Episode 5 Rip Off Britain

Now here on BBC One, here's Angela, Gloria and Julia

Welcome to what, I'm sorry to say, is the last day of our special week

As well as plenty of advice on perhaps the widest range

And we've a new twist on a story that kicked off the week,

as we reveal how fraudsters have already found a way to exploit last

We asked you to tell us what has left you feeling totally ripped off

and you contacted us in your thousands. You told us about the

company did they get it wrong and the customer service which is not up

to scratch. They wanted to take money from people. That is what it

is all about. You asked us to track down scammers and charges that you

say are unfair. What kind of people can do this to an innocent human

being? And, when you have lost out and no one else is to blame you have

come to as to stop them falling into the same trap. You have to go

through various levels of authority and push away through. We are here

to find out why you are out of pocket and what you can do about it.

Your stories, your money, this is Rip Off Britain.

And we're delighted to have you with us as we wrap up our week

of live programmes with a real mix of the topics that we know

really are the ones that matter most to you.

And we know that of course because of all the e-mails

and messages you send us - which by the way we're

And we hope that you'll keep them coming while we're on air today.

[email protected] is the way to get in touch

with us right now, or we're on Facebook

And we've plenty of stories on their way that I'm sure you're

Among them, after some genuinely shocking examples of how the big

We'll be making sense of why airlines may deliberately

And it could be it's not as bad an idea as you think.

We'll also be seeing how the police are able to spot the difference

And when you see some of the fakes - as I already have -

you start to understand why the fraudsters so often

And forget those smart meters, most of us have already got

appliances so clever that we barely know what to do with them.

Well, we'll be making things simple, while revealing some

wonderfully unexpected tips on cleaning your clothes.

On top of all that, we'll be paying our last visit to our

pop up advice clinic, where travel expert Simon Calder

and tech guru David McClelland are already getting

As will we, by revealing why a vital service that's helped millions

Over the years, a common theme in stories we cover on Rip Off Britain

has been the work of trading standards in protecting consumers

over the UK. Last week we revealed how one of the organisation was not

big as ever investigations had nailed frost is behind the scheme

which had left people thousands of pounds out of pocket. I did not

realise anything was wrong until I got my bank statement. I saw these

endless withdrawals. It was one of only two macro times in my life when

my knees gave way beneath me. A huge realisation in my life that I had

been duped. Polly and others have been tricked into handing over money

to a company promising to promote their business but instead using

card details to take money from accounts without permission. After a

mammoth investigation by trading standards and the police, the

culprits were brought to justice and the ringleader sentenced to six

years in prison. This was an enormous, organised fraud on an

industrial scale. It sends out a message that we won't tolerate

businesses which go to these lengths to defraud consumers and businesses.

That is just one element of the work of trading standards. Its teams also

raining any businesses treating customers unfairly, crack down on

rogue traders and keep tabs on product safety. Most important of

all quite trading standards officers issue warnings about the latest

scams and step in to help those most at risk. For the last three years,

that has been a key part of the work of Beverly Burns will trading

standards in Northern Ireland was she often visits people who have

found themselves on what is usually known as the suckers list. If you

have sent money off just to one scam, ?5, that is your details on to

the suckers list. Those scammers will sell your details around the

world to others. When it is on that list, it is on it for life is that

even when you pass away, your details are still circulating

somewhere around the world. Today, Beverly is visiting an elderly

gentleman who has been repeatedly targeted by scammers. I discovered

he had been sending money off regularly. I'm hoping to return and

making sure he has taken on board as vice I have given him. Hello. How

are you? 89-year-old artist spends lives on his own just outside

Belfast. How many letters where you getting a day? Some days it was five

or six, may be more. I just looked at them and I was taken in. You

really believed when they said, Mr Spence, you have one a sum of money.

We have to do is place an order and we will send you the prize-winning

check. How much will you sending off every week to the scams? Sometimes

it was ?30, ?40, ?50. You are leaving yourself short? Leaving

myself short. Over the last five years it is thought he has spent

?8,000 on various scam offers. You have to be careful how you are

handling these scam victims. You must not make them feel that they

are stupid. You want to put them back in control of the situation and

make them aware there are a range of scams and their details are being

circulated around the world and they need to be really, really careful.

This kind of help for people like RTE is under threat. Trading

standards teams across the country have been hit hard by severe cuts to

local authority funding. Since 2009, staff numbers nationally have been

reduced by more than half. 20 services in England have lost 60% of

their funding with some just left with one trading standards officer.

