The biggest advert doesn’t mean the best price!

In years gone by all of the major retailers’ sales started on the same day – and at the same time on the same day – and queues were formed outside our shops in the middle of July before the main summer giveaway started and then again just after Christmas for the Winter Sale.

These days every shop seems to have a permanent sale. We’re bombarded every night of the week with adverts for ‘half price sofas’, ‘two thirds off all of our TVs’ and ‘lowest price ever washing machines’. Buy now while stocks last they all seems to say, and no more so than in the next few weeks with retailers looking to make hay while the Christmas sun shines!

On top of that we’re often told that we need to rush because the ‘great give away must end this Saturday’ or that we should ‘hurry because there are only three more days left at these great prices’. The reality is that these ‘great prices’ will still be around in two months time somewhere in the country, or that another retailer will be selling the same goods at a better price and not even calling it a sale at all! And that’s before we even start to look at the bargains available these days online. So when is a sale a real bargain, and when is it just clever marketing?

The Consumer Protection Act 1987 sets out guidelines for sale items. For the discounted offer to be considered genuine, the goods must have being offered at the higher price for at least 28 consecutive days during the last six months (in the same shop), prior to the goods being discounted or ‘placed on sale’.

So it’s easy then? Well not really and several retailers have been taken to task by the Office of Fair Trading for misleading adverts and for falsely inflating the price of goods before a ‘sale’ begins. So if you are looking for a bargain in the run up to Christmas, patience and a good look round before parting with your hard earned cash may be a better option than rushing to the shop with the biggest and loudest adverts!

How long should it last?

Most goods that you buy will be covered by a manufacturer’s warranty that lasts for the first twelve months from the date of purchase but any Manufacturer’s Warranty is issued in addition to the protection you enjoy under Sale of Goods legislation. This legislation allows you to bring an action against the retailer that sold you the faulty goods for up to six years (five in Scotland) from the date of purchase.

So when you take something back after 12 months and the retailer gives you a long drawn out and dirty look before telling you that ‘you are only covered for the first 12 months’ you can now tell them that they are correct, but it is the manufacturer’s cover that expires after 12 months – you still have protection under the Sale of Goods Act.

Of course if something does go wrong within the first twelve months you could choose to ask either the retailer or manufacturer to deal with it – and it’s up to you to decide which one.

In fact if the goods you bought cost more than one hundred pounds (but less than £30,000) and you paid with your credit card you may actually have a third option since you could take action against the credit card company instead.

Now I said a minute ago that you are covered for up to five or six years depending on where you live. That doesn’t mean that you should expect a full refund if your kettle breaks down after five and a half years, but instead any claim after a prolonged period of usage would need to take into account the expected normal working life of the goods concerned. So if you paid £5000 for a leather suite you would expect it to be in good nick after three or four years but you might not be surprised if your £20 printer that you used every day gives up the ghost after a couple of years.

Why did they not tell me that at the time?

So you’ve just bought the biggest, widest-screened, multiest-dimensional, highest definition TV in the shop and you can’t wait to get it opened on Christmas morning to watch a blue ray version of your favourite movie.

It was great, in fact everything you watched was great. Sport, movies, soaps, even a bit of Kirstie and Phil on Location, Location, Location. All looking glorious with your latest technology.

Then disaster.

You bought the TV on interest-free-credit-pay-nothing-for-12-months-super-duper-deal-of-the-week and twelve months or so later you get a bill through the door. But they’ve added interest at 25.7% backdated to the day you bought the TV.

But why, you think? I bought it on interest-free credit. How can they start to charge me interest. And I only bought it less than a year ago, on 12 months interest free credit so I shouldn’t even have to pay for it for another few weeks yet.

So you go find the agreement you signed, which of course you haven’t looked at since the day you signed it – in fact the fact that you can find it at all is a bonus!

And then the awful truth dawns – you bought it a year ago last week and it’s there in black and white that if the balance wasn’t completely cleared in exactly 12 months then interest would be charged from the date of purchase!

With no reminders.

Ouch!

Read the small print – always, and especially at this time of the year!!

Your’e Fired!

These are worrying times for a lot of people as employers make cuts to cope with poor trading conditions. But you do have rights as employees, and it’s important to know what these rights are, and what you can do if you think that your employer is contemplating redundancies.

