on my door to demand this money I believe I don't owe.
And first the trains don't run on time, but now it seems even the refunds will be delayed.
I am paying well over £5,000 a year to travel and I think that I deserve that money back and it should be coming back a lot quicker than what it is.
When you're moving into any sort of new home, one of the things that probably all of us would consider to be pretty essential is that there is a phone line.
And for most people, getting connected these days is easier than ever with almost an endless choice of providers.
But there are still parts of the UK and not necessarily isolated ones either, where residents have been unable to get any sort of phone line that works and for some of them, that is more than just an annoyance.
It's a problem that could have really serious implications.
Phoning a friend for a natter, checking your e-mails or even calling for help in an emergency.
However we use it, we usually take our phone line for granted.
Yet while technological advances like broadband and Wi-Fi get most of us connected more quickly and easily than ever before, the people who live in these three houses in Somerset all suffer from the same problem.
They haven't got a phone line.
So no calls, no internet and no idea of when or if that will change.
Stuart Warne and his family moved in in October 2014 and as a satisfied BT customer on and off for 20 years, Stuart had no reason to think sorting his phone line would be an issue.
We just phoned BT up to say we were moving address.
They said not a problem and it would take one to two weeks.
Whoever your phone supplier is, most line connections and installations in the UK are done by BT Openreach, which is part of the BT Group but operates independently.
You don't have a contract with them but they are the ones responsible for the wires and cables that connect the country.
So a week or so after the family moved in, it was a BT Openreach engineer that visited Stuart's newbuild home to connect his phone and broadband.
But on arrival, the engineer told Stuart he wouldn't be able to connect anything and that damage to the underground phone lines in the area made it impossible until repairs had been done.
The engineer turned up.
Couldn't get it working.
He went the other end of town, checked that, said there was a fault there.
So he couldn't connect me.
Stuart was told the same thing in a follow-up visit and on subsequent calls.
Over the next few months, he says he was given different information as to when the necessary repairs might be done and that the phone line could be finally installed.
Every time we phoned them we were getting passed from pillar to post.
And all the while, as an existing BT customer, he was paying a monthly direct debit for a broadband and telephone service that he simply didn't have.
We said we would just cancel our direct debit and they said, "Don't do that.
It won't be much longer.
" So they have still been taking our direct debits for phone line and internet.
After further complaints, B eventually refunded Stuart £179 for the direct debits that he had continued to pay.
But when we filmed, seven months after moving in, he still had no phone line.
The Smart TV he bought for their new home obviously couldn't connect to the internet.
And not being able to get online has also had an impact on son Joe.
I think it's unfair because I can't talk to my friends.
I can't play on my PlayStation with my mates either.
I can't do my homework online or anything.
I have to stay back after school or do it during my break or lunch or something.
And with mobile reception in the area unreliable, Stuart has more serious concerns as well.
I worry about not having the phone because I am diabetic and if you have to phone an ambulance here, it's pretty hard to get a reception.
Next door, Chris Driver and his family have similar problems and there is a big reason for them why not being connected is a real concern.
The phone line is actually the most important part for us because of Tristan, our middle child.
We think he has ataxic cerebral palsy, which means we have a lot of health professionals that we need to be in contact with on a regular basis.
Like Stuart, Chris had expected his phone line would be connected soon after they moved in.
This was essential because they quickly found out that the mobile signal in the area was limited.
In fact, the only spot in the house where they can get a decent mobile signal is up against the front kitchen window and even then what typically happens is that they can hear the people to whom they're speaking but the other end of the call can't hear them.
This is probably the only place in the house where you get any signal.
It's not a lot and when we do, it's normally you can't hear anybody anyway.
It just breaks up like we are in a tunnel.
When Chris contacted BT, he says he too was told that the connection itself should only take a couple of weeks to resolve but that the underground cabling in the area needed to be fixed first.
It's been seven months so I don't believe they are even doing anything to try and rectify the problem at all.
Adding to both families' frustration is the difficulty in finding out exactly what is going on.
You can't call BT Openreach direct so all calls or contact has to go through your service provider, whether that is BT, Sky or Talk Talk.
And that can make it tricky to get either the latest information or a straight answer.
Communication is key and we're not being communicated to.