Keith is at Bournemouth University. His team has been researching the

scale of the problem. He believes the work of trading standards is

more vital than ever as scams continue to increase. This crime is

affecting people all over the place, causing terrible psychological,

emotional and economic damage. Research over the last few years has

suggested it is accelerating and is more sophisticated. Criminals are

turning to this sort of crime because often they recognise that

they are unlikely to be caught and they are unlikely to be prosecuted.

Keith knows at first hand the effect such scams can have. I spoke to him

on rip-off Britain a few years ago after his own late mother, who

suffered from dementia, was duped into spending thousands of pounds on

vitamin pills. Have you any idea how much your mum has spent? Over the

space of seven months, she has spent over ?2200 on one company on

vitamins and vitamin supplements. I have had days when I wanted to cry,

my guts turning inside out, frustration and anger. My mum is a

great woman, a great mother. I am feeling slightly emotional talking

about it. I really love my mum. What is going on? How can this happen to

my mum? That terrible experience inspired Keith to investigate the

consequences of such scams and made him see how crucial trading

standards can be. The cases you work with, it described to us how they

have literally broken down in tears in sheer relief they have been able

to tell their story and change their way of life and not to be conned

anymore, not be scanned anymore. As part of his research the case has

studied the effect that cuts are having on the work of trading

standards. One of the ways I like to describe this is what I call a

perfect storm. The tragedy of more scamming going on and huge pressure

on the resources because of cutbacks. Keith worries that

reducing trading standards funding is counter-productive and could end

up costing more long-term. If elderly people are scant of their

life savings if they lose 50,000, 100,000, ?200,000, a significant

number of those people at some point in their lives will provide some

form of care. Normally a local authority would ask the person to

make a contribution, or find that out of their life savings. If they

have been scammed of life savings, the local authority picks up the tab

for the long-term care of that person in the future. However,

according to Simon Blackburn from the Local Government Association,

with their own funding cut by six S if governments, local councils have

little choice. Every element of local authority spending is under

pressure. Every council is full to make very difficult decisions about

how they allocate those resources. Now are no easy answers to any of

this. What I do seek not just in trading standards but across council

services in general, is a huge amount of innovation and commitment

and joint working from staff which means we are getting extremely good

value for money for the public. But at the chartered trading standards

Institute, the chief executive says, services have been slashed so much

they are now at crisis point, especially in local authorities

where the trading standards team has been cut to just one person. That

one trading standards officer has 250 different bits of legislation to

enforce. That includes workaround product safety, integrity of the

food chain and the stuff we do to protect elderly victims from scams

you cannot do that with one person. The help of a trading standards

officer has been invaluable. You have not sent any more money off

since I was last out? No, I have a lot to be thankful for. I have not

sent one brown penny. You're going to send me your scan post now on a

regular basis? Comes now, I will forwarded on to you. That is great.

That is a lovely part of of my job when you visit someone you have gone

out to and given advice and discovered they have taken on board

that advice and have stopped sending money off to scams. With such

drastically reduced resources, it is exactly this kind of interventions

that the trading standards Institute fears may no longer be able to

happen. We know that most locals trading standards departments cannot

deal with all of this. The struggle to find why this is not getting

higher consideration because these of vulnerable people we are letting

down. Our colleagues up and down the country are working hard, doing

really great work, but they have not got the resources to cope. You can

see the dilemma for councils to have to make tough decisions to balance

the books. Some fear next time, anyone like RTE is targeted by

scammers, there may be no one to help. I was scared of not having

enough money to get my daily living. This lady turned up and told me what

it was. Now I can go to bed at night more relaxed, knowing that I'm going

to work it out and still have a few shillings in my pocket.

Well, as we heard, cash-strapped councils can have

But when you hear someone like Artie explain the difference

Trading Standards has made to HIS life, you can't help

but worry about what might have to give if the service

Let us know your thoughts on that, as you have on the stories we've

Yesterday's item on broadband speeds prompted a number

of you to get in touch - I'd say straight away,

but I suppose that depends if your connection is quick enough

She contacted us to say that for six years she's had a MAXIMUM

She reckons line rental should be charged according

Those listening carefully may have noticed you said

Larry Simons e-mailed querying that point,

and he's right to, because there's actually a big difference

BITS refer to speed and BYTES to storage size.

So, in this context, it's definitely BITS!

And you sent us a real range of opinions after our piece

on the baffling world of child prices.

Janet Reeves is still unhappy that she had to pay the full adult

price when she took a three and a five-year-old to a panto.

But, on the other hand, Charles King is among those to say

that, though he agrees in some instances children shouldn't cost

the same as an adult, on flights, he thinks they should,

as you pay for the seat, whatever the age of the person who's in it.

