Mr Russell,

I would be glad if you would clarify your statement on STV this evening that, I quote, “‘The actions of the Government and Local Government along with the new deal with teachers will ensure there are more jobs next year.”

I ask as your own figures state that there will be a drop of 1057 jobs this year. Far be it from from me, as a Computing teacher, to tread on the toes of the Maths or English departments to argue numbers or semantics, but I usually associate a “drop” with a lessening, i.e. resulting in a lower number. Not an increase, as the word “more” implies.

Or, dare I say it, are you just lying to the public in a bid to gain support while you destroy our education system?

Many thanks, (etc.)

If you want to ask him yourself, he’s available at Michael.Russell.msp@scottish.parliament.uk

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An open letter to Mike Russell

Bunch of bastards

Recently, I had some issues with my PayPal account. Briefly, I had money move out of my account to pay for something I didn’t buy, and two people sent me a total of ten payments for approximately $30 each.

I contacted the “buyers” who started asking for refunds, which I duly actioned as it wasn’t my money. They hadn’t tried to pay me and didn’t know why they’d “sent” me the cash. I also put a halt on the other payment which was eventually refunded.

At one random point, PayPal decided to take £40+ from my bank account. I eventually found it was because I’d issued to may “payments” (actually the refunds!), they had opted to avoid risk by funding them directly from my bank.

So, even though the money was in my PayPal account and was being refunded to the people it came from, PayPal took money from my external bank account to fund them.

As a result of this, I ended up a few quid out of pocket as the payments had been made and refunded in dollars. Due to conversion rates changing, the money left in my PayPal account didn’t cover the amount taken without my consent from my bank.

To find out why all this had happened, and was happening, I emailed PayPal. They told me to ring them on their lovely 0870 premium rate number. I asked if there was another number to call them on as that was charged as 10p/minute. I was told “no”, that was the only number they had and they couldn’t resolve the issue by email.

I called. I was on for an hour. Things, after 2 weeks, finally became resolved and my PayPal balance contained the amount taken – without my consent – from my bank. A transaction, incidentally, that put me perilously close to going overdrawn.

I demanded the cost of the telephone call back and was told that this wasn’t policy and that their terms and conditions state that I am liable for all ISP and telephone fees generated as a result of using PayPal.

Hang on.

They can’t do their job over email. They insist I call otherwise I would remain out of pocket. They push me to the redline on my bank account. They tell me that ringing is the only way to resolve the issue…

And then they profit from the phone call?

What a fucking rip-off. This isn’t a business, it’s a scheme to fleece people any which way they can.

Oh, and if you want to lodge a complaint in writing then the address is in Luxembourg, despite them having a physical UK presence.

PayPal – fuck you. I’ll find another way of paying for things online. You’re untrustworthy, sneaky, dodgy, conniving, dishonest and very dubious.

And don’t you dare send me another form email starting “On a personal note…”. The second one of those mails I received – from a different employee – made it obvious there’s nothing personal about you. The third just turned it into a joke.

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PayPal – the easiest way to be ripped off online

For those unaware (i.e. those who don’t follow me on Twitter or Facebook), my host (that would be One&One) received a “take down” notice the other day. It relates to this post on the blog, was issued by M Law solicitors and is on behalf of [company I can't mention].

As of midday Monday 25th October, that post has to be removed or my blog will be taken down wholesale.

So, I’ve taken the precaution of backing everything up. And posting the entire text of the post here and here. The former is MoneySavingExpert.com, a well known consumer action group with an actual legal team who would happily tell M Law to go check their rulebook as there’s no grounds for removing the post. The latter is the lovely Shelli’s blog and is hosted in the US where they still seem to have laws that protect freedom of expression.

Do note that the original postings from which my blog post was put together are still available (at the moment) on PePiPoo.com – although I gather they’ve also received a take-down notice. For a large portion of their site. PePiPoo are a consumer action website featuring complaints relating to vehicles, parking and so on. As such there is a lot of potential defamation up there… if you regard “criticism” as “defamation”.