It’s also important to make sure that you understand why your employer has chosen you for redundancy rather than one or more of your colleagues, and to know what you can do to make sure that all processes are followed before you are made redundant

In this first part of a new series on what to do if you think you are at risk of losing your job, Dawn Robertson, Partner at Employment Solicitors Murray Beith Employment (www.murraybeith.co.uk ), looks at the early stages of the process.

What should I do if I think I am going to be made redundant?

The answer to this really depends on whether you have good reason for thinking you are going to be made redundant or whether you simply feel that you have less work than normal. If your employer is in any way thinking that they may need to cut heads, they should make you aware of this before taking any steps in that direction. They may, for example, be aware of possible new work or other issues, of which you are not aware.

If, however, your employer has already indicated that things are slow and that it may be necessary to think about redundancies, they should, in the first instance, meet with you and your colleagues as a group to inform you of this. In doing so, they should be asking you for your views and proposals in terms of how redundancies can be avoided. Coming up with suggestions like shorter working weeks, reducing overtime costs and generally reducing costs without loss of jobs should help. The more you can do to help your employer reduce costs, the less likely it is that a redundancy process will happen.

Having said that, there will be situations were redundancies can’t be avoided. In those circumstances, your employer is required to meet with you on an individual basis and run through what they intend to do. If you are one of a group of employees who do the same thing, your employer will be obliged to go through a selection process for redundancy.

Basically, this means that they will need to mark each of you in terms of how you do your jobs, the skills you bring to your job etc and reach a decision on who is the most likely to be made redundant. This is an area where the employer can get it wrong and you should be given an opportunity by your employer to comment on any marks given to you.

Daft as it seems, the marking often is done by someone who knows some individual employees better than others and this can result in a distortion of marks. You need to be in a position to question and challenge the marks you have been given in order to minimise your risk of redundancy.

The meetings that Dawn refers to above need to rake place as part of a formal consultation process that begins with you, as the employee, being made aware that your position is ‘at risk’ of redundancy. Next time we’ll look in detail at this process and explain how you can make sure that you do as much as you can as part of this process to protect your job and income or, if that is not possible, to ensure you come out the other end with all of the benefits to which you are entitled.

Complaining Calmly

I find that it’s remarkable what a difference it makes in a shop if you mention the Sale of Goods Act. Staff are likely to assume that you know what you are talking about and will back off accordingly. One of the most important things to remember, and please don’t think I’m being patronising here because I’ve forgotten this rule myself on countless occasions, is to stay calm and don’t get angry, no matter how annoying and unhelpful staff are becoming. I have a friend, with a very public profile, who called a call centre recently to complain about something. Forgetting that he had given his very well known name at the start of the conversation, which wasn’t going his way at all, he ended it by telling the ‘customer service operative’ that he “should f*** off and get a proper f***ing job.” I’m sure it kept the whole place going for hours afterwards!

Many of the complaint letters I see are wordy, lengthy, cheeky and arrogant. Not the ones sent to me, you understand, but the forwarded copies of the ones that have gone to the companies concerned. While there is always a temptation to show what we know and record every aspect of a transaction in minute detail, I have always found that the letters that generate the best, and quickest, response are concise and polite. Simply detail what you bought, where you bought it and why there is a problem. Set a deadline by which you should receive a reply, and outline what you will do next if no reply is forthcoming. Keep an accurate record of any telephone conversations you have had, noting dates and times as well as names of anyone you speak with. Use these details in your letter of you think it will help.

Always write to the most senior person you can. Call the company concerned and ask Switchboard for the name of the Chairman or MD and address your letter there. And always follow up within the timescale that you set at outset.

Happy complaining!

I’d just like a refund please.

We’ve all been there. We’re looking to buy a new pair of shoes as quickly as we can. “Sorry no time to try them on just now but I’m sure they will be fine. I’ll try them on when I get home.” Then you get home, try them on and discover that it’s not fine at all!

You take them back the next day only to be told by the shop manager “Sorry, not my problem, you should have tried them on when you were here. No, you can’t have your money back.”

Before you get involved in a lengthy argument it’s actually the case that here the manager is correct. The retailer is under no obligation at all to exchange or refund something just because it doesn’t fit!

But the good news is that most major retailers have a sensible exchange policy that will allow you to take unsuitable goods back within a certain timescale – usually but not always around the 28 day mark. They may stipulate that you have all of the original packaging and that you have proof of purchase. They should also have a sign displayed somewhere near to the tills that ‘this policy does not affect your statutory rights’. All that means is that you can still make a claim outside the 28 day period, or without the original packaging, if the goods you are returning are in fact faulty.

