The Sunday Times May 22, 2022 15
MONEY
BUY PRINTS OR SIGNED COPIES OF ROB MURRAY’S CARTOONS FROM OUR PRINT GALLERY AT TIMESCARTOONS.CO.UKM
y wife booked Budget
Lodge in Alnwick via
Expedia’s website on May
12 last year. The booking
was for seven nights from
June 23, and she paid
£378 by debit card. The
payment to Expedia
shows up on my bank
statement on June 13.
I arrived at the hotel on June 23 at
4.10pm, but there was no one there.
I used the intercom as instructed on an
email from Budget Lodge, but there was
no answer. I tried phoning the number
provided on the same email, but was
informed the voicemail box was full.
I returned at 5.15pm, but again found
no one there. I left a note saying I would
return at 6.15pm, leaving my mobile
number. No one called me. I returned
at 6.15pm and waited until 7pm. I left
a note demanding a refund and booked
into a nearby hotel.
On June 24 I emailed Expedia and
Budget Lodge with my complaint,
requesting a refund of £378. I got no
response from either party, so I
complained again to Expedia using its
website complaints procedure — twice.
Finally I called Expedia and the person
I spoke to was quite helpful, but the
company emailed me later to say it was
unable to contact Budget Lodge and it
needed to abide by the terms and
conditions, which says refunds are
not allowed.
I paid Expedia, so it should provide
goods or services or refund my money.
This argument continued until October
18 when we discovered that Expedia no
longer took reservations for the Budget
Lodge. I contacted Expedia again and it
asked for the receipts from the other
hotels that we had to book into as we
couldn’t get into Budget Lodge. We sent
these but heard nothing more.
Finally on January 21 this year we
called Expedia again, and repeated the
whole sorry story. The call centre
operator reviewed our correspondence
and then told me that because Expedia
can’t contact the hotel, it can’t give a
refund — something to do with the hotel
agreement policy — and he suggested we
contact our bank.Jill replies
Contacting your bank may have helped if
you had done it within 120 days of trying
to get into Budget Lodge. Because the
hotel and Expedia failed to provide the
room you had paid for by debit card, you
could have made a chargeback claim,
which involves your bank contacting
the recipient’s bank to ask for your
money back.
There is no guarantee this will work
as there has to be enough money
in the recipient’s account, and the
recipient may challenge your claim for
a refund. There is also a time limit on
chargeback claims — usually 120 days
from the date when you paid or when
you expected to receive the goods
or service.
You were well outside the time limit
by the time Expedia suggested this to
you, and the fact that no one — including
me — could contact Budget Lodge
suggests it has long since gone out of
business. The most recent review I could
find for it was 11 months old and was so
negative the hotel may have done you
a favour by locking you out.
I asked Expedia to refund you,
pointing out that it had strung out the
complaints process for so long, it was
impossible for you to get a refund any
other way. It paid the money into your
account the next day.I’m not with British Gas,
but I still get the bills
British Gas keeps charging me for gas,
even though I am not a British Gas
customer. It has threatened to obtain a
warrant to enter my home, report me to
credit agencies and disconnect my gas
supply, even though I have never been
its customer.
I moved into my apartment in August- Since then, I have had my gas
supplied by Pure Planet, which went
into administration last year and my
account was transferred to Shell Energy.
In February this year, I started
receiving bills for gas from British Gas.
After multiple calls to British Gas they
acknowledged that the bills were sent in
error. It turns out that my gas meter
number appeared twice in the national
registry. The person I spoke to promised
that the additional entry, which British
Gas believed it had supplied, would be
removed from the registry. My bills
would be cancelled.
None of that happened. Instead, I
started receiving increasingly
threatening letters from British Gas.
After every letter I contacted British Gas
through its online chat, and every time I
was promised that the bills would be
cancelled. Yet I was put in collection and
told that, if I did not pay immediately, I
would face severe repercussions.
At the end of March when British Gas
threatened to disconnect my gas, report
me to credit agencies, and obtain a
warrant to enter my house I actually
paid the erroneous bill to avoid these
things happening. At the same time I
wrote a formal complaint to British Gas.
I never received a response to my
complaint, which is now three weeks
past British Gas’s promised resolution
date. That is despite the company, in
every contact that I have had with it,
acknowledging that I am being billed in
error.
Just now, British Gas have sent me
a new £270 bill for the gas used since
March. I am desperate to have this
resolved but feel like I am facing a
brick wall.
Jill replies
You must have been absolutely
desperate to pay British Gas to clear
erroneous bills and late payment
charges for energy that you know you
have not used. I forwarded the bills you
had received from Pure Planet and Shell
to British Gas and asked it to stop
harassing you and refund the £588 you
had paid it for nothing.
