The Sunday Times April 3, 2022 15
MONEY
I
have been emailing Budget, the car
rental firm, since the end of August
2021 to request a refund of £392
plus car damage insurance of £25, a
total of £417.
My 92-year-old uncle died in
February 2021 and because I was
seriously ill with Covid, he was cre-
mated alone in London. He had
lived with me for a year, and the
family agreed it would be nicer to have a
memorial service near Chester because
his friends and relatives lived there.
I have a Smart car, but this was too
small to carry all the items from his happy
and long life that we wanted to display at
the service. I booked a rental car on June
18 to be collected from London City Air-
port at 10am on August 18. On August 11
I was invited to check in online and was
told I was being “super smart for doing
so”. I was told to bring my driving licence,
passport or ID card and a payment card.
On a following page Budget also said I
didn’t need to join the standard queue at
the airport, and mentioned that I would
need proof of address and DVLA licence
code. I assumed that my driving licence
was proof of my address.
I arrived at London City Airport to find
two assistants. One was struggling and
seemed new to the job. At 10.50am I was
called to the desk and handed over the
requested documents. My DVLA code
was looked up and the assistant at the
desk told me that my licence was about to
expire, however because of Covid I had a
year’s grace. This was untrue because my
licence does not expire until 2025.
I was then asked for proof of address.
I pointed out that my driving licence had
my address. I argued for ten minutes then
began to cry. I was still grieving for my
uncle and had the effects of long Covid.
The woman assistant just said, “Well, you
can’t have the car.” It was all too much.
I asked the other assistant to hold my
things as I was going to try the next desk,
Eurocar. The assistant rudely shouted
after me: “You won’t get a car anywhere.”
At Eurocar, I was shown to a car within
a few minutes. The assistant, Rodney,
gave me water and had immaculate
customer skills. After my return I emailedresult of this has been absolutely nothing,
zilch, in short: bugger all.
I hope your influence might be able to
prise the £237 credit that is due to my
mother-in-law‘s estate from BT.Jill replies
I asked BT to chase your bereavement
refund. It apologised for causing incon-
venience at such a difficult time, sent you
(“a living person with an active bank
account” as you put it) a cheque for
£236.85 and £100 was credited to your
BT account as an apology. You said:
“Within one hour of you forwarding the
details to BT they had rung me from ‘high
level complaints’. A phone number was
provided that gave direct contact to the
office involved without an automated
menu. Actually speaking straight to a
person — how novel is that?
“So a successful conclusion, but how
sad that it took a direct intervention from
you to kick a process into action that
should have been so simple. Surely the
process of dealing with a single person’s
estate and a closed bank account must be
very commonplace?”
You would think so.Budget to request a full refund as I wasn’t
given the car, but during the past seven
months all I have received is automatic
replies confirming that my feedback has
been received and that a member of cus-
tomer service will be in touch.Jill replies
Budget does ask domestic renters whose
licences have been issued in England,
Wales or Scotland to provide a proof of
address, but it doesn’t specify what docu-
ments it will accept. I think it was reason-
able for you to believe your driving
licence would suffice, as it is illegal to
have incorrect details on your licence
and you can be fined up to £1,000 for not
telling DVLA about a change of address.
The way the Budget assistant treated
you was horrible. Thank goodness that
Eurocar’s assistant, Rodney, was better
trained and empathetic. The world needs
more Rodneys.
I asked Budget to refund your £417
plus compensation. It has paid you £450,
which includes just £33 in compensation
— a pitiful amount considering that its
staff reduced you to tears.Sorry saga from BT
I have been trying unsuccessfully to close
my mother-in-law’s BT account since
October last year. The line was cut pretty
much immediately when I phoned BT
bereavement team about her death on
October 28 last year. After about three
weeks I contacted BT and was promised
that a cheque would be in the post within
seven to ten days. This cycle was
repeated three times prior to Christmas
with no sign of a cheque.
Eventually I was told that there was a
BT email account active that was blocking
the closure of the account. However,
after being transferred and speaking to
the technicians they denied there was
any such account. I then raised the com-
plaint to a higher level and was allocated
a personal contact at BT who promised
she would deal with it in person.
Early in January the personal contact
eventually got the email account closed
and promised a cheque would be in the
post and sure enough eight days later
there it was — payable to my late mother-
in-law and with her name misspelt.
My last contact was on January 28
when a very friendly lady assured me that
she could see exactly what the issue was
and that the cheque would be issued in
my name to my address within seven to
ten days. She also closed the complaint.
As you have probably guessed the netReduced to
tears at the
Budget car
hire desk...
QUESTION
OF MONEY
JILL INSLEY
Should I not get more
than £77 state pension?
I began receiving my state pension in
March last year. I realise that having paid
a married woman’s stamp [a reduced rate
of national insurance (NI) contributions]
most of my working life I won’t receive a
full pension, but I think the amount I
receive is incorrect. I have a forecast from
December 2018 saying that I would get
£142.08 a week; however I get only
£77.26. Since my first payment in March
2021 I have been trying to get answers
from the Department for Work and Pen-
sions (DWP). In January I spoke to Citi-
zens Advice. It said I should ring DWP and
make a formal complaint. I did this and
was told that someone would telephone
me inside 15 days. Twenty eight days later
I still have not been called.
