Latest news with #HelenCrane
Daily Mail
29-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Parcel Compare won't pay for broken £500 synthesizer because the BOX was reused: CRANE ON THE CASE
I work in the music industry and in March I sold a vintage synthesizer for £500 on Ebay. I bought the postage on the price comparison website Parcel Compare. I chose a 24-hour Parcelforce service which cost £39.70. This included £22.50 for 'parcel protection' insurance up to the value of £500. Unfortunately when it arrived it was damaged beyond repair, appearing to have been dropped or crushed on one corner. The plastic casing had broken off, exposing the electronics, and some of the keys had fallen off making it unusable. As the item didn't arrive in the condition promised, Ebay has taken the money back from me to refund the buyer as per its policy. But Parcel Compare rejected my insurance claim, a decision made partly on the basis that I packaged it in a reused box. I strongly dispute that my packaging was the cause of the damage. B.B, Nottingham Helen Crane, This is Money's consumer champion, replies: Ebay and Vinted sellers, people with friends and family far away, and other regulars of the Post Office queue will know that packaging can be expensive. Many elements, such as bubble wrap and foam pellets, also can't be easily recycled. So, as countless parcel senders do every single day, you reused a cardboard box. This was a box you'd previously received a keyboard in, which was the right shape and size to fit the synthesizer. It was wrapped securely, with bubble wrap, folded cardboard and screwed up brown paper inside to protect it. But Parcel Compare rejected your insurance claim because it said you had not packaged the item properly. What happened to reduce, reuse, recycle? You sent me a picture of the packaging and it looked perfectly secure. The buyer agrees the item was properly packaged, and has also told Parcel Compare this - but to no avail. So can you send something in a reused box, or not? As someone who sells things online from time to time - and has never thought twice about an old Jiffy bag - I wanted to find an answer. When I contacted the company, it pointed to its 'labelling and packaging criteria'. Not following these to the letter can result in an insurance claim for damage being denied, according to Parcel Compare. This is mentioned in the booking process, but you must follow a link to see the full criteria. Fair enough in principle - but I'd argue some of these conditions are so obscure that they could catch a huge number of parcel senders out. It states any box used must be 'new, rigid and with flaps attached'. But this is a bit confusing as, on another page on Parcel Compare's website, called 'packaging guidelines,' it describes a good box is 'ideally one that's new'. That implies a new box is preferred, but not required. Another rule you got caught by was this: 'If you're sending large fragile items such as electronic equipment or machinery, the product should be fully suspended inside the box, using moulded polystyrene that's specifically moulded to the product you're shipping.' You were selling a vintage instrument which is nearly half a century old. You didn't have the original foam moulding, and even if you did it's unlikely it would have held up to 50 years of wear and tear. I can't imagine where someone would procure a single piece of custom-made foam moulding - or how much it would cost. Senders who want their insurance to be valid must also remove all labels and markings from the box, make sure the items aren't touching the walls of the box, and place a duplicate address label inside the package, and put the label on the outside using a 'documents enclosed pouch'. They could also invalidate an insurance claim if they encase their box with paper or plastic, or use string. Customers are fed up of their items being treated shoddily in transit, whether that's a £500 Game Boy game that goes missing or a mobile phone that gets replaced by a face serum. But even you admitted that you don't blame the delivery driver, as they are often under pressure to hand off as many parcels as they can, as quickly as possible. However, you think Parcel Compare should do the right thing and reimburse you for the £500 gadget. What's worse, the person you were sending the synthesizer was due to use it to record a track with a band - work which they then lost. Sadly, the company did not agree. It told me: 'When customers take out extra parcel protection they are immediately given a warning that appears in a large onscreen box that, in the case of damage, the cover does not protect: "Goods not packaged in accordance with our labelling and packaging criteria".' 'Unfortunately, B.B's shipment was damaged during its transit. When we asked for photographs to assess the damage for his parcel protection claim, the images appeared to show a lack of internal packaging sufficient to meet our packaging criteria. 'Also, our customer appears to have re-used an old box, rather than a new one as specified in our criteria. Re-used boxes lose their strength and integrity.' It said it asked you to send further images, but you couldn't provide any as the buyer had thrown away the packaging. Its claims guidance advises not to do this until the claim is completed. The spokesman continued: 'In this case, as the packaging did not meet our criteria—specifically due to insufficient cushioning—we maintain that our initial assessment was fair and accurate.' I also contacted Parcelforce. It said that as your contract was with Parcel Compare, it couldn't investigate fully or consider reimbursing you. Its spokesman did clarify its packaging rules regards reusing boxes - though perhaps clarify is the wrong word, as I still don't feel I am any the wiser. Parcelforce's general packaging guidelines state that senders should 'use a new rigid cardboard box which is strong enough for the weight of the contents.' However, its longer, full packaging guidelines say it 'strongly advises that cardboard boxes are used for a single despatch only.' Strongly advises isn't the same as being banned, though. Interestingly, Parcelforce also cautions against using new boxes made from recycled carboard. I'm sorry I wasn't able to help here, and I do still think Parcel Compare's decision was unfair. If anyone can enlighten me as to whether reusing a box is really banned by parcel firms or not, do get in touch.