British Gas confirmed that there is a
duplicate supply recorded against your
meter’s details on the national database.
It said: “We’re sorry for the time it’s
taken to get this resolved. We’ve now
closed the occupier account down at our
end and are arranging for the national
database to be amended to remove the
duplicate supply that’s listed. That’ll
ensure he doesn’t get any letters again in
the future.”
It is refunding the £588 to you as
quickly as possible and also paying you
compensation of £100 for the
harassment you have suffered. It can
take a while to make changes to the
national database, but if you do get any
more bills or threatening letters, please
forward them to me.Lloyds bungling just
added to our grief
My mother died unexpectedly on March
1 and we’re still awaiting an inquest and
a final death certificate. We found a copy
of a will dated 2015 which stated that my
sister and I were executors, so now
we’re trying to get to the point where we
can see a solicitor to sort out probate. As
usual, this is made complex by grief and
administrative trivia and it sometimes
seems as if organisations are deliberately
trying to slow the process down.
I rang my mum’s bank, Lloyds, on
March 6 and Richard on the
bereavement line was really lovely and
helpful. He gave me lots of detail about
her accounts and explained that he
needed a copy of the death certificate.
He said that the bank would be able to
help with probate and he was the calm,
reassuring voice I needed. At some point
I received a secure link and was able to
upload a copy of the interim death
certificate to the bank’s site.
On March 22 I had another
conversation with Lloyds bereavement
service in which I got all of my mum’s
account details including a Scottish
Widows distribution bond. I got all the
balances, the standing orders and the
direct debits and was told that the
accounts would be stopped.
The funeral was on April 12 and two£378 to be
locked out
of Budget
Lodge...
days later I remembered that I hadn’t
heard anything from Lloyds so I rang
them. I spoke to Alex, another lovely
person, who told me that Lloyds had
found a copy of a will in which the bank
was the executor and that they had sent
these details to me on March 22.
Everything was now with the Estate
Administration Service and we were out
of the loop.We discussed dates and it became
clear that this will was much older than
the one we had found. Lloyds sent me a
link to upload a copy of “our” will, which
I did later that day. Alex described the
processing of the accounts as being in
limbo but everything was being emailed
to the “back office system” and would
get sorted out quickly.
On April 18 Lloyds sent a letter to mymum at her address asking if she would
like to return to paper statements as she
hadn’t been using internet banking.
Since then despite calls and emails,
there has not been much progress.
Then there was the fiasco of the
Scottish Widows bond. After speaking to
five people, I was told nothing had
happened because they hadn’t had a
copy of the death certificate and Ineeded to complete a form and send it
back with an original copy of the death
certificate, a copy of the grant of probate
and a copy of the will. At this point I did
have a bit of a rant. We can’t apply for
probate till we know how much money
there is, and we don’t know that because
no one from Scottish Widows or Lloyds
Bank is communicating with each other,
and they are communicating pretty
poorly with us.
What is Lloyds trying to do here? They
certainly aren’t helping me and my sister
as we wade through the paperwork.
Dealing with a death is hard. When I first
rang Lloyds it was absolutely the best
service out — but now?Jill replies
The one time you really need a bank to
get it right is when you are grieving, yet
time and again readers tell me about
errors, delays and stroppy staff.
Lloyds’ staff do seem to have been
sympathetic at least, but the failure to
communicate meant you had to repeat
details that were painful and time
consuming. The ideal bereavement
service is one that provides one kind
person to deal with throughout who has
access — directly or indirectly — to all the
necessary details to help you through
the process of closing accounts and
applying for probate.
This is exactly what I asked Lloyds to
provide for you. Within two days you
had spent half an hour on the phone to
someone who started to sort out all the
tangles. He is organising the refund of
incorrect bank charges, statements for
all your mother’s accounts, stopping all
further communications to your
mother’s address and arranging for the
paperwork for the bond to be delivered
to you, and will see it through to pay out.
He also apologised and offered
compensation of £300.
You said: “I asked him if all of this had
happened as a result of your
intervention, and he said it had, but that
it would have happened if I had
complained to any of the other people I
had spoken to. I must learn to use the
word ‘complain’ earlier, apparently.”QUESTION
OF MONEY
JILL INSLEY
CAN WE HELP YOU?
Please email your questions to 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 only copies of original
documents. Letters should be
exclusive to The Sunday Times.
Advice is offered without legal
responsibility. We regret Jill cannot
reply to everyone who contacts her.