I suppose on that logic if you put them in the overhead locker they go

free! But an e-mail we've had

from Kirsten Hackman sums up how bonkers it can be to work

all this out. She has a 12-year-old

and a 15-year-old. And when she goes to her local

cinema, the 15-year-old is classed as a teen,

so is excluded from the It actually ends up cheaper

for her to buy what ends up as five tickets -

so a family ticket plus a teen ticket -

than it is to get the four tickets A situation she calls

"utter madness." All this week we've been bringing

you updates on stories we've covered At the start of 2016, on our holiday

series, we looked into how many airlines carry a life-saving piece

of kit and told how a medical student ended up being drafted in to

use it when a passenger was suddenly taken ill on his flight. It was only

really after words when he went off the plane and everybody kind of

believed out and you realised what had happened. Certainly the

disability gave this man the best shot of survival and if they had not

had that his chances would have been much slimmer than they were. You

might have expected it would be standard practice to carry --

defibrillators. But it is up to airlines to decide. It is important

because life is precious than something so simple, a small piece

of equipment that does not cost a lot of money can save a life. It is

as simple as that. We asked the ten UK alone for carry the most

passengers whether their planes had defibrillators on board. While most

did, three of them, Flybe, log-linear and do to, either carried

them rarely or not at all. That has changed. These airlines have revised

their policies and this invaluable equipment is either already or soon

will be on board their flights as well. Meanwhile in 2015 we reported

on an auction website driving some of you mad including Paul Taylor

from Northamptonshire who had come across that looking for a new phone

for his son. I am used to bidding sites and auction sites, I have been

doing it for several years, so when I saw the advert I thought this is

great. The ad he had seen was from a company called Madbid which was

promising high end electrical goods at 80% less than on the High Street

but the site did not work as he expected and every time he bit he

was racking up the cost. Shocking was the word I would use for my

stark realisation that I felt that I had done something really stupid.

Other viewers told us they did not think the way Madbid works was made

sufficiently clear. I did not realise you were actually paying to

bed. At the time Madbid completely rejected such criticisms saying the

money poll had spent was not lost but converted into credit that he

could use against purchases. It is the speed that is how the site works

and it is made perfectly clear but earlier this year the advertising

standards authority looked into five issues around the practices of

Madbid and several other auction sites I'm ruled against the company

on each one, in particular finding that Madbid failed to sufficiently

explain the costs of bidding and the savings were not backed up by

sufficient evidence. The company tells us it has made changes to

address the points raised, for example adding to its how it Works

section and removing in active advertising content from the web. In

one of programmes last week we went behind the sea is with the

Metropolitan Police, cracking down on the criminals producing all too

convincing fake ID in towns across the country. They will get loads of

different specialist equipment together and be generated these

documents on a daily basis. You have holograms, watermarks, UV, cards, so

they would be mass-producing these on request for individuals. When you

see ID you are looking for a driving licence? Criminals can use a machine

like that to print driving licences, identity cards, security industry

cards. The fraud busting team has stopped hundreds of crooks in their

tracks and say various organisations over ?60 million but we wanted to

know more about how they can tell which documents are fake.

Well, to show us exactly that, DCI Gary Miles who we saw in that

Last year identity fraud reached the highest levels ever recorded -

with almost 173,000 cases reported in the UK.