Daily Mail
22-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Thieves stole nearly a MILLION Avios - and months later BA still hasn't sorted it: CRANE ON THE CASE
I frequently travel and am an avid collector of British Airways' Avios points, having amassed close to 1million over many years. In late January I was in a taxi travelling to the airport in Bangkok when I started receiving hundreds of emails to the Gmail address connected with my Avios account. This continued for several days. I changed the email password and checked my bank accounts. No money had been taken so I assumed whatever scam this was had been unsuccessful. But on 1 March, l was browsing flights on the BA app and noticed I only had around 5,000 Avios in my account. On the same day I received all the emails, approximately 950,000 Avios had been transferred out to an account with the Spanish airline Iberia. I reported it to BA and my account was frozen. I still don't have access to it. However, that was more than two months ago. Despite chasing up BA several times, I still don't know if I will get my points back, and when I will be able to get into the account again. N.R Helen Crane, This is Money's consumer champion, replies: You are a committed Avios collector, and given the value of your points I can see why you are irked by BA's lackadaisical response. You told me: 'It's taken many, many years to build up that amount of Avios, and whilst there's much worse that can happen in life, it's still stressful to find that it's all been stolen and BA seems uninterested in resolving the matter.' Based on the standard calculation of 1p per point, your total Avios are worth £9,550. If you spent them strategically, though, they could be worth more than £14,300. You pay £300 a year for the Amex Premium Plus credit card, which lets you earn Avios on your spending, and also £899 a year for an Avios subscription which tops up your account with a certain number of points each month. But despite almost being an Avios millionaire, it never occurred to you to check your account on the day your email account was spammed. You assumed the faceless fraudsters had tried, and failed, to access your bank accounts and moved on. Until now, you say, you weren't even aware stealing air miles was possible. But sadly it is, and it has proved a lucrative line of business for criminals lately - as I have previously covered in this column. So how does this happen? As with most scams of this nature, one option is that the fraudster hacked into your emails, giving them the ability to find your Avios details, reset the account password and gain entry. The other is that your Avios login - or the login for another account you hold with the same username and password - was compromised through a data leak, and then acquired on the dark web. The email-bombing that you received on the day of the theft was a bid to stop you noticing any emails about your Avios account password being changed, which would have alerted you to the fraud. It's a good idea to change change the password regularly, and make sure it is not the same as the password you use for any other websites. Many phones will now generate secure, hard-to-guess passwords automatically and store them for future use. You reported the theft to British Airways the day after you noticed the points were gone. It said it would pass your case on to the fraud team to investigate and that someone would get back to you. You say the person you spoke to couldn't give you a time frame, and wouldn't let you speak to the fraud team directly. When you hadn't heard back more than three weeks later, you called again and were met with the same response, and then again two weeks after that. At one point, you were told the 'normal turnaround' for such matters was between 24 and 72 hours - which was laughable given how long you had already waited. It could be that the fraud team is overrun with cases like yours. But if it is, that suggests that BA needs to find a way to beef up its security and stop this from happening. I went into my own Avios account to check what happened if I tried to transfer some of my (comparably tiny) points balance to someone else. Before allowing me to do so, it made me set up two-factor authentication, meaning I had to generate a text message code which was sent to my mobile phone and type it into the BA website. But that is little use to protect against theft, as the fraudster can simply enter their own phone number when prompted. I did notice that, when transferring Avios, the gifter must supply the full name, executive club number and email address of the recipient. Names on Avios (or other points programme) accounts should be real, because if they are not the same as the name on the traveller's passport this can cause issues with bookings. That suggests BA knows the identities of those stealing Avios points, and I would hope that they are being passed to the authorities. I contacted BA to ask why it had taken so long to re-credit your balance. It quickly got in touch with you to confirm your identity and then, once you changed your password again, your Avios were restored. A spokesman for BA said: 'We're very sorry for our customer's experience and we thank them for their patience while we resolved the matter.' I asked whether the firm was considering any extra security measures to combat Avios fraud but it did not respond directly. It said customers should use strong passwords, and not repeat the same password across multiple accounts. BA does have a page on its website giving security advice and listing common scams relating to the company, but it does not mention the Avios thefts. I am glad your Avios riches have been restored - and after all this, I think you deserve a holiday.
