This is Money Blog

Someone's been sitting on my cash

I received my energy bills from Powergen yesterday and finally decided to claim back my overpayments. The bill informed me in huge letters: 'You are £129.42 in credit.' But underneath it said: 'We will carry your balance forward to the next statement.'

Oh no you won't I thought. Why should they sit on my cash? It's estimated that these energy companies sit on hundreds of millions and possibly billions of pounds of our money by charging too much on direct debits.

Even the regulator, Ofgem, has no idea how much of our money they are sitting on - and what's more they are under no obligation to reveal the figures. In their home countries, most of our foreign-owned utilities refund overpayment - but not here. Instead they keep our cash, earn interest on it and use it to boost their profitability.

So why not claim it back?

I was forced to sit on hold for 12 minutes before I got through but at least it was a free number. The call centre operator actually checked whether she could send me a cheque. The cheek of it - it's my money. Then she asked whether I wanted the whole amount back.

I said yes - unless they wanted to send me some extra so I could earn interest on their money  for a change.

So in seven to 10 days I should receive a cheque. You might think £129.42 is a small sum to bother about but multiply that by the number of customers and you've got a hefty pile of cash.

And this is the middle of the summer - my credit balance is only likely to increase over the coming three or four months.

There's one other piece of good news for the Hazell household. This excess means I must be using less electricity and gas than last year because I'm on a fixed price tariff.

Our energy bill for the last year is a tad under £825 which is quite a bit less than the national average and shows the benefit of cracking down on standby, turning off lights and generally being an energy miser.

Tony Hazell, Money Mail editor

RELATED STORIES ON THIS IS MONEY:

>> Fuel bills update: Should you switch?

>> Energy giants cash £1bn overpayments

>> Energy firms sit on direct debit millions

Easyjet, cancellation and travel insurance claims

The Hazell family is currently rather irritated with Squeezyjet. I'm normally a great fan of this low cost airline. It's efficient and you get what you pay for. I'll have no truck with people who turn up just before check in closes and then moan that they can't sit next to their nearest and dearest. You know how the system works and if you can't bear to be parted for a couple of hours then get there earlier!

So what's my problem? Well, my son's back is in plaster and his consultant says he can't fly so we've had to cancel our holiday.

So I log on to the website and search for the cancel button. I'm not expecting any money back, you understand. I just want to cancel and get a letter (for which I'm willing to pay a modest fee if necessary) confirming it so I can make a claim on my travel insurance.

There's no way to cancel online so I send an email. The auto response doesn't answer my query neither does the next email to arrive which, bizarrely, apologises for the long wait. In fact I have waited mere minutes and this is clearly a copy of a response sent to someone else in relation to a completely different question.

So I then phone and am told that I'm not allowed to cancel the booking and must become a no-show. Who, precisely, does this benefit I wonder?

I must wait another eight weeks before I can make an insurance claim. But from Easyjet's point of view there were 10 of us on this flight in school holidays. A return to Portugal on our flights is currently selling for £218.98 plus taxes, so that's more than £2,000 worth of seats they could resell if they accepted our cancellation.

There's also the not insignificant fact that they are sitting on our taxes. As I said we don't want a penny back from them (except the taxes) we just want to have a letter confirming we've had to cancel.

I know their aim is to cut out unnecessary admin but   I really can't see how anyone benefits from this policy.

- Tony Hazell, Money Mail Editor, Daily Mail

Other blogs...
> BA lost baggage... and customer service goes missing too
> Now Ryanair charges for NOT taking a bag
> Overdue airline compensation rules
> Don't cry for me Argentina Airlines

And advice...
- The latest advice on travel insurance and holiday money

TalkTalk: Is it worse than British Gas?

I've often considered running an award for the worst customer service. British Gas would obviously be a contender but my vote goes to TalkTalk.

I moved there last year for free broadband - but boy have I regretted it as I spend endless hours on the phone dealing with a call centre in India or, more often listening to Thunderclap Newman's Something in the Air. I now know every note and word of that song. I hear it in my sleep and hum it as I walk the streets. 

My call waiting service stopped working properly when I was 'upgraded' to 8 megabit broadband toward the end of last year. I finally gave up attempting to get it put right. Life is too short and they seem to be incapable of fixing it. 

The latest battle is getting calls to mobiles blocked to prevent my teenage son running up three-figure phone bills. You might think that this is fairly straightforward, but nothing is straightforward with TalkTalk.  I originally made the request on March 16 and was told it would take three to five days.

When my massive April bill arrived last week I discovered they had not been blocked. I called immediately and, after 40 minutes on the phone, was promised they would be blocked and offered a refund.  At the weekend I received a text saying the problem was solved. It wasn't. I called again on Monday and after 30 minutes on hold and being cut off twice I eventually spoke to a man who told me I simply needed to key in an activation code (the first I'd heard of it). He also said the call waiting would be fixed and promised to call at 8.15 on Tuesday morning. 

The call never came, when I used the activation code I received a helpful message saying I wasn't subscribed to the service. And neither my call waiting nor caller display work. So I've now taken a step backward.

I wasted a further 25 minutes on the problem this morning but somebody who identified herself as 'Anthea' promised the services would be set up in 'two to four hours'. That was at 10.35 am; I am highly sceptical.   I an now keeping a diary of the number of hours I spend on the phone trying to get TalkTalk to fix what should be straightforward problems.

