The Sunday Times - UK (2022-04-10)

The Sunday Times April 10, 2022 15

MONEY

‘After 12

fittings my

blinds still

don’t work’

Group that specialises in buying up the

bits of insurance businesses others no

longer want. Even so, either L&G or

ReAssure should have had the decency

to reply to your cousin.

She said: “ReAssure said it has had my

account since 2020 and has tried to

contact me without success. I still have

the same address it has on the account,

though. No one ever told me the account

was transferred and I would never have

found my money if it was not for you.

L&G never replied to any of my

correspondence.”

ReAssure has now made sure that

your cousin can access her account,

which she has discovered holds £51,357.

You tell me that you are all benefiting

from this because your cousin is visiting

the UK next year and will be treating

all her cousins to a get-together. I think

you missed a trick here — the UK or

Hawaii? Hmmmm.

Months without

broadband

Between December and March our BT

broadband did not work. During this

time I have had ten Openreach engineers

visit my property on seven occasions.

The only reason I have any broadband

at the moment is that on the last visit one

of the three engineers that attended had

an “old-style” Hub 5 router that worked.

I have been in contact with

approximately 15 BT call-centre staff and

have spent at least 20 hours trying to

resolve my “non service”.

Finally, after getting my broadband up

and running, I was in communication to

talk about compensation. After I spent

20 minutes explaining the situation, the

person I was speaking to consulted her

immediate manager and was authorised

to credit my account with £60 — not

really any form of compensation as BT

has been charging me £27.99 a month

for my non-existent broadband.

As I cannot even raise a complaint

with BT via its website, please can you

help? I think I am slowly losing the plot.

Jill replies

You managed to resolve the problem of

your broadband not working yourself.

Your reason to complain to me was “BT’s

absolutely rotten customer service,

apart from a gentleman who works in

the Northern Ireland office” and that

you had been offered no compensation

for the delay in getting your service back

to full working order.

On its website BT proudly says it

played a leading role in developing a

new voluntary industry code of practice

for automatic compensation for fixed

broadband and landline customers — so

I asked it to adhere to the code’s

recommendations.

These state that BT will pay

compensation automatically when it is

late in delivering a fixed line or

broadband service, when it takes more

than two working days to repair a fault

that has caused a total loss of service, or

when its technicians miss an

appointment. It pays this at a rate of

£8 per day of delay and £25 for a missed

appointment.

You also reckoned you were owed for

three months’ Netflix (£18) and Amazon

Prime (£24), and five days’ annual leave

wasted in trying to sort the broadband

issue out (£500).

Unfortunately companies rarely value

customers’ time as much as their own,

so BT ignored this part of your claim.

However, it did award you £88 as an

apology for the delay in restoring your

service, £25 for a missed appointment

and £596 in automatic compensation —

£709 in total.

Nearly 60 per cent of the 42,350

taxpayers who exceeded the annual

limit on pension savings in 2019-20

were NHS workers.

Most people can pay up to £40,000

or 100 per cent of their salary, whichever

is lower, into their pension each year

and get tax relief. Those who bust this

allowance have to repay the relief on

contributions over the limit. If your

pension has a “scheme pays” facility,

you can ask it to pay the charge out of

your pot. If not, you will have to pay it

yourself.

Your tax-free limit is reduced

gradually if you are a higher earner

using a system called the tapered

annual allowance.

Of the roughly 25,000 NHS workers

who exceeded their annual allowance,

15,600 went over the standard £40,000

limit, according to data obtained by the

wealth manager Quilter from the NHS

Business Services Authority. A further

9,435 higher-earning NHS staff are

estimated to have been hit by an annual

allowance charge despite paying in less

than £40,000 because of the tapered

annual allowance.

High-earning NHS staff are

particularly affected by the annual

allowance limit due to their generous

pensions. NHS staff have defined-benefit

pensions, which pay a guaranteed

income for life, and have to pay a certain

percentage of their salary into the

scheme. If their salary pushes them

above the annual allowance, there is

little they can do.

Another problem is that NHS workers

often take on extra shifts to cover a lack

of staff, pushing their income over the

threshold. The British Medical

Association (BMA) trade union has

warned that the rules encourage doctors

to turn down extra work.

The salary threshold at which your

pension allowance starts tapering was

increased in 2020, partly due to the

effect it was having on NHS staff.