Daily Mail
08-05-2025
- Automotive
- Daily Mail
I booked a petrol hire car but Hertz sent me on a nightmare 560-mile trip in an EV: CRANE ON THE CASE
My wife and I live in Australia and recently visited family in England. One day, we booked a Hertz hire car so we could visit my wife's grandparents. One of them is unwell and this may be the last time she is able to see them. I asked for a Mercedes GLA when I booked - which would be either a petrol or diesel car, or a hybrid. But when I turned up, I was was given a Polestar electric vehicle. Neither of us had driven an EV before, and this caused huge problems. Our journey was a 560-mile round trip from London to the Lake District, with a stop in Birmingham on the way home to see my uncle. The maximum mileage of the car in peak conditions is about 250 miles. We had to stop to charge four times for about 40 minutes each, and also kept having to veer off course to find a charger. This totally derailed our trip and meant we missed our dinner with my uncle in Birmingham at 5pm. We didn't arrive there until 9pm. It was a freezing winter day and we kept the heating off to conserve battery. The card Hertz gave us to pay for charging also didn't work. This completely ruined our day, and by the end my wife was in tears. N.L, Brisbane Helen Crane, of This is Money, replies: I am sorry to hear about your traumatic trip in this electric car. This was an important and emotional day for your wife, and the vehicle Hertz gave you just wasn't up to the job. Baffled to be given an electric car, you requested a replacement when you arrived at the Hertz office to pick it up - but the assistant told you that only EVs were available. You say they were rude and told you to 'take it or leave it'. The lack of petrol cars may have been because you were in central London, where many non-electric vehicles must pay the £12.50 daily ULEZ charge, so perhaps Hertz keeps a smaller internal combustion-engined fleet there. You and your wife can also only drive an automatic - which is the norm down under - and this ruled out many of the cars. But it is Hertz's responsibility to give you a car that is the equivalent to the one you booked and if that isn't available it is standard car hire industry practice to upgrade people. You were reluctant to take the EV, but the desk assistant assured you there were charging points 'everywhere' and that the car would charge fully in 15 minutes, so you set off. This easy charging was far from the case, in your experience. You made one stop to charge on the way to the Lake District, which took around 40 minutes. This only charged the car's battery to around 50 per cent - which might have been down to the freezing weather and depends on how fast the charger available was. EVs don't charge as quickly when it is very cold, and the battery will also run down faster - but you can't have been expected to know this, as total novices. When hiring an electric car, you must pay for charging in the same way you would pay for fuel in a petrol car. Unfortunately, while c harging an EV at home is cheap, on the move it can be expensive. You paid £112 in total for charging, which you claimed was more than double what you might have paid in petrol for a similar journey. Chargers can be cheaper or more expensive depending on who runs them and how fast they are, but you didn't know this. Hertz had given you a payment card for charging, which would add the cost of the charging to your final Hertz bill, rather you paying out of pocket upfront. However, you couldn't make it work. When you arrived at the grandparents' home, you plugged the car in and hoped the four-hour stay would allow it to charge enough to get you home. But in fact, it charged the car by just a measly 3 per cent. While EVs can charge via a