I should be grateful that One&One didn’t just hoik my blog out from under me, as I have heard has happened to other people with other hosts. However, after repeated requests they have so far failed to furnish me with the exact text of the demands from M Law – to whit, what precisely is allegedly “defamatory” about the post. I think I am legally entitled to this information. I’m not an allegedly dodgy parking company (as alleged by pretty much every website you’ll find by Googling their name, including BBC’s Watchdog) with the money to spend on lawyers so I can’t be 100% sure.

One&One, however, are taking the easy route and assuming guilt without giving me a chance to prove innocence. At least, that’s the way I see it. I don’t wish to appear defamatory, and part of me can see it from their point of view. It’s easier to get me to do something than to fight my battle for me, regardless of whether said battle is right or wrong.

In the meantime, the blog post – which, on Tuesday had been read maybe 30-40 times since it was posted, has now gone past the 400 views mark. That is not including viewings of the post on PePiPoo, MSE (another 130) or Shelli’s blog. That makes a more than ten-fold increase in readers simply due to their actions to try to stop people reading it.

[company I can't mention] - if you wanted to avoid bad publicity then you went very much the wrong way about it!

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Legal action against my blog

• MoneySavingExpert.com (has own legal team, and a set of balls)
• Shelli’s Blog (hosted in the US, has freedom of speech)
• Facebook’s “You don’t have to pay parking tickets – spread the word!” group
• PePiPoo’s consumer rights forum, where the posts were originally posted (ignored a similar take-down order)

OK, the whys and wherefores.

The issue I had was with [company name removed so I don't risk allegedly defaming them]. Their lawyers are M Law. I am hosted on a One&One server.

According to M Law I defamed [company name removed so I don't risk allegedly defaming them] in the post. They complained to One&One who, due to the fact that “as an ISP Provider, we have legal obligations in accordance with the Godfrey v Demon Internet Limited 1999 case law to ensure that all the defamatory posts have been removed, or litigation will be pursued against us not yourself.”

Do note that the major point here is “defamatory posts”. The post was not defamatory. At most it was allegedly defamatory. No judge had looked at the case, someone had simply complained that I had not put [company name removed so I don't risk allegedly defaming them] in a good light.

I will not make further comment about [company name removed so I don't risk allegedly defaming them]. I will not make any statement about them. What I will say is that whatever I do say would be in the public interest as they are a company who many members of the public deal with regularly. The public is allowed to complain about poor service, or quality of goods. If they didn’t then every single reviewing website or publication would be impossible to publish. BBC‘s Watchdog and Which? magazine could not function.

This is what I believe would be the result had the alleged defamation claim been taken to court. Instead, both organisations seem to have jumped the gun and proclaimed me guilty without a trial.

However, it seems that One&One don’t grasp this and neither do M Law.

Further, I don’t want to lose my entire blog which was the threat laid against me if I didn’t remove the post by midday on 25th October 2010.

All of the above is stated fact, at least as far as I have been able to ascertain from the limited information supplied to me by both the solicitors involved and my web host, despite several requests for more detailed information.

I have not defamed anyone with any of the above text. I leave it to the reader to make their own judgement, research as they require and – for instance – do a Google for the relevant companies. I’m sure the evidence will be enough for you to make your own judgements.

It has been suggested by more than one quarter that, in fact, by making a claim that I was (without due process) guilty of defamation, I myself have been libelled. This is something I am investigating. After all, if a newspaper reports someone as a thief, for instance, before the case has gone to trial and a verdict found then the alleged offender can sue.

Incidentally, prior to the takedown order my blog post had been read approximately 40 times.

As of the post being replaced with this explanation, it had 427 hits. Plus the MSE mirror was over 280. And Shelli’s blog hits had trebled.

Several statements spring to mind, but the two choicest are:

OWN GOAL

and

SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FOOT.

So that’s why I can’t mention Parking Eye on here any more.

Whoops.

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Don’t pay “Parking Charges”

A good response from NE

To follow on from my earlier post, I spoke to my mum last night and a letter/cheque arrived from National Express with a full refund. I was about to get all shirt with them as they never replied to my emails!

