It was 45 years ago that I left Britain for the first time, to hitch-hike around Western Europe. I was a different person and the continent was a different place. Today, Europe is about to become a different place again. Brexit – assuming it goes ahead – will change the EU, as well as changing […]
Q. I hired a car on 7 July online through Rentalcars.com, for my holiday in Spain from 9 to 23 July. I advance paid the required amount of £298.59 to pick up the car from Malaga airport. On arrival at Malaga I had to wait two hours in a queue at the local care hire
Q. In March I booked accommodation at a Greek hotel. We had an exchange of emails discussing the rooms, hotel facilities and so on. This led to me making a reservation payment of €2,500 to the bank account – details of which I was given in the emails – via an international bank transfer. In
Q. On 23 April, I parked in the Matalan car park in Bury, entered my full vehicle registration as instructed and paid £1.50 for two hours parking. The car park camera footage shows my car entering the car park at 15.10 and leaving at 16.01. My receipt shows that I paid for two hours’ parking
Q. I allowed my son to use my eBay account to sell some items, but he has clocked-up over £700 of debt. He linked his Paypal account to my eBay account and I never received any money for the items he sold. Now I have received a letter from debt collectors Transcom demanding that I
Q. We went on holiday to Cornwall at the end of May, but we had serious problems. We booked a cottage through Holiday Cottages. When we arrived we found that the promised wifi, one of the reasons we booked the accommodation, was not working, neither was the fridge. The owner telephoned us on the first
Q. Several years ago I accepted Sky at face value as a provider of services. But I found my charges were hiked by 50 per cent without warning. It takes hours to try to speak to anyone at Sky to resolve problems. I had agreed with Sky an entertainment and sports package for £26 per month. That
Q. I booked flights and accommodation in November last year through Expedia, travelling to Mauritius and leaving on 24 March this year. My kids are 12 and 14, so the flights are not eligible for Air Passenger Duty (APD). Emirates are now refunding the APD on these flights where a customer has booked the flights
Q. I went on a ski holiday costing £1,426. The holiday was badly affected by a huge group of guests who took over the coach transfer and hotel with drunken rowdy behaviour, foul language and banging on our room door in the middle of the night. The group was so noisy and foul mouthed that
Q I signed up to a Virgin Media service package because of a special offer made to emergency services workers by a department called Virgin Media Partners. I received an email from them which offered a £100 shopping voucher; free broadband installation, normally costing £49.95; free service and repairs; ‘our fastest every WiFi hub’ and
Q. My partner and I booked return flights to Rome with BA and pre-paid for seats to guarantee that we could sit together. When we arrived at the gate for the outbound flight I was told that I had been moved from 14C – the pre-booked seat – to 28C. I find flying stressful and
Q. When we bought our house several years ago we had an underground LPG [liquid petroleum gas] tank installed. We purchased our own tank rather than rent one to avoid daily charges and to give us the option to change suppliers if we wanted. We initially used Flogas, but gas prices rose so we compared