regular three-pin plug, this is painfully slow. They really need a dedicated charger, which of course your wife's elderly grandparents didn't have. After leaving the Lakes, you had to charge the car twice on the way to Birmingham and both times had to veer wildly off course to find a high-powered charging point. All in all it took you seven hours to drive from the Lakes to Birmingham - a trip that could be done in three and a half hours in good conditions. You arrived at 9pm, having missed dinner with your uncle and with your wife cold, fed up and in tears. You had to make a final charging stop on the way from Birmingham to London, which meant you didn't get back to your hotel until 1:30am - not ideal as you had a sightseeing tour booked first thing the next day. You couldn't complain when you returned the car early the next morning, as the office wasn't yet open - but you did so afterwards with the help of your UK-based uncle. Hertz refused to reimburse you, saying that only EVs were available at the time and that it didn't take responsibility for customers' charging issues. You were then hit with an extra cost when you checked your bill. The petrol car you originally booked included unlimited mileage, but only 300 miles were included on the electric car. Extra miles were charged at 24p per mile. It meant that in total, the rental cost you £252 including the fee for the hire, extra mileage and charging costs. Can a car hire firm give me an EV? You selected a petrol Mercedes GLA when you booked. You've sent me a screenshot to show that, on the website, cars are clearly marked as electric - and the one you opted for was not. This is standard car hire industry practice to show whether a car is petrol / diesel or electric and many people do not want to hire EVs due to the extra hassle. But when you later complained to Hertz, it simply said you booked a 'medium car' and the booking didn't specify whether it was petrol, hybrid or electric. Hire firms are allowed to swap the car you've booked for a similar or higher-spec car, if it isn't available. Hertz's website states that 'similar' means 'that the vehicle you rent may not be the exact make and model as the vehicle displayed, although it will be from the same car group, meaning that it will be comparable in size and performance to that vehicle.' Is an EV comparable to a similar-sized petrol car? The problem here is that it's so subjective. For someone who regularly drives an EV, and was only going 100 miles, the Polestar EV you were given might not have been a problem. But for you, it was a disaster. The car was totally unsuitable for your trip, and you were told the car would be electric with any reasonable notice, you would have cancelled and booked elsewhere. Being able to spring an EV on you at the rental garage, when you're eager to get away, doesn't seem fair. It would seem sensible to have an option where drivers can opt out of EVs during the booking process, if they don't feel comfortable driving one or don't think it's suitable for their trip. Given how upset you were about this experience, I contacted Hertz to ask if it would reconsider reimbursing you. It said the limited car choice you were offered on pick-up was because you required an automatic. But many tourists aren't able to drive manual cars or don't want to, and I agree with you that there should have been better options. Hertz also clarified that the charging card you were given was not broken, but would only work with chargers operated by Shell, with which it has a partnership. This could have been explained better. However, Hertz added that it recognised that you were disappointed with your experience during an important time. Therefore, it has provided a refund of your hire fee and charging costs as a gesture of goodwill.