I can’t complain, I suppose. Again, they were acting within their terms and conditions but as an act of good faith to a whinging old fart they’ve done well.

So – thank you National Express.

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National Express – thank you

No other vehicles, no damage to anything or anyone and a simple job to quote for. Easy-peasy.

Unfortunately I was driving a car insured by Saga Insurance (my folks are in the age bracket where they can use this bunch of incompetent buffoons) so instead of being a simple claim, this turned into a marathon.

In brief, the car went at first to my cousin’s garage where they looked at it, diagnosed the mechanical trouble and told me it would be around £300 to fix it (no labour charge for family). However, he couldn’t repair the seats, seatbelt tensioners and airbag. For that it would have to go to the coachworks next door.

That quote came to over £2000 so it went from a quick fix to an insurance issue. An thus the fun began. Saga were contacted with the details on Monday February 1st and given the details of the problem. Remember, this is as simple as it gets. They had a quote ready for them and no third parties to worry about. It was a simple case of “is the car worth repairing or is it a write-off?”

After two weeks we started to nudge them again. Yes. TWO WEEKS. Apparently they were, and I quote “busy”. As if that’s our problem. Where I stay, the public transport sucks more than Dyson’s finest and the lack of a car was taking its toll on both my personal life and my educational one. A 30 minute drive to college equates to 2 1/2 hours using buses and trains.

After a further week or so we received a request for copies of all the drivers’ licenses. No reason why, or why it had taken three weeks for this request to come through. As far as we could figure it was another excuse for them to drag the claim out more to avoid coughing up.

At the end of the month my dad rang them and pretty much said if they didn’t get their thumbs out of their collective arses and make a decision one way or the other, he’d be taking his insurance elsewhere. My folks don’t just have their car insurance (two cars) with them, they also have the house, possessions and so forth. All of their insurance policies, basically.

By some amazing coincidence, the garage were contacted the next day and told to go ahead with repairs. Time since accident: almost 5 weeks.

Thankfully the garage were swift, and swifter still as a favour to my cousin especially when they heard about the death of my gran. Only a shame I couldn’t have had the car back much sooner so that I could have perhaps seen her a little more often just before she died.

And on to today, March 13th.

My dad got home late this afternoon to a letter from the insurance company dated March 5th. Note that this is after Saga told us to get the car fixed.

The letter states that they will contact us soon after they have made their decision as to whether the car is economically repairable or not. Erm. OK.

Further, as I seem to be the main user of the vehicle and I’m not meant to be (I’m a named driver) they have decided that they no longer wish to insure the car. Therefore as of 14 days from the date on the letter, which would be next Friday, the policy will become null and void and we have to go elsewhere.

Which is strange. If they wanted to null the policy on the basis I shouldn’t have been driving the car then surely they could have used that as an excuse to refuse a payout four weeks earlier. At which point I could have arranged to have the car repaired privately and had the damn thing on the road within a fortnight.

Essentially it looks like a case of left hand/right hand/no idea.

What worries me most is that this is a company that aims its product at the higher end of the age scale, and therefore one of the more vulnerable markets. A lot of over 60′s will freak if they get badgered by insurance people and may well give up or avoid claims as a result. Thankfully my dad’s not one of them, but I hate to think how many other policyholders would put up with this crap.

Needless to say, we’re shifting my car insurance ASAP… along with all the other policies. Saga have just lost as much business as one person can possibly give them. But look at it from my parents’ point of view – if the company can make this much of a mess from the simplest of vehicular claims, would they really want them handling a house fire or flood damage?

Hell, no.

It’s all well and good looking for the cheapest quote. But if that quote will get you abysmal service when what you need is help then it’s not worth the saving. And I’ve not even gone into the time spent on hold, the non-returned calls, the insistence on details being faxed rather than emailed and so forth.

Saga Insurance. Avoid. They are, in every respect as far as our experience is concerned, complete and utter shit.

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Insurance Saga

"Flight delayed, sir? £5, please."