And remember that the same rule applies if the brand new and very expensive leather suite you purchased won’t fit in your front door, or can’t be squeezed up the stairs to its new home.

It is your responsibility to make sure that the goods you are buying are suitable for you  – not the retailer’s and once again they are under no obligation to take goods back from you just because you don’t want them any more, or because they don’t fit, don’t suit or you have gone off the colour.

So always check the refund policy of the retailer before buying anything new and remember that it will vary from company to company. As a last bit of advice here remember too that if you return goods that you have bought on line just because you have changed your mind then the retailer is under no obligation to pay the costs of returning the goods. So make sure you really want them before you click ‘buy’!

Top ten holiday money tips

As the holiday season starts to kick in, although you wouldn’t know it if you were caught in thunder and lightning storms all over the UK at the weekend, here are our top ten tips to make sure you don’t suffer any unexpected financial storms while you’re away!


 Don’t wait until the last minute to change money – airport travel shops don’t always offer competitive rates.

 Buy your travel insurance as soon as you arrange your holiday, and read the terms and conditions and exclusions and limits of the policy you are buying.

 Check the cost of using your mobile while you are abroad. Buy a local sim card if you are going to be making local calls while you are away.

 Don’t get fooled into thinking that the headline price is what you will pay for your flight. You’ll have to add on bags, taxes, priority boarding and credit card fees.

 Remember that you have different levels of protection depending on whether you arrange all of your holiday components yourself or do it all as a package with a travel agent.

 Using a credit card for holidays costing between £100 and £30,000 means that you have added protection if the holiday company or airline goes bust.

 Buy goods in the local currency in shops.

 Make sure your Bank knows you are away and likely to use cards abroad.

 Check the cost of using your credit card abroad.

 Pay extra to cover the excess if you are hiring a car.

Have a great holiday!

Keep that receipt safe

As the summer sales are really all up and running now here’s a timely reminder to keep hold of your receipt if you buy something that you may later want to exchange.

I have said here often that you don’t need a receipt if you are returning faulty goods so why should it be any different if you are returning Sale items?

It’s because the right to return goods just because you have changed your mind don’t form part of the protection you have under the Sale of Goods Act. A shop can set its own rules when it decides what you can return and when, and these rules usually tighten up around sale times.


And of course this actually adds in a bit of protection for you because if you bought something just before the sale started and it was reduced in the sale you may only get back the lower price if you can’t prove what you paid for it in the first place!

So keep that receipt safe!

What makes for good customer service?

We’re very quick to complain these days so in an effort to reward good service rather than criticise poor service Moneysucks is looking for your stories of exceptional customer service where companies, or individuals within companies, have taken that extra step to help.

Kirsten Easdale kicks us off by telling Moneysucks “We bought a futon from Futons First. Unfortunately the metal frame broke about 4 months later. Futons First were very helpful and sent a new frame (with a different, stronger design, which arrived 2 days later. No fuss, no hassle. I would recommend them for top customer service.

What’s your recommendation for top customer service? And what did that company, or individual, do that stood out for you?

I’m really not interested thanks

I had a fascinating conversation with a Moneysucks? reader yesterday.

He called his bank to authorise some transactions and the conversation went something like (I say ‘something like’ because he didn’t record it and so it’s not verbatim just in case anyone at the Bank wants to sue!)

“You’ve got an awful lot of money in that current account getting no interest. Would you like me to move it to one of our savings accounts?”

“No thanks, I’ve an awful lot of bills to pay over the next few months and that’s why there is so much there at the moment.”

“Okay, but you’ve got an awful lot of money in the account. I could just move it to one of our accounts paying more interest.”

“No thanks, I need it over the next six months to pay some bills.”

“Yeah, but there’s too much in this account. What would you do if something happens to it? Would you not be safer moving it to another account?”

“What do you mean if something happens to it? I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

“Well you might get your card stolen, or your identity stolen and someone might take the money out of your account. You’d really be better moving it to a savings account.”

“Look, I’ve already told you……….

We don’t need to say any more do we?

Do you have a similar story of pushy sales tactics or incorrect advice from banks, or retailers for that matter, trying to sell you stuff?

If so drop us a line here

or leave a comment below.

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