A Question of Money

KP writes: I have received a huge council tax bill and a court summons from Southwark council, south London, for a property with an address I have never lived in — although it is similar to one I occupied for seven months more than two years ago. This is the first time I have received any correspondence regarding this property. I have been paying council tax on another property in Southwark for the past two years (where I live) — despite this, Southwark is chasing me for two-and-a-half years’ worth of back tax for the first one. I have supplied proof of my current address and spent a lot of time trying to prove my innocence — but have been told it’s my fault for not advising the council that I had moved from an address I’ve never lived in.

This was a tangled tale indeed. The first culprit was the developer who built the flat you rented for seven months in 2006-7. It gave the building a fancy name, but failed to provide official notification of this. So the address that you had for this property (the one the developer had given it — and to which all your other post had been delivered while you were there) was different from the one the council had. Even the postcodes were different — and to add to the mess, the code quoted by the council on its demand did not even exist. While you were living there, you had called the council several times to try to arrange the payment of council tax, had provided the name of your landlord, and were promised you would be contacted. Nothing happened.

It seems the council belatedly started sending bills to the address it had, but they were returned — evidently you had moved out by then.

It was only when I got in touch that the council realised this mix-up of a double address for the same building. It is writing to apologise and to assure you it is stopping the debt recovery action and wiping off the costs, although it will be asking for the tax for the seven months that you lived there. I have suggested you seek a reduction in the amount of this bill, to reflect the trouble and worry that this mix-up has caused you. It has also reassured you that none of this appears on your credit record.

We don’t need to chop off heads

PG writes: My handbag with my credit cards inside was stolen last summer. The thief did not try to use the cards, which had been cancelled and were recovered. Nationwide then supplied me and my husband with new cards. Then the problems started. The balance on my card is paid off in full every month with a direct debit from my NatWest savings account — only since August it has not been as Nationwide keeps cancelling the direct debit. Each time, I call Nationwide to explain and it apologises, reinstates the direct debit, and cancels the late payment charges and interest. Each time I am promised it has been rectified — only it hasn’t.

Now it has. It seems the problem was inordinately simple — that is, Nationwide failed to tell NatWest that your card number had changed, so the money never reached your card account. Why it couldn’t have been so simple to rectify is beyond me. Nationwide says that “steps have been taken” to ensure this situation is not repeated. And it has offered you £150 for the seven months’ worth of inconvenience this has caused.

Perhaps understandably, you were not wholly satisfied with this. You replied to Nationwide in coruscating terms, naming in particular one employee of Nationwide who does seem to have been serially incompetent over the matter, demanding to know what the society was going to do about her, and firing a series of questions on its management and administrative procedures. You refused to accept the compensation until all the issues you had raised “had been addressed”.

I suspected it was your husband who had drafted the letter — which proved correct after a long chat with him. At some points the letter read as if nothing would satisfy you short of the said employee’s head, delivered to your home and served up on a silver platter. Not so — your husband said he was merely after “blood on the carpet” and “body parts”. I think he was joking, mostly. Yet there’s a serious point here. Customers (or in Nationwide’s case, members, hence part-owners of the business) are perfectly entitled to tell a firm if, in their view, a member of staff has behaved badly, but they don’t have the right to know what the company decides to do about it. That, surely, is a matter for them.

Tactically speaking, blasting off general questions such as “how is it possible for a complaint to remain unresolved for four months without alarm bells ringing?” can be a mistake. There is no way you’ll get a satisfactory answer. My advice is to move on, knowing that you have made your points in the strongest and clearest manner possible, and pocket the cash. I think you will do so, eventually — but you’re about to go off for a few weeks’ sailing and are in no hurry.

Where is my £3,000 cheque?

AB writes: I sent a cheque for £3,000 drawn on my Abbey account to my Capital One savings account. The money was taken out of my Abbey account five days later but has not been credited to Capital One. It told me to get a copy of the cheque from Abbey so it could be traced. More than three weeks later I have got nowhere with Abbey, despite making nine calls to ask what was happening. I feel I’m being fobbed off each time I phone.

Two days after you wrote to me, you did receive a copy, only it was unreadable. Now it has been resolved, and you have realised that the problem was that you forgot to write your Capital One account number on the back of the cheque, so that although it reached the firm, it never found its way to your account. “It was my fault,” you said, “and I’m kicking myself.” I’m sorry that you had three weeks of anxiety, which was certainly no fault of yours.

We can’t beat this overdraft trap

JM writes: I’m writing in desperation over a problem my wife has encountered with her Alliance & Leicester current account. The charges are mounting out of control. It stems from the point at which our mortgage was paid off, but the premiums for the buildings insurance continued to be taken from that account.

Your wife was notified this year that there was a shortage of 57p in her account to pay the insurance direct debit, so she hot-footed it to a local branch to pay in £60 to cover this and the charges that had arisen. A few weeks later the same happened, and she went back to the branch to pay in £100. Your intention had been to stop the insurance and close this account once the mortgage was repaid, but it became impossible. Each time she paid money in, it was not sufficient to meet both the direct debit and the charges that were being imposed. By the time you wrote to me, and despite your and her best efforts to pay in sufficient to cover them, total charges had risen to £200.

This clearly wasn’t a case of someone cavalierly letting an account drift into overdraft. I think possibly you were not aware that it was up to you (not A&L) to cancel the direct debit for the insurance. Be that as it may, A&L has agreed to cancel all fees subsequent to the first £60 and the account has been closed.

E-mail Diana Wright at the address below or write to A Question of Money, The Sunday Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1ST, giving a daytime telephone number. We cannot send personal replies or deal with every letter. Please do not send original documents or SAEs.

Advice is offered without legal responsibility. questionofmoney@sunday-times.co.uk