[note - issue resolved in a very positive manner. Details here]

I had some fun and games getting down to Norwich on Friday (which will be detailed on another blog shortly), mainly due to French air traffic controllers being complete arses. Please, if you happen to know where one of these ignorant sods lives, please let down all of his tyres and see how he likes being delayed.

National Express assed to my misery somewhat by “fining” me for being on a delayed flight… and then allowed people who hadn’t changed their tickets onto the later coach for free. That isn’t on. Hence the following letter. Let’s see what I get back.

I booked a return from Stansted Airport to Norwich online a couple of days before travel. Unfortunately due to French air traffic controllers, my plane from Glasgow was delayed by three hours. I called your helpline who told me it was £5 to change my ticket to a later bus which I duly paid by debit card.

However, when I got to Stansted I found that several other people had fallen foul of the same delay and were boarding the bus happily without a changed ticket.

Given that this delay was due to matters outside of our control I felt that this was a nice gesture by your driver. However, I feel aggrieved at being charged £5 as I went through the “correct” channels. After a long delay (with no food due to EasyJet never being adequately informative about when the plane was actually going to turn up) this really added insult to an injurious evening.

Incidentally, your call centre staff and website also mistakenly listed my arrival time in Norwich as 02:40 when the bus arrived at 02:00 – which seems correct judging by the timings of earlier schedules. As a result, I ended up waiting in the freezing cold of the bus station for ages to be collected by a friend who’d expected me to turn up 40 minutes later.

I’m going easy on them as, in fairness, my ticket change and fee were within the sale conditions. I just feel “punished” for going through the correct motions to change the ticket when those who didn’t/couldn’t were given a freebie.

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National Express – adding insult to injury

Several hours later and someone did. They admitted that it had all been a complete mess and that what happened simply should not have happened. The booking that we’d been told had been cancelled hadn’t been, or at least there was no indication on the system that this was the case.

The van sat outside which we were told was “too big” should have been rented to us. Standard practice if a rental can’t be fulfilled due to vehicle shortage is to upgrade. Although not ideal, it would have meant getting a van while there was still daylight and over three hours before we were actually supplied with one.

Methinks the Dundee manager may be in for a bit of a roasting. However, Jonathan from Stirling will receive the praise he deserves. I was assured of both.

In addition, the entire cost of the rental was refunded (the incorrect cost as they overcharged), plus £30 to cover costs plus £40 in vouchers in the hope we’d use them so that they could prove they weren’t always a shower of useless halfwits.

I think I’ll pass the vouchers on to someone else…

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National Van Hire – resolution

Togo needs your support

For those who don’t know the story behind this, please check this BBC News article. A load more links at the bottom.

I hope I am one of thousands who email you to voice my and our disgust over your treatment of the Togo national side. To not only suspend them, but to fine them also is, frankly, sickening. Your organisation decided to host this year’s Cup of Nations in a known warzone. Despite this, you blame them for dropping out after suffering two deaths and numerous injuries.

I simply cannot comprehend how you could even conceive of passing this judgement, especially when your own regulations (Article 80) states that such a withdrawal *can* be understood and taken into account.

Looking around in various places on the internet I have seen countless messages of anger and disbelief at what you have done. I have yet to see a single one which takes your side.

Wake up. Realise that what you’ve done is incredibly wrong and repeal this awful decision.

I’ve sent this to their email address. You can find this and other means of contacting the organisation via this page on their web site.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Emmanuel Adebayor labels Togo’s Africa Cup of Nations ban as ‘outrageous’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Togo Banned From Next 2 African Cups (nytimes.com)
• Togo banned from next 2 African Cups (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Togo banned from two Africa Cup of Nations tournaments for withdrawal in Angola (telegraph.co.uk)
• Togo banned from next two African Nations Cups after deadly ambush (canada.com)
• Togo suspended for leaving Africa Cup of Nations after attack (cnn.com)
• Togo banned from next two Africa Cup of Nations after pulling out of Angola (guardian.co.uk)
• Togo ban is outrageous – Adebayor (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Adebayor slams ‘outrageous’ decision to ban his team (cnn.com)

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Open letter to the Confederation of African Football

Won't be hiring from here again

OK, this one’s a doozy and I can’t blame you if you don’t get to the end of it. Upshot is it’s these idiots who cost me the entire of the weekend of the 9th/10th, plus taking the Monday off uni. Not forgetting that Christina, my dad and I ended up spending 23 hours solid moving stuff. And then more time the next day after around 5 hours sleep.