Especially when you are expecting people to do their job.
We provide the information that there's a problem and you pay a lot of money to these companies for their services.
When they are not even providing that, it's quite frustrating.
The third house on the street did get connected by Openreach via overhead wires.
But Chris and Stuart were told that no such lines were available to help them.
- Have you heard anything from BT? - Not recently.
The last time I spoke to them was a couple of months ago but I keep getting these texts through.
The fourth of every month, you can guarantee the exact same text message comes through saying, "We're doing what we can.
" I'm fed up with it.
I'm absolutely fed up with it.
When we had to phone the ambulance for Tristan at Christmas, I had to stand on the main road.
So I had no idea what was going on with him inside the house but he was in a really bad way.
There are plenty of other new homes across the country that have been left without phones and internet.
Openreach has had complaints of long waiting times for connection on estates in places as varied as Cumbria, Hertfordshire, Hampshire, Kent, Chester and more.
Communications regulator Ofcom told us it wants that to improve and that it is closely monitoring Openreach's performance.
While it accepts "some jobs inevitably take longer than others", it has put in place strict rules meaning that the majority of new lines now have to be installed within 12 working days.
And when we contacted BT about Stuart and Chris' frustrations, there was at last good news and a great result.
The company told us it was "sorry for the delay in connecting residents", which it blamed on some of its cables being "damaged by another utility company working in the area" and a footpath above those cables needing to be resurfaced before they could be fixed.
But the company's engineers have worked around the clock to get the job completed.
The line has now been connected and both Stuart and Chris can now get phone and broadband services.
BT said it'll be giving both families some sort of compensatory gesture to apologise.
But though all of that is good news, Chris and Stuart remain frustrated that until coming to us, they had to wait so long.
When you're talking about a provider that actually allows communication, that's their pitch, communication, connecting to other people, but they can't connect to their customers and that's a real problem.
Last year, a backlog of half a million applications at the Passport Office forced some travellers to cancel or even reorganise their travel plans, so it's totally understandable that if you're applying for those vital documents, you might be tempted to use a service that promises to have everything sorted out within a specific timeframe.
But as we've reported before, not all of the companies that you're going to find online, offering to help with passport applications, are necessarily doing quite what you expect.
And now, we've been hearing complaints about one site in particular, where signing up could cost you a lot more than you bargain for.
You've booked your flights, your hotel, packed your swimwear and got your sun cream.
You think you're all set for that dream holiday for which you've been saving for the past year, until, that is, you realise that your passport is out of date.
And as many of you have found out, going online to renew a passport can easily lead to complications that you didn't expect.
28-year-old software engineer Alex Yates relies on his passport for his job.
My passport is absolutely essential to my line of work.
I do need to be able to travel.
In the last month, I've been to Germany, Austria, Ireland, Italy.
But in September of 2014, Alex noticed that his passport would shortly expire, and with plenty of work trips planned, he wanted a new one as soon as possible, so he logged on to what he assumed was the official UK passport website, where he saw an option for a fast-track service that would mean he'd be able to get his passport within a week.
I didn't want there to be any risk about me not having my passport at some point in time and not being able to get on a business trip to the States.
So, Alex entered his bank details on to the site, selecting the option for an on-the-day appointment.
Shortly afterwards, he received an e-mail from British Passport Services, saying they were pleased to confirm his upcoming appointment at his nearest Passport Office in Peterborough, for which he owed them £117.
60.
Now, Alex had assumed that cost also included the price of his passport, and it was only when he rang the Passport Office to confirm his appointment that he discovered that wasn't the case at all.
Far from booking his appointment with the Passport Office direct, the website he'd used belonged to an entirely separate company, British Passport Services.
I spoke to a lady there who said that the appointment had been booked by a third party and that it didn't include the passport fee.
The £117.
60 charge he was being asked to pay by British Passport Services was purely that company's fee for arranging the face-to-face appointment.
To actually get his passport, he'd still need to pay the official £128 charge that the UK government has for its premium same-day service.
At this point, I realised that what I'd paid was a price that was similar to the price of actually getting the passport, similar enough that when I saw the price, I was like, "Yeah, that's about right.
" But all that had done was just book me an appointment.