Workers are now affected if their

“threshold income”, which includes

their salary, bonuses and income from

investments, is above £200,000, up

from £110,000 before 2020, and their

“adjusted income”, which is their

threshold income plus their pension

accrual, is above £240,000, up from

£150,000.

The BMA welcomed the move but

warned that a pay increase or a

promotion could still result in doctors

facing significant tax bills.

NHS doctors

fall foul of

pension

saving caps

Imogen Tew

59%

of those who exceeded the 2019-20

pension limit were NHS workers

T

he fitting of our electrically

operated Thomas Sanderson

blinds started on September

7, 2020. During the following

18 months there have been

many visits, many new blinds

ordered again and again due

to incorrect sizing, wrong

colour, or problems with the

motors. On a number of

occasions, blinds have been ordered by

the fitter and not manufactured by

Sanderson and each time there is a six to

eight week wait for them to be made.

I paid 50 per cent of the £7,700 price

on placing the order and the final

payment is due when the fitting is

finished satisfactorily. Sanderson is now

demanding the balance, which I am not

happy to pay as the final blind ordered

by the fitter was not made because

Sanderson said it did not need to be

replaced.

I feel that significant compensation is

due and the five-year guarantee should

start when the job is complete, but my

requests are being dismissed.

I would very much appreciate your

help and advice.

Jill replies

By the time you contacted me the

outstanding cost of £3,850 had been

reduced to £2,500 by Sanderson in

recognition of the problems you had

suffered with its blinds. But it was now

pressing for you to pay this amount even

though your blind order was still not

complete as far as you were concerned.

One blind needed replacing but

Sanderson told you that as it was a fault

in the fabric, this did not affect the

functioning of the blind so the company

would not replace it. In fact, as your

complaint progressed another blind that

had been working failed.

You had waited 18 months and had 12

visits from fitters involving 13 blinds and

said: “I strongly feel that that [reducing

the bill by £1,350] is not sufficient

compensation for the dreadful quality of

the product, the appalling customer

QUESTION

OF MONEY

JILL INSLEY

service and the inconvenience caused

over a prolonged period.”

I contacted Thomas Sanderson,

which is part of the same group as

Hillarys, and it offered you two options.

The first was to keep the blinds as they

were and pay nothing more. This clearly

wasn’t acceptable as the blinds weren’t

working. The second was to pay the

remainder (with the agreed discount)

and have all the blinds replaced with

Sandersons’ “new system blinds”. You

had been told that the new system is

identical to the old blinds that you had

before ordering new ones. They had

worked well so you were happy to have

those, but not content with the size of

discount given the length of time this

had been going on and the stress and

inconvenience it has caused. I asked

Sanderson to reconsider.

It has now agreed to replace all the

blinds with the new version and is

waiving the rest of your bill.

What has L&G done

with my cousin’s cash?

I am trying to help my elderly cousin

trace her savings account with the

financial services company Legal &

General. She was born in August 1944

and raised in England but has lived at the

same address in Honolulu, Hawaii, since

1972. Before Covid she was a regular
      visitor to family in the UK.
      In approximately 1984 she opened a
      savings account with L&G by investing
      £37,000. She has not paid in or
      withdrawn any funds since and
      received regular bank statements by
      post from L&G.
      In September 2017 L&G wrote to her
      asking her to prove that she was still alive
      so she obtained a notarised letter and
      sent it by registered post. There was no
      reply and she has heard nothing from
      Legal & General since then.
      She has always declared this account
      to the US Inland Revenue Service (IRS)
      for tax purposes but now the IRS is
      demanding proof of the amount in the
      account.
      L&G has no branches now and carries
      out its business online. My cousin tried
      to set up an online account but the only
      reference number she has is a plan
      number for US customers. This is not
      recognised online.
      She has sent letters to the head office
      outlining her predicament but these
      have been ignored. The time difference

between Hawaii and the UK makes

telephoning difficult, but on the couple

of occasions that she has got through

she has been passed around until she is

cut off. I appreciate that she’s not good

with computers and may have difficulty

on the phone but there is a lot of money

at stake and she’s very worried about

the IRS.

Any help or suggestions would be

very welcome.

Jill replies

Your cousin told me she had been trying

to contact L&G for about two years. Her

account was absorbed by a company

called ReAssure, part of the Phoenix

CAN 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

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