And I just spotted this evening that they’ve over-billed by credit card as well.

UPDATE as people have asked for it, I’ve rediscovered the piece of paper with their head office phone number. It’s 0116 2565656 – the reception will give you the address to send complaints to.

Letter in the post in the morning, addressed to the MD (names abbreviated etc):

Dear Sir,

I am writing to complain in the strongest possible terms about the treatment myself and a friend (Ms C) received from your company on January 9^th 2010. One piece of inept “customer care” snowballed into a complete nightmare of a weekend for myself and Ms C.

I am assuming that you or members of your staff have moved house at some point in the past. I therefore hope that you can appreciate that, at the best of times, it is a hugely stressful endeavour. National turned our weekend into one from the very depths of hell itself. Please be aware that I am, frankly, furious about the entire matter and that I have been very careful to refrain from profanity both while talking to your staff on the telephone and in drafting this letter. Believe me, I have not been so restrained when discussing the matter with friends and family.

On the preceding Thursday, we booked a van via your website. This was to be collected at midday from your Perth office and returned around 4pm on the Sunday. We promptly received a conformation email with the address, times and booking reference.

At 11:30 on the Saturday morning, I was stood in the snow outside the aforementioned office, which was unmanned. A large poster in the window told us to ring a number for attention as there was nobody there. At 11:55, I duly called this number… and received a pre-recorded message telling me that the phone was switched off. There was no option to leave a message. We both tried again until around 12:15 – quarter of an hour after we were supposed to collect the van.

We next tried the booking number emblazoned on the side of a van which was parked outside the office. Do note that this “lo-call” number involved a fairly large per-minute rate to ring from Ms C’s mobile as your company does not see fit to provide a proper telephone number for customers to ring.

After ten minutes or so we discovered that there was nobody to rent us a van as there was only one person working in Dundee so they couldn’t close the office to come down and rent one out in Perth. Our booking had been cancelled and nobody had seen fit to do anything simple, such as tell us. By the time another few pounds had dropped into your coffers via the premium telephone number, we discovered that some computer glitch had meant that someone in Dundee hadn’t been able to get our details on Friday to inform us. This same glitch obviously wasn’t still in effect so we were wondering why nobody had contacted us on Saturday morning. Or why they’d not contacted someone else in the company and asked them to do it.

We were given another (premium rate) number to call, which I duly did. I had to explain our situation all over again to another member of staff. They advised us to get a taxi to Dundee and get a van from there, for which you would refund us. Of course, by now we’d be cutting it close as your office in Dundee would be closing in little more than thirty minutes. I asked her to check with them first to see if a van was available. More coins dropped into your corporate piggy bank until she informed us that, no, there was not. A good job we hadn’t flagged down a cab, really.

She agreed to ring round some other offices and call us back. By now, we had no chance of booking from another agent. By the time we got back to my house, it would be past 1pm and everywhere would be shut. My friend was in floods of tears. By this stage, your company had reached the stage of behaving utterly unforgivably.

We finally got a call back where we were told to ring another number. I’ve lost track of the departments now, but more money was added to my mobile bill ringing this one. I demanded a number for the Dundee office, which I called… only to be re-routed back to head office as it was 13:00 and 5 seconds, so Dundee had obviously taken their phone off the hook.

I finally got to speak to a supervisor and informed him in no uncertain terms that National would be furnishing us with a vehicle. On the Saturday. And I did not care if someone had to drive it from London. I did not care if every van was stuck in a garage covered by snow. You would be digging it out. I did not care if it hadn’t been scrubbed clean, or the last renter had left their McDonald’s wrappers on the passenger seat. We would be getting a van.