Alex was horrified to discover that the government offers these appointments free of charge, so he called British Passport Services to let them know that he decided to cancel the appointment that they'd booked and make his own instead.
I explained that I thought it was misrepresented on the site.
The person on the end of the phone got very angry and he said that I legally had to pay them, that I'd signed a contract and that I was backing out of a contract, that he insinuated that I was a very bad person for doing that, which wasn't very nice.
Looking again at the website, Alex could see that in the small print, there was a clause stating that there is a non-refundable charge for arranging an appointment.
The website does also make clear that British Passport Services is not affiliated to Her Majesty's Passport Office.
But the person he was speaking to now told him that unless he paid what they said was due, he would be charged more money every time they contacted him, be it by e-mail, text or phone.
The things that they're charging for are just ridiculous! Erm they're laughable when you actually look at it.
But the company continued to send him both texts and e-mails saying he had no choice but to pay up and reiterating that the longer he delayed paying up, the more he was going to be charged.
So, what I've got here is a few letters that British Passport Services sent me.
This first one, it lists all the charges here that I've been charged for, so, for example, use of the online booking form -- £10.
E-mail and letter confirmation -- a further £10, so I've been charged £20 pre-VAT just for using their online booking form and them sending me a confirmation letter.
Three months later, a letter arrived threatening him with legal action if he didn't pay and it was no idle threat.
Alex received a County Court claim for the money that British Passport Services insisted he owed them.
This is the actual claim form that's been issued to me.
It lists me as a defendant, which just seeing my name underneath "defendant" wasn't nice.
Still refusing to pay, Alex set up an online forum to see if anyone else had had a similar experience.
It soon became clear that British Passport Services had a number of other customers who weren't happy about the charges that they were being asked to pay.
Among them, Linda Tomlinson from Essex.
She'd gone online to apply for a passport for her then 13-year-old daughter, Sophia, ahead of a holiday to Egypt and, just like Alex, had thought that she was dealing with the official UK government website.
Looking on the site with British flags and people sitting at desks and a picture of a passport, it was very well done and very convincing.
It was only when Linda was on the payment page that alarm bells rang.
It didn't quite tally with her previous experience of buying a passport, so she immediately closed the page.
She went on to get Sophia's passport through the Post Office's check-and-send service instead and the family went off on their holiday.
But on their return, there was a nasty surprise waiting for them.
Linda had received a text message from British Passport Services informing her that she owed them £117.
60 for outstanding services.
Shocked, she called them immediately to find out what was going on.
I didn't understand who these people were, so I asked if I could speak to somebody else in the office, to which he told me I wasn't I was unable to and that there was nobody else, it was only him I could speak to.
He then became aggressive and told me that I had to pay this money and this debt needed to be paid otherwise court action would be taken.
Petrified that a debt collection agency would be knocking at her door, Linda began to panic.
I'm a single mum with two teenage daughters and my priority is to keep them safe and I didn't know really what to do.
I felt very anxious, worried and where would this end? I felt that I couldn't sleep at nights for somebody coming round at whatever time to knock on my door to demand this money I believe I don't owe.
Linda then started to receive letters similar to the ones that Alex got, including threats of court action.
When I was looking at the letters that they'd sent, they'd put a breakdown of their services that they'd offered to me or I'd agreed to.
Their services were completely outrageous.
What's more, when Linda spoke to the official Passport Office, she was told that British Passport Services had never even booked the appointment they were billing her for supposedly arranging.
There is no such thing as customer services with this company.
They set a list of what they believe are services that are non-existent and they add extra charges to services, again, that they haven't given, and to me, that isn't a professional company.
The charges Linda believes to be risible include £10 for directions to the office and £20 for access to a 24-hour helpline.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing for all the people caught out in this way is that they're being charged for a service that's completely unnecessary.
The official Passport Office will never charge for face-to-face appointments.
The only money you'll need to pay is the cost of issuing the passport itself, which may vary depending on how quickly you need it.
Several times before, we've reported on websites that you may think are the official place to get your passport, but in fact are no such thing.
I felt very angry and I felt that I'd been deceived by this company simply because the £72.
50 charge was exactly the same amount as the cost of a new passport.
