58 Saturday June 11 2022 | the timesMoney
5IN THE
SUNDAY TIMES
TOMORROWplus
Why child benefit
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special report
The pension
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My five reforms to end the travel misery
1
The Civil Aviation Authority
was founded as an independent
regulator in 1972, a time when the
airline industry was very different
from how it is now. Its primary
role then, as it is today, was to
improve safety standards. More
recently it has been charged with
improving competition and
environmental standards.
Increasingly, though, it is also
being asked to intervene on
consumer protections. This started
with the formation of the Atol
scheme, which protects travellers
if a holiday company goes bust,
but more recently it has stretchedto flight delays and customer
service problems.
That is a conflict of interest.
Power for the consumer side of
aviation should be passed to a new
travel regulator to monitor service
standards at airports and airlines.2
If you have a complaint about
an airline or airport you can
take your case to one of five
independent arbitration schemes.
Which one you go to depends on
which airline you used. If you have
a complaint about a packaged
holiday there is the scheme run by
the Association of British Travel
Agents, or an independent
arbitration service run by the
Association of Independent Tour
Operators, although it costs you
£110 to make a claim.
What a mess. Scrap the lot and
replace them with one independent
travel ombudsman backed by the
new regulator modelled on the
one that operates for financial
services firms. It should be free for
consumers, and the worst offendingfirms should pay higher fees to
protect smaller operators that
are only the subject of the odd
complaint. The schemes should
be expanded to cover cruises and
other overseas travel such as ferries
and the Channel Tunnel.
Complaints about travel
insurance should remain with
the financial ombudsman.3
Refunds for delays should apply
to everyone on a flight. At the
moment individual passengers
have to make individual claims
for refunds for delays. Often two
passengers on the same flight will
get different decisions from the
arbitration schemes. Once one
claim is successful all passengers
on that flight should get an
automatic refund. Better still once
a flight arrives late, compensation
should be automatic without
anyone having to complain.4
All firms should have a service
obligation. For airlines this
should include always having staffavailable in airports. They should
also have a phone number and an
email address for customers. The
new travel regulator would be
able to fine firms if emails are not
replied to within 48 hours and
phone calls or online chats are
not answered by a human being
in ten minutes.
Airports should also have a
service standard, with fines issued
if queue times are too long.5
When you are on a delayed
train, the guard will often
announce how to make a refund
claim. Airlines should be forced to
do the same, explaining your rights.
Complaints data, including the
number of cases upheld against a
firm, should be released quarterly,
and decisions adjudicated on by an
ombudsman should be published so
consumers can better understand
their rights.
Only all these changes will finally
put an end to the shambles of
delays and cancellations.
@jimconeyJames
Coney
Money
editor
Comment
Don’t envy the
rich — they’re
not as wealthy
as you think
N
ormally when we
interview someone well-
known it is in a five-star
hotel, in a smart office, or
on Zoom where they have
stylish pot plants and prints behind
them. The process is highly stage
managed and lackies are on hand to
get the famous person anything they
so desire.
I’ve only been to a famous person’s
home’s once, and the visit proved to
me exactly why we shouldn’t be
allowed anywhere near their real
lives.
Before the visit, I was anxious,
because, I realised later, I feared the
television presenter’s lifestyle was
going to be so appealing that it would
make me re-evaluate mine negatively.
That I would see her nicer home,
smarter outfit, a child with ironed
clothes and this would make me feel
jealous.
I arrived at the flat where she lived
in Chelsea with her daughter and
buzzed the doorbell, full of
anticipation. So it came as a surprise
to arrive in a small, dark flat with a
galley kitchen that had seen better
days. The whole place could have
done with a lick of paint and her
daughter was glued to an iPad,
clothes crumpled. The presenter toldme she was renting, and I later found
out how irregular her income was.
Rather than feeling despondent
about my lot, I closed the front door
with a new-found appreciation of my
life. Despite not enjoying the same
high-profile career and earning
power, my regular income, savings,
the flat that I owned — not to
mention my marriage, which was
intact — made me wealthier.This was a valuable lesson in
learning to appreciate what I have,
but it doesn’t stop me from feeling
hard done by when I shouldn’t.
Particularly when I read that the
starting salary for a graduate at the
US law firm Akin Gump is now
£161,500 and for those starting out at
the US bank Goldman Sachs it is justover £80,000. Then, last week, we
learnt that the average salary for
FTSE 100 chief executives is
£2.7 million. This is 87 times the
£31,000 average salary for full-time
UK workers and means that the
bosses of Britain’s biggest companies
will have made more money by
elevenses on Thursday in the first
week of January than the average
worker makes in a whole year.
In weaker moments I ache for their
holidays. This thought process led me
to stalk my wealthy ex on Facebook
and scroll through the pics of him and
his new wife on honeymoon. I wasn’t
jealous of their relationship, but I was
very jealous of their honeymoon.What is interesting is that the
opposite does not happen. I don’t go
on Facebook scrolling through the
honeymoon pictures of exes who (I
assume) earn less than I do and think:
better hope they don’t see my pics of
my honeymoon in case they feel
jealous of the hotel I stayed at (a
guesthouse in Malaysia where the
owner took in stray cats, so every
morning you wake up with a different
cat in your face).
Similarly, I don’t register news
stories where I learn of professions
where people earn less than me and
think: blimey, I’m wealthy.
Why is this? Why do we compare
ourselves with people who arewealthier but not poorer? It appears
to be a British habit, according to
research by the polling firm YouGov.
When it asked Britons to estimate
the proportion of us who earn more
than £100,000 a year, the answers
were wildly inaccurate — 20 per cent,
when the true number is 3 per cent.
And when they were asked how many
Britons make more than £1 million a
year, the guess was also way off; 5 per
cent, when the correct figure is
0.04 per cent.
Meanwhile Americans who were
given the same questions answered
accurately, near enough. They
suggested that the proportion of
people who earn more than $100,000
a year was 38 per cent, when the true
figure is 34 per cent.
One likely reason for this is that
Americans have facts when judging
other people’s wealth rather than
speculation. This is because — shock
horror — they tell people how much
they earn. Anyone who has spent
time in the US will have found an
American cheerfully admitting their
salary within five minutes of meeting.
This is very different to here, where
best friends, parents and even
partners don’t always know what we
earn.
There are likely to be other factors
at play, though. Americans are more
likely to see wealthier people and feel
admiration, or something to aim for.
It’s doubtful that Rishi Sunak’s entry
into The Sunday Times Rich List
would create any problems if he were
a politician in the US — in fact it
probably would have improved the
chancellor’s political standing.
So are Britons more envious and
bitter? Perhaps we don’t look at
things logically or sensibly.
Confirmation bias tells us that all
retired people are loaded — made
wealthy by the luck of being born in
the right time, when in fact the
average pensioner’s weekly income is
just £304.
Whatever is happening, I know one
thing: comparing your wealth with
others is not a recipe for happiness.
My sons ask questions occasionally
about our family wealth. I tell them
we’re lucky, to focus on what we have,
and to avoid comparing with others
because you’ll come away with false
information and lose sight of your
own good fortune. I tell them to learn
from my brush with the famous
person, which taught me to
appreciate what I have, and never to
judge a person’s wealth by their
Instagram feed.T k Wh i iHome Economics
Jessie Hewitson
Comparing yourself
with others makes
you lose sight of your
own good fortune