Maybe fifteen minutes later he called back to say he’d spoken to the manager at Dundee and that there were no vans available. This was simply not good enough. I still had no explanation as to why nobody had contacted us 24-28 hours sooner, why their office had closed early, why the manager herself hadn’t deigned to phone us to apologise, why we couldn’t have the van which was parked outside the office in Perth…

Again I was informed that he would look into it. By now we were well over an hour past out original booking time. The friends who’d volunteered to help us move were getting impatient as they also had other matters to attend to.

Between calls from the gentleman in head office telling me you could do nothing, I received a phone call from Jonathan in Stirling. He, completely at odds to the rest of your company, seemed genuinely sympathetic and interested in helping. I hope you don’t even think of chastising him for this, but he agreed that your other employees had acted unprofessionally and selfishly in trying to fob us off and agreed to make some phone calls. I believe that Jonathan had already finished for the day, but was prepared to put the effort in to resolve the awful situation that Ms C and I were now sliding into.

He contacted the manager of Dundee directly and she, finally, called us. She explained that she was sending someone down to Edinburgh airport to retrieve a van and bring it up to Perth for us. This would take a couple of hours.

This raised some questions:

1)      Why couldn’t this have been organised sooner so that the van had been available earlier?

2)      Where did this mysterious person come from seeing as there was nobody to man the Perth office?

3)      Why couldn’t we have the van that was already there in Perth so that we could get on with moving stuff?

I think I managed to get answers:

1)      Because the manager at Dundee is inept.

2)      He had been brought in on his day off to run a stupid errand which could have been avoided had answer “1” not been the case.

3)      Because it was stuck in snow. Until I pointed out that it was no longer stuck as the snow had melted. At which point it became “too big” as we had booked a smaller van. How incredibly helpful.

Answer three there, really stuck in my throat. I had to, and I do not exaggerate, physically bite my tongue to refrain from shouting at the Dundee manager when she told me that. We were being made to wait what turned out to be five hours for a van to be driven up from Edinburgh because the one already available was too big?! In particular the way that the van switched in the space of one sentence from “stuck” to “big” really galled me. It smacked of someone making up excuses.

I gather that said van had been there for a booking on the 8^th, but at that time was bogged down and immobile. However, that booking was no longer relevant. The van was there. And I didn’t give a hoot if it was too large or not. The fact was, we’d booked a van for midday on Saturday and by the time we got one it was after 5pm.

The gentleman who we eventually met at Perth was polite and helped us melt the ice in the windscreen wash bottle before we set off. It was obvious, though, that he wasn’t too happy about being called in on his day off.

Sorted? No. Not in the slightest. It was now dark. Everyone who was due to help us move house had left. Instead of eight people moving things from one second floor flat to another, there were now two. We managed to shift some of the smaller items, but due to the lights in the closes at both locations being broken, we had to give in otherwise we would have risked injury on the stairs.

The next morning we began at 8am. By mid-afternoon it was apparent that with just two people, this was going to be impossible. My father very kindly volunteered to help us move some of the heavier items.

I would like to point out that my father is 64 years old. He had pneumonia 3 years ago, never completely recovered and is asthmatic. He is also, stubborn, helpful and prepared to go out of his way to make sure that people aren’t stuck in a hole they can’t get out of. Unlike many of your staff.

Despite his help, we were forced to continue on into the night regardless of the fact that we were walking blind at times due to the aforementioned broken lights. At 4am (I kid you not) I was questioned outside Ms C’s old flat by the police as they couldn’t believe someone would be moving at that time in the morning.

At some point, I can’t recall when, I received a phone call from one of your staff asking when the van would be returned. I told him “6am tomorrow, if we get finished” to which his response was “That’s fine”. I thought nothing else of it. I had been informed that there would be nobody to check the vehicle until Monday morning anyway.

We finally returned to my house to bed down at 6:30am on Monday. By the time we got to bed, we had been working almost non-stop for 23 hours.

It gets worse.

Late on the Sunday night, Ms C’s sister had informed us that she could no longer stay awake for us to deliver some things to her house for storage. It was simply too late. She had been expecting us earlier on the Sunday, but we couldn’t get the things to her then as we still hadn’t moved other items due to wasting the entire of Saturday sorting out your mess.