The government has issued stark warnings about such sites, stressing that the only website you need to get a passport is their own, GOV.
UK.
Since we've filmed with him, Alex has had some good news.
He won his court case against British Passport Services.
His charges were cancelled and the company was ordered to pay him costs of £113.
48.
When we contacted British Passport Services, the company told us it's disappointed with the court's ruling.
It insisted that both Alex and Linda fully signed up to, received but then refused to pay for, the services it provided.
And it stressed that the website clearly states that it is separate from Her Majesty's Passport Office and looks completely different from the government site, pointing to research from the Advertising Standards Agency which found that 83% of users could tell the difference between official and commercial passport websites.
British Passport Services also maintained that all its charges are outlined clearly, pointing out that more than once during the booking process, customers are required to confirm that they understand them.
It went on to say that while the site does inform users that these charges can be avoided by using the government site, their services can save time and work when renewing a passport and it said staff are .
.
promising to look into the suggestion that its agents were aggressive.
But both Alex and Linda will make certain that the next time they're after a passport, it's only the official government site that they'll use.
If I'd perhaps taken a few more moments to look to clarify that it was a government site, then it wouldn't be this mess.
The website is a complete disgrace.
I wish I'd never clicked the link.
I'm properly annoyed at the amount of time I've wasted over this.
Still to come on Rip-Off Britain The aspiring actors cast as zombies in a new TV show but the real frights came when they didn't get paid.
I'll never work for him again.
I wouldn't have worked for him in the first place, if I'd have known.
For two days only, Nottingham was the location for our annual Rip-Off Britain pop-up event.
It was great to meet so many of you.
We had more experts, more advice and tackled more of your problems than ever before.
Carl Whitbread got a double whammy of help from our legal and technology experts Gary Rycroft and David McClelland after he lost most of his downloaded music from an online account and ran into trouble getting it back.
I contacted the company who referred me to another provider because they'd actually sold the service on to somebody else.
I sent them all the details of the transaction that I still kept and they came back to me saying we don't have any record of your transaction and, in fact, the date of the transaction predates our service purchase.
Whereabouts are you right now? Is that as far as you've been able to get? I was referred back to the original provider who then sent me back again.
- You're going round in circles.
- I'm going round in circles.
- Round a digital rabbit warren.
- Yep.
There's a particular, I guess challenge, with who owns music that you download.
- Gary, how does that bit work? - Yeah, that's right, David.
I think we're actually, in legal terms, sitting on a bit of digital time bomb, to be honest.
Unlike when you purchase a CD, you own something physical that's yours, when you download music, you don't actually own that asset.
You effectively are leasing it, you're listening to it under licence.
So you have never owned the music that you've downloaded.
You just had the right to listen to it.
It's a curious world where you buy something but you don't own it.
- Yes - That's what you're really saying.
I guess, ideally, you would make a backup of anything that you download.
Because, like Gary says, as soon as you download that, there's a licence there.
If you need to go back to that provider, depending on those terms and conditions, you may not be able to get that data back again.
So as soon as you download something, make a backup of it.
I think it would be worth you going back to your original contract with the original provider to see what exactly it was that you signed up to.
You obviously agreed to pay them a sum of money, what did they agree to give you in return? So you need to do a bit of homework.
I think you are going to have an uphill struggle because of this issue we're talking about, digital assets not being tangible but it's certainly worth you making a nuisance of yourself and going back to the original provider.
- Are you happy with that? - I am.
I've made a fuss already and I'll go back and make more fuss and say I've been in contact with Rip-Off Britain.
Outside in the heart of the shopping centre, we set up what we call our gripe area, where you came to vent your feelings about a whole host of consumer subjects.
A few months ago I was approached by a member of a charity organisation who asked if I'd like to make what I was told was a one-off donation to his charity and then I've looked into my account today and seen that I've been charged again.
It's not so much that it's an issue that I have a problem paying into the charity but I do think it's the kind of thing I should be told upfront about.
Recently I was double charged on my phone contract.
I thought this was really unfair because this had left me with no money for the rest of the month.
So I was really furious with this and they still have refused to refund me my money.
When you ring up a company and you get a phone menu where you press one, two and three All we want to do is to speak to a human being, that's all.