What is most galling is the record message saying: 'We apologise for your continued wait. We will answer your call shortly.' They're not sorry at all. If they were they would do something about waiting times.  TalkTalk has the worst customer service I've ever experienced (and I'm a former NTL customer, so I know about poor customer service).

Perhaps you've experienced worse. Let me know.

- Tony Hazell, Money Mail

See also -

This is Money's TalkTalk special, with news, advice and debate

Talking the Talk Talk

Teenage car insurance woes

Aaah! I'm suffering car insurance agony with my 17-year-old son. Our insurance is coming up for renewal and we'd like to put my son on it. We've rung around and been quoted £400 without him and £1,400 with him. It's hardly as if we drive a souped up car. We've got a 1 litre S-reg Nissan Micra.

Now, I understand that teenagers are more risky, but if they're this expensive to insure on our policy how the hell can they be expected to buy their own insurance? You can just see the mindset - 'I'll drive without cover and risk the £250 fine' - which is what thousands choose to do.

What's really shocked me is the rise in premiums since we put other son on the policy five years ago - that cost around £700. One insurer told us it would be cheaper to insure for any driver over 17 than for our son as a named driver.

The problem is I promised to get him driving lessons if he promised never to ride a motorbike - a fair compromise if you've seen the stats for motorbike accidents among youngsters.

There must be a sensible solution here, but I can't see it. Meanwhile my wife is spending the week on the phone searching for a cheaper insurer while I brace myself to lose a sizeable chunk of money for daring to want my son to learn to drive responsibly.

- Tony Hazell, Money Mail

>> News and advice on car insurance 

Talking the Talk Talk

They talk the talk but can they walk the walk? Talk Talk have been enticing customers with high profile advertising but the recent experiences of myself and colleague James Coney suggest their customer service doesn't match their marketing.

When I was 'upgraded' to 8 meg broadband my phone network services stopped working. So call waiting and caller recognition stopped working. The initial customer service while I was trying to resolve this was crap as one call centre passed me to another and nobody had the slightest idea how to solve the problems. Their service provider Opal claimed it was a problem with my phone, which turned out to be baloney.

Now I have caller recognition but it turns out, that despite their claims, Talk Talk cannot offer the same call waiting service as BT. Their upgrade means that when someone calls they just hear a constant ringing giving the impression that either I'm out or can't be bothered to answer the phone. This, I'm told is progress. I call it incompetence.

James Coney meanwhile has no broadband or phone at all  - which was particularly useful when he was trying to file a late story on Tuesday. He was promised it would be fixed in 48 hours but has just received an automated text promising another update in 48 hours. Fortunately he is an office-based journalist or he would be completely unable to work.

As it is he's having to run up a mobile phone bill because he can't make calls from his landline. He's looking forward to a rebate on his bill for services not provided.

Perhaps the regulator should insist that before it can advertise for any more customers Talk Talk should first have to provide a decent service to its existing ones.

Tony Hazell, Money Mail

>> More on mobile phones and broadband

Mobile phone for grown ups please

High drama in the Hazell household this weekend when my wife dropped her mobile phone in a pint glass of water. So I now face the trauma of entering a mobile phone shop and dealing with a teenager who wants to sell me an MP3 player, multiple downloads, camera, diary and tennis racquet all in one.

Both my wife and I are in love with our existing mobiles. They were made by Nokia and fold open to reveal - joy of joys - a qwerty keyboard. These phones have allowed us to communicate by text with our teenagers without having to grapple with the mysteries of intuitive spelling or continually tap the same number to reveal a single letter.

But guess what? It appears nobody now makes this style of phone.

Are the manufacturers not aware that people over the age of 40 buy phones and might even buy them more often if they could only figure out how to use them? Have they never figured out why so few of us text or timed how long it takes us to send a short text on a normal phone?

I don't want a personal organiser, access to the internet or any other add-ons. I just want a phone that folds open to reveal a qwerty keyboard. Surely one manufacturer can find it in their heart to give us a phone we can text on.

Any ideas, anyone?

- Tony Hazell, Money Mail

My TalkTalk broadband upgrade problem

I spent 2006 trying to save cash as one of Money Mail's Money Misers. Swopping energy, internet and broadband suppliers and some juggling with credit and loyalty cards eventually left me more than £1,200 better off.

One of the most frequent questions I've had is whether I ran into any problems. The answer is 'no' except for on my phone and broadband. I swopped to TalkTalk and initially all was well, but since the line was upgraded to 8megabit broadband my phone has never worked properly. And the customer service has ranged from irritating to pathetic.

All I want is a call waiting service that tells callers when I'm on the phone and lets me switch between callers. Instead when I am on the phone callers get a constant ringing with no message leading them to believe that we are out and our answerphone isn't working.

I've been passed from pillar to post (or more accurately India to Warrington) and receive regular texts telling me they have fixed it but several weeks later it still doesn't work. This makes it: difficult for me to work from home; impossible to get through to my wife when she is talking to her mother/sister/work colleagues and enormously frustrating for anyone trying to call me.

So why am I blaming my broadband upgrade? Well, my brother in law, has never had a decent internet connection since BT 'upgraded' his broadband to 8 megabits. BT has sent him from India to Wales and back as each side of the business has refused to take responsibility.

So, I wonder are we the only people having this problem, or are there more general problems with the 8megabit broadband that no-one is telling us?

- Tony Hazell, Editor, Money Mail

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