At this point, Ms C physically broke down. Prior to this time I was angry with your company. This, however, was crossing a line. She was, for almost half an hour, inconsolable. 11:15pm on Sunday night was when I decided that I would be doing everything in my power to make National pay for what they had done. Things were now far beyond a financial issue or a simple apology.

The above phone call meant that we’d stored all the things due at Ms C’s sister’s at her friend’s flat instead. She was expecting a few boxes and some furniture. When she arrived on Monday morning to find the flat full, she understandably asked for a large amount of it to be removed.

Monday, then, was spent moving a goodly number of boxes plus a freezer and a tumble dryer across Perth using my Renault Clio. Obviously, this took a vastly larger number of trips than in a van – which by now had been returned.

I’m currently a student on a post-graduate course at Strathclyde University. I must maintain an 80% attendance on each module or risk being unable to collect my diploma in June. One of those modules is on a Monday. However, I could not leave Ms C to move everything herself, especially as she had no transport. As such I was forced to miss a tutorial, which displeases me immensely.

In addition, I didn’t make it back to Glasgow until 1am on Tuesday morning after dropping Ms C off in Stirling. Ms C had to return to Perth the following morning by train and then hire a taxi to move the last few items out of her old flat. This, obviously, cost her money in addition to which she had to pay a penalty to the letting agency for leaving the property a day late – she was supposed to hand the keys over on Monday.

I appreciate this is a lengthy letter, but so much went wrong and every single part of it is down to National failing to contact us on Thursday or Friday, thus giving us the time needed to go to another company and rent another van. The complete failure of your staff, excepting Jonathan in Stirling, to give a damn about us or our situation utterly staggers me. For the Dundee manager to go off the radar for almost two hours, close the phone lines early, refuse to speak to me (until Jonathan contacted her), make up pathetic excuses about the van which was in Perth and then force some poor soul on an unnecessary 2½ hour errand is verging on unbelievable.

As well as the emotional and physical strain that your company put us through, you cost us a small packet. The phone calls mount up to slightly under £10. Then there is the fuel cost of driving my car around Perth on Monday. Plus Ms C’s transportation to and from Perth on Tuesday, along with the taxi fare to move her last items into storage and the letting agency’s “fine”. My 100% attendance on my university course has been wiped, though hopefully won’t affect my grade. It does, however, cause potential problems should I fall ill in the next 5 months and there is the fact that the hours at college I missed have actually been paid for. More money wasted courtesy of yourselves.

I went through all of the above as a favour to a friend in need. My father the same. Both of us would do it again. The thing is, neither of us should have had to if National had not acted in such a shoddy, pathetic, and ultimately childish manner. From a simple mistake, to fobbing us off and then spitefully running rings to make it look like you were doing us a favour when a simple solution sat on a driveway 10 minutes away.

And do you know what? It’s not finished. I have just checked my credit card and found that “EC VEHICLE RENTAL WATFORD” has charged £79.17 to my credit card. This comes as a huge surprise given that the bill was supposed to be under £50 as per the agreement I signed on the Saturday evening.

No damage was done to the van and the vehicle was returned with the fuel needle above the “F” mark. I shall, of course, be ringing someone tomorrow to discuss this little affair. So where this extra £30 or so comes from is a mystery. I’m sure someone will make up some pathetic excuse when I call them tomorrow.

In the meantime, I have contacted my credit card company and informed them that this payment is in dispute.

I have dealt with some pretty poor companies in the past. National, however, have caused more problems from one act of ineptitude than just about any other. Believe me, that’s actually quite impressive.

Obviously, I expect a full enquiry and prompt written explanation for all of these failings. I would also expect a reasonable level of financial recompense. I won’t throw figures around. I leave it to you to decide what you believe to be fair for the utter chaos and financial loss your company has caused.

Rest assured, though, that you aren’t trying to buy back my custom. You won’t be getting it again.

I await your prompt and full reply in short order.

Yours faithfully (etc.)

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National Van Hire – 6-page complaint