It's simple.
The people here in Nottingham, they've really responded and come in literally off the shopping centre with all sorts of fantastic stories, which are really great because it's given us the chance to give them advice which, as you know - And help other people.
- .
.
is brilliant for other people, isn't it? - Yeah.
Yes, I get quite a strong feeling that the people who watch us regularly are becoming quite savvy.
Actually, what's nice is we've had a lot of people come up to us to say how much they appreciate the programme because they've learnt so much from it.
So a pop-up shop like this is brilliant to get that.
Important question of the day, have you done any shopping yet, Julia? - Yes.
- What did you buy? - Ahem.
(Perfume.
) - I forgot mine.
- Smells very nice, dear.
Yeah, smells very nice! The perfumed Miss Somerville is about to go - and meet more members of the public.
- I think the word is waft.
Waft off on a cloud of perfume.
I don't know why she says she's only going to waft on her perfume, she wafts all the time, really.
Here's something that will be very familiar to a lot of you.
There's nothing worse than sitting at a train station, looking at your watch and knowing that you're going to be late, late, late.
Whether it's for work or pleasure, a late train can really be frustrating.
Train delays are more frequent, of course, than any of us would like and whilst many of you know how to complain, it appears that there are just as many delays in actually getting your money back and if you find yourself having to claim, say, around three times a week, like our next story, travelling anywhere is an utter nightmare.
Every day, 1.
4 million of us rely on the train to get to and from work.
But the numbers of complaints are increasing with the top of the list of gripes being, you've guessed it, delays.
It's claimed by some that as many as a third of trains failed to arrive on time in 2014 and that Britain's railway passengers are enduring the worst delays for four years.
Travelling by train in Britain is way more expensive than most places in Europe.
It's very complicated to get a good deal.
The thing that annoys me most is when I pay £55, or something, for a return trip and I end up standing up on the train because it's overcrowded.
The services are very, very poor.
Time-keeping is very, very poor and I need it to be reliable and it isn't.
Laura Baker is all too familiar with this picture.
She recently moved out of central London, where she works, to Worthing and now makes the daily commute by train.
It costs her more than £5,000 a year and is a typical journey for the million-plus commuters who pour into the capital by rail every day.
My train is at 6.
46am and then it's meant to get in to London Bridge at 8.
18am and then that gives me half an hour to get on the Tube to get to Canary Wharf, which is plenty of time, I need to be at work by nine.
But that doesn't happen.
Waiting for the train That never comes Laura's train operator is Southern, a company whose performance recently hit the headlines.
Its service into London from Brighton was identified as one of the UK's worst for delays.
Dubbed the "Train of Shame", the 7.
29 failed to get in on time on any occasion in 2014 and Laura's Southern service has suffered from frequent delays as well.
You can understand once in a blue moon something happens, obviously delays can happen, but when it's happening every single week, that's ridiculous.
Southern Railway is one of the main operators in the south-east, running between central London and the south coast seven days a week.
Last year it pulled in profits of £29.
3 million.
But its track record, I'm afraid, isn't so impressive.
Just over half of all Southern trains were late in the last 12 months.
Southern came 23rd out of 23 train operating companies for overall passenger satisfaction.
19th for value for money of price of ticket, last for punctuality and reliability and joint last for how well they dealt with delays.
It's complaints like these that have brought about some changes in the way that passengers are compensated for these frequent delays and cancellations.
Under the Delay Repay scheme, if you're delayed for anything more than 30 minutes, you can claim back a proportion of your ticket cost.
But since 2015, those refunds no longer have to be in vouchers.
You can now get your money by cheque or by bank transfer.
I'm late, I'm late For a very important date.
You claim through the train operator by filling out a form, either online or on paper.
And it's a process that Laura has become more than familiar with.
Since her move back in May she's made eight claims to Southern but she doesn't think it's the most user-friendly process, not least because of all the detailed information that you need to make a claim.
It's really time-consuming to actually put the claim in online, as well as to get your refund through.
It's just really frustrating.
Southern promises to deal with your claim within 20 days but Laura says her money often takes longer to come through and on top of all of that, she says she frequently has to chase up her claims by telephone.
The first month I started claiming I had eight refunds put in.