Daily Mail
24-04-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Why wasn't my pension lifestyled? I lost £8,500 in stock market downturn: CRANE ON THE CASE
I have a personal pension which I opened in the 1980s with Wesleyan Financial Services. In recent years, I received letters and emails suggesting my pension would be 'lifestyled' into a lower-risk fund five years ahead of my claim date, which was set to be when I turned 65 in March 2020. This did not happen and instead, my money remained in a fund rated moderate-high risk/high reward until March 2020. At this point, I realised what had happened and asked for the switch to be made manually. The same month, I asked for my pension date to be moved forward five years to March 2025. Shortly after, the stock market plummeted due to the pandemic and I am now entering retirement with a shortfall in my fund. Had my pension been moved into a lower-risk fund in 2015, as Wesleyan said it would be in its letters, I believe I would not have lost as much money. In the event, it fell by approximately £8,500. Is there anything I can do? I.M, Exeter Helen Crane of This is Money replies: We initially spoke late last year, but I thought your story was worth sharing now, as those approaching retirement may once again be concerned about stock market turbulence caused by Donald Trump's tariffs and what that means for their retirement funds. Losses during the pandemic were much steeper, however. In March 2020, your pension was worth about £50,500, but by April 2021 this had fallen by more than 20 per cent to about £39,000. At the end of 2024, it had recovered somewhat, rising to £42,000. Like a number of pension savers, you were unfortunate to also be affected by the stock market fall of 2022, which happened after the mini-Budget. You expected to be shielded against these losses to a degree, thanks to a common feature of pensions known as lifestyling. This is where savers' money is moved into lower-risk investments as they approach retirement. The idea is that, while the gains they make won't be as large as previous years, the risk of losing money is also lower. It is intended to avoid big drops just before they need to access their money. You were sent a letter five years out from your initial retirement date, which explained why you might wish to consider moving your pension into lower-risk funds. This also included a generic 'information sheet' about lifestyling, which wasn't tailored to your pension specifically. This said that 'Lifestyling starts five years before your benefit date, unless you tell us you don't want to include it' - so you thought this would happen. I contacted Wesleyan to ask why it did not. It told me that as the pension was taken out in the 1980s, when lifestyling was uncommon, the plan did not have this built in to it. Lifestyling only became popular in the 2000s, as customers with more modern 'unitised' funds approached retirement. This is where a savers' money is used to buy 'units' in a fund, and receives the same amount of 'units' back at the end - hopefully having grown in value through investments. Before that, many policies paid out a defined sum or benefit when they matured, regardless of how the investments performed. As your plan predated this change, Wesleyan confirmed that lifestyling would not happen unless you gave the instruction. The company claims that it confirmed to you that lifestyling was not part of your policy in 2019, though you did not share that letter with me. It previously investigated a complaint from you, which was not upheld. Wesleyan also told me that the Financial Ombudsman Service investigated your complaint and agreed with Wesleyan's finding that it was not accountable for any financial loss. A spokesperson for the Wesleyan Group said: 'We were sorry to hear of I.M's complaint in 2022. 'We fully investigated it at that time, as did the independent Financial Ombudsman, and both agreed that Wesleyan was not to be held accountable.' I do agree with you that some of the information you were sent by Wesleyan could have been clearer, in particular the fact that it sent you a generic 'information sheet' on lifestyling which didn't reflect your situation. However, you may be interested to learn that some people who did have their pension lifestyled in the last few years ended up losing a lot of money from their pot, too. That is because lower-risk pension funds are often heavily invested in government bonds or gilts, which tumbled in value after the 2022 mini-Budget - something that not many people expected. Of course, it is impossible to know now whether you would have ended up better or worse off. See this column former pensions minister Steve Webb wrote for us at the time. The global trade war launched by US president Donald Trump has sparked a bond sell-off in recent weeks. If the chaos continues or worsens, older workers may once again discover they are sitting on big pension fund losses right on the brink of retirement, which they might be forced to delay as a result. Finally, I don't know what your plans are for the pension, but if you left it invested, as opposed to buying an annuity for example, the investments would have the chance to increase again. Some experts would suggest avoiding lifestyling if you intended to stay invested for the long term, as this could result in higher returns - though there is always risk. I am not a pensions expert so it is worth taking proper advice, but this is something to consider. Clarks turned away my £75 voucher Last Christmas, my son bought me a £75 voucher for Clarks shoe shop. When I tried to spend it in my local store recently, I was told the card had not been validated and was therefore unusable. It was hard to get hold of the customer service department, so I lodged a complaint online. I've recently been told by Clarks that the card has been reloaded - but only with a balance of £26. E.A, Hampshire Helen Crane replies: Clarks is a staple of the British high street, so it is unfortunate to hear that the firm put its foot in it when it came to sorting out your gift voucher. You told me the assistant in the Andover store spent 40 minutes on the phone trying to get it sorted, but in the end said you needed to call customer services yourself. After trying and failing to get through on the phone for 90 minutes, you put in a complaint via the website, providing the receipts for the gift cards from your son. As your reward for all that effort, you got back only a fraction of the full balance. You told me: 'The effort and hours spent trying to get this sorted was disgusting. The company have and are making this as difficult as possible for people, perhaps hoping people give up!' I attempted to contact the shoe retailer myself for several months, but unfortunately never received a reply. However, one of our complaints must have eventually been heard, as you recently contacted me to say the remaining £49 had been credited to your voucher.