I would like to know why I am not paid
my forecasted pension. Also I would like
to know if I am entitled to a percentage of
my late husband’s state pension. He died
aged 66 after paying more than 40 years’
NI. I have some savings but they won’t
last for ever and as you can imagine
£77.26 a week doesn’t go very far.Jill replies
State pension forecasts are estimates,
and as you have found, they can be mis-
leading. This is partly because the bodies
involved in providing the information
that is needed to generate a forecast
(HMRC, the DWP and personal or occu-
pational pension schemes to which you
may have contributed) are not always
quick to share the necessary data.
You reached state pension age in 2021,
five years after the introduction of the
new state pension, so your weekly pay-
ment has been calculated according to
the rules for the new state pension. This,
the DWP said, entitled you to just £77.26 aweek, considerably less than the maxi-
mum possible new state pension of
£179.60 (until Wednesday where it rises
to £185.15), because you only have 13
qualifying years of national insurance
contributions. This is because you opted
to pay the Married Woman’s Reduced
Rate of NI contributions, which did not
count towards your state pension, from
April 1975 to January 2006.
Some widows can inherit part of their
late husband’s state pension, but as with
everything related to the state pension,
the rules are complicated.
As your husband was born in July 1951,
you would be entitled to receive half of
any extra pension he got over the full flat
rate. The DWP refers to this as the “pro-
tected payment” component. Your hus-
band’s state pension did not include a
protected payment component, so there
was nothing for you to inherit and ini-
tially the DWP stuck to its guns about the
amount you should receive.
However the DWP had failed to apply a
special concession for women who have
paid the Reduced Rate when calculating
your pension. Steve Webb, former pen-
sions minister and now partner with con-
sultants Lane Clark and Peacock,
explained that a widow who was paying
the Reduced Rate 35 years before the
start of the tax year in which she reaches
state pension age automatically qualifies
for a 60 per cent old-style pension at
retirement or a 100 per cent old-style
widow’s pension. You had been severely
underpaid for the last year and the DWP
is paying you £4,561 in arrears and will
increase your weekly pension to £151.46
from Wednesday.
It is a timely warning for other women
who paid the married woman’s stamp to
check their state pension. Webb said:
“This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this —
it’s alarming how often [the DWP] fails to
apply this concession.”The number of remortgages approved
by banks is up 40 per cent over the past
year after homeowners locked in new
deals before rates increased.
Loan rates have been going up since
October on the back of rising inflation
and three consecutive increases in the
Bank of England base rate.
Some 48,200 people remortgaged in
the past 12 months and a record
£9.8 billion worth of remortgage loans
was approved in February. The previous
record was £9.42 billion in August 2018.
In October the lowest two-year fixed
rate at 60 per cent loan-to-value (LTV)
was 0.79 per cent and the lowest five-
year fix was 0.91 per cent. The lowest
comparable rates are now 1.25 per cent
and 1.51 per cent — £41.71 and £55 more a
month on a £200,000 loan.
Andrew Montlake from the mortgage
broker Coreco said: “Borrowers no
longer want to wait to remortgage with
their own lender, something known as a
product transfer, because you are often
able to lock in a better rate if you go to a
different lender up to six months before
the end of your fixed rate. We’ve seen
this happen since rates started to
increase in October.”
Ben Merritt, the director of mortgages
at Yorkshire Building Society, said:
“We’ve gone from record-low Bank base
rate and historically cheap mortgages to
an increasing-rate environment,
prompting borrowers to take advantage
of lower rates while they still can.”
The earliest you can remortgage is six
months before your fixed rate ends.
Some brokers have reported clients
paying early repayment charges to get
out of fixed-rate deals. You need to do
the maths to check if this is financially
sensible: it will depend on how long is
left on your fixed deal, and how much
you will save by getting a cheaper rate.
Five-year fixes have become the most
popular choice because they offer a
balance between a low rate and
flexibility. They also allow higher
borrowing because the affordability tests
are less strict if you fix for longer. Ten-
year fixes, once rare, are also becoming
more common and some are available
without strict early repayment charges.
The lowest two-year fixed rate for
those remortgaging is 1.75 per cent from
Newcastle Building Society available at
80 per cent LTV. It has a £999 fee.
The lowest five-year fixed rate at
60 per cent LTV is 1.86 per cent from
Lloyds Bank, also with a £999 fee.Homeowners
rush to lock in
super-cheap
mortgages
George Nixon1.25%
The lowest two-year fixed mortgage
rate at 60 per cent loan-to-valueCAN WE HELP YOU?
Email Jill Insley at
questionofmoney@
sunday-times.co.uk or write
to Question of Money, The
Sunday Times, 1 London
Bridge Street, London SE1
9GF. Please send copies of
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Jill cannot reply to everyone.