After a month, I hadn't even had the first one through.
I rang up customer services, they were like, "Oh, give it another week and ring back.
" And I was sitting there thinking, "Why do I need to keep ringing you, "when you haven't given me the service that I've paid for?" I wasn't happy with that.
The process of keeping a record of delays and cancellations in detail is so time-consuming that, perhaps inevitably, companies have sprung up online that, for a fee, will do the legwork for you.
Sarah Dolby runs one such service and is confident that the train operators could do more to make the Delay Repay scheme easier to use.
I don't think it's working at the moment because the operators have made it difficult and confusing for the customer to actually claim the compensation.
Sarah would like to see the system centralised and automated so that the money you are owed goes straight into your bank account.
The only people that can actually do anything about it are the operators themselves.
They need to actually change and apply a compensation scheme that is reasonable and appropriate to the customers and the consumers that are using the system.
As it stands, making a compensation claim puts the onus on passengers to come up with detailed information about the timings of their delays.
But there are ways that you can make that easier.
Sarah has agreed to show Laura two websites that do much of the legwork.
There are a couple of solutions and systems online that can assist you.
You can use a system provided by Realtime Trains but you need to know that you were on that train on that day at that time.
It will then present you the details back and then you still need to actually submit the claim.
But there's another free site that Sarah thinks it can pay to know about if you're making a claim.
This site is Raildar.
You can use this site to validate the information that you think you know based on the delay that you've just encountered.
If you look at this site it will let you know exactly how many minutes you were delayed for and the difference can be quite big in terms of the compensation.
Last year Southern paid £1,623,000 to passengers whose trains were delayed.
Does that mean that some people are put off making a claim because the process is just too much faff and bother? Well, the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train operating companies in the UK, would say not.
It told us that compensation has become increasingly generous and easy to apply for, with £23 million paid out last year.
It said that passengers have already benefited from changes, allowing payments to be made in cash and that train operating companies are doing more to make passengers aware of the compensation available.
Meanwhile, Laura's train provider, Southern and Gatwick Express, pointed out that Laura has made several successful claims with them and stressed that the Delay Repay scheme is a much fairer compensation system than the previous one, which only allowed season ticket holders to claim and only when their ticket was due for renewal.
Southern acknowledged that in recent months, its performance had fallen below expected standards but puts this down to the rebuilding of London Bridge station.
It said that more than £50 million is now being invested in an improvement plan and has stressed that the performance of both Laura's commuter route and that notorious Brighton to London "Train of Shame" have now greatly improved.
Meanwhile, Laura is stuck with a train service that, as far as she's concerned, doesn't feel anything like good value for money.
I'm paying well over £5,000 a year to travel and I think that I deserve that money back and it should be coming back a lot quicker than what it is.
Next, for anyone who fancies working in the glamorous world of TV (Ha-ha!).
.
then the chance to work as an extra in a well-known series or even a movie is going to be too good to resist.
Agencies sign up aspiring actors with the promise that they can find them work as a so-called background artist.
So one day you could be sitting in the caff in Albert Square and the next in the waiting room of Holby City.
But no matter how much fun it is, you're still going to want to be paid for any work you do, which is why the people in our next case have been left feeling, well, extra short changed.
For many who are chasing the bright lights of Hollywood, one way to get your face on the silver screen and see if you've got what it takes to make it big is to get work as an extra.
You don't even need traditional film-star looks.
It doesn't matter what you look like, whether you're tall, short, fat, thin, they'll love you.
What's more, it can be a great way of supplementing your income and earning a bit of extra cash.
There are plenty of agencies eager to sign up hopefuls.
For a fee they'll find you work and make sure you get paid.
But we've been hearing about one agent in particular who, it seems, hasn't been playing by the rules and the people he's let down and not at all happy about it.
One of those is Steve Brunton, an experienced and highly versatile extra with hundreds of roles over the years.
I've got police outfits, all sorts of stuff, really.
There's motorcycling, I'm a part-qualified yachtsman, so if that that ever came up I can swim, obviously.
So broad is Steve's range that when he saw an advert online asking for actors who could play zombies in a new TV drama series, he knew that was something he could pull off.
So Steve sent off his details and within a few days, received confirmation that he'd got the job.
There was a few weeks' work, a few days a week over a period of a month.
The company Steve had signed up to work for, Zombie Extras, was run by a man called Johnny Lynch who, it seems, had made quite a reputation for himself in the industry but not an altogether good one.
I was told not to work with Johnny because he was a bit of a shark, really.
He didn't pay properly and he'd bumped a few people and I was a bit wary of him.
However, as he was keen to land the job, Steve decided to go ahead with it, although not without a discussion about the pay.
What about the money side of things -- did he spell out what you could expect to earn? Professional rates up to I mean it's £160 a day roughly but you get holiday money, you get early call money, you know, it can add up.
You can soon be getting £300 a day if you're there for long hours, overtime.
And sure enough, within ten days of finishing the job, Steve received his wages, £540.
So when he was asked back to do another job for the same company, he didn't hesitate to say yes.
I think we did some training day of zombie movement training, which was quite fun.
- What did that entail? - Walking around like a zombie.
It was movement training, basically.
They wanted us to walk in a certain way because, believe it or not, zombies are different.
I've never seen a zombie, does that surprise you? You get hungry zombies that are the flesh eating type, then you get the ones that drag their leg and make a noise and stuff.
So they wanted us to do a certain thing in a certain way.
Yeah, I mean, I had a great time, it was a great place to work.
But this time the filming didn't have such a happy ending.
Steve has been waiting since June 2014 to be paid and despite chasing Johnny Lynch and Zombie Extras for the money, he's still more than £540 out of pocket.
And we've heard about plenty of other people who did work for Johnny Lynch and haven't been paid.
One of those is Jeremy from Croydon.
He says he's been owed £200 since 2014, as he explained when I gave him a call.
When he told you that he was going to pay you, did he spell out exactly how much money you would get? OK, so that's what you were expecting and what did you end up with? A quick look online reveals that Johnny Lynch has received decidedly mixed reviews for his performance.
There are some people saying I worked for him and everything was fine but, by and large, there's an awful lot of very abusive stuff, saying that they were ripped off or didn't get paid when they thought they should have been, or weren't paid as much as they thought they deserved.
On the whole, he doesn't come out of it very well, I'd say.
So it seems Johnny Lynch has become famous for all the wrong reasons.
We tried to contact him but had no response to our calls, letters or e-mails.
But BECTU, the union that looks after extras and supporting artists, says nonpayment is a problem it takes very seriously.
BECTU gets calls every week of every month of every year about people being exploited.
People who are film extras are the most vulnerable in our industry, - so it's very common for us.
- Do nonpayments happen quite a lot? We do get lots of cases and we're quite proactive in terms of chasing those monies up when we are actually contacted by individual union members.
But for anyone who's hoping to become an extra or actor in the TV and film industry, Spencer has a few pointers to keep in mind.
There are certain checks that they can do to safeguard in terms of whether the agency is legitimate or not.
They need to find out how long they've been established, they need to find out whether they're registered, they need to look on social media as well.
But the problem is there's no regulations around agencies at the moment that safeguards particular individuals.
And there's nothing to stop somebody who may have been shown to be at fault setting up again and doing it all over again? We see it all the time in terms of agencies mushrooming up, subsequently disappearing and then starting up again and there's nothing, in terms of the legislation, that we can do about it, or the government or anyone else, unfortunately.
As for Steve, he'll now be much more cautious about who he works for and he certainly doesn't plan on doing more jobs for Johnny Lynch.
I'll never work for him again.
I wouldn't have worked with him in the first place, if I'd have known.
Here at Rip-Off Britain, we're always ready to investigate more of your stories.
You can write to us at Or you can send us an e-mail to The Rip-Off team is ready and waiting to investigate your stories.
Well, don't forget you can find advice on all the stories we've featured today and a lot more on our website.
It's And, by the way, you'll also find on there a link to send us your own stories.
So do please keep them coming in because we love reading through them.
And it's by sharing your experiences with others that we can make sure that they don't end up feeling ripped-off as well.
But I'm afraid that's where we have to wind things down for today.
We will be back very soon with even more of your stories but, until then, thanks for joining us and from all the team here, - bye-bye.
- Bye.
- Goodbye.