I was scammed and very briefly last year on a fake driving licence and

that freaks me out a little bit. Tell me what we can look out for. We

would ask people to look at the driving licence they have got. This

is a genuine license. If you were to feel along the top of the licensee

will feel different things. It is raised at the top. There is a

texture to it all the way down. If you do not feel that when you are

comparing it to the licence presented to you then there is

something wrong. This one is smooth so I would know that it's fake. I

called this a hologram. There is a device on the back that shows you

two types of photograph when you twist it which is difficult to

counterfeit. Can you see that? I tried this on my real licence that

whole mount it is actually quite easy. On the counterfeit they cannot

do it. Nothing to the eye or the camera. All of the photographs on

the driving licence are in black-and-white or if there's

anything any colour... I probably would have said colour if you had

asked me in isolation. Now, everything is black-and-white. What

are you demonstrating here? All passports, EU, UK rest of the world

to be exactly the same size and have exactly the same dimension is. If

you were to compare your passport with the passport you are looking at

and it is bigger or smaller there is something wrong. You can also look

at a genuine passport has rounded corners whereas counterfeit, because

it is difficult to cut them, usually have square corners. I saw that

machine that cuts the corners. There is a machine for everything. You

have a big office with about 30 or 40 people working looking at the

differences. I am thinking of all the people in banks and post offices

and airports. Surely that has to be more training for those people to

understand exactly what is fake and what is not. I agree. It is a fine

line. They have to be trained more on the things that are easy to

detect and pick up in their day-to-day work without having to

actually make them experts. The fake licence in my case was made in a

sitting room and it got them right through the bank system without any

further checks. Unfortunately that is common. I will be feeling my

driving licence or we tend! Next this morning, you may remember

some really quite upsetting footage that made headlines last month

after an incident on one of the best ADVERT: That's what makes

the world's leading United Airlines describe themselves

as the friendly fliers. But you can't get much more

unfriendly than this? In shocking scenes filmed

by other passengers, a 69-year-old doctor was dragged

from his seat to make way United Airlines was heavily

criticised for what happened but has since offered a wholehearted apology

and announced a complete shake-up It will now offer passengers up

to $10,000 for giving up their seats Probably considerably more than the

cost of the tickets in the first place.

Travel expert Simon Calder joins me now.

Simon, this was obviously an extreme example but less

dramatically enforced overbooking is actually rather common, isn't it?

Absolutely. It is much easier to list the ones that do not overbook,

jet two, monarch, Ryanair, than the ones who do. You might think that is

terrible. There are advantages. They are lying makes more money which

they say keeps fares down. It enables people who are desperate to

travel to get on an apparently full flight and if you're like me and

your travel plans are flexible you can actually earn more than the cost

of your ticket for fallen tidily getting the next flight. You are

somebody who welcomes this? Very much so. What united airlines did

wrong was not offer enough cash. If they had had an on-board auction and

said $1000, $2000, they would have eventually found people who would

have walked off the plane voluntarily. They should have done

it when he checked in at the gate? They should be offering lots of

money. If you do not want to go, if you want to stay on the plane, what

right do you have to stay there? Can they make you come off? Absolutely.

The airline will see we reserve the right to off load you. An airline

ticket is a pretty flimsy promise but if the make you work assuming

you are in Europe they have to give you either a cheque or bank transfer

or cash compensation up to ?500 and put you on the next available flight

and give you meals and accommodation until you can catch that. Some

people saying there should be outlawed and they should not be

overbooking. You would not agree because it would do you out of free

flights. When it is handled well everybody is happy, the hurling, the

passenger like me who has been invited to leave for a good

incentive than the person who gets to travel, maybe it is a family

emergency. Every time I hear something bad about it it is because

the airlines have handled properly. I hope next time I am travelling you

are one of the passengers and then you can get up instead of me!

Next, if you're buying a new appliance, chances are you'll

make sure you get one with all sorts of snazzy functions.

But how many of them will you actually go on to use?

Washing clothes used to be so simple. From now on wash days are

going to be different. But in these high-tech times getting to grips

with your washing machine can seem such an impossible task that most of

us do not bother trying. Research shows 70% of us use the same wash

cycle almost every time and nearly half are put off by complex

multi-setting controls. This woman from north London has a football mad

family so she knows more than most about dirty clothes. My husband is a

coach and both of my children play for the teams. I have three lots of

kit to clean. Also bids for 120 children who are also playing. When

it comes to working out how all the different items need washing and

understanding all the settings on her machine Mickey struggles. I

would love to know what they all mean but I only use the max settings

because I do not know what the others, all the other buttons do. I

have shrunk a few things. I am known for that. I press a button which

makes it a shorter cycle. I do not know why, but I am just thinking if

it is a shorter cycle to saving you money. On top of the various

programme options to mull over there are all of the symbols on the labels

to figure out. When I look at the instructions on the label I know

what the number means and I know what dry-clean only means and that

is about it, all of the other boxes I do not know. If not, look at the

number, puppets in the machine. All the best. She is by no means the

only person who does that as we discovered when we ask you how many

symbols you recognise. I do not know that one. You can wash it? Something

like that? Not sure. Another person equally baffled is Bob from west

London who does not really know what all the buttons on his washing

machine do. I just put it on 40 and put the start button on and all the

rest of the mynah bird use. I put everything in one go, jumpers,

shirts, all the whites, colours. I put a white sheet with a black sheet

and it came out great. When we are shopping for any appliance we will

actively seek out the ones that have the most functions but when we get

them home we just stick to the basics. Help is at hand. A member of

the domestic appliance service association is going to give them

both a masterclass in getting the most from their machines. He wants

the rest of us to get to grips with all of those settings as well,

however daunting that may seem. It can be a little bit daunting to go

through the manual but it is a good idea to understand how best you can

use your products instead of using one programme that fits all. Today

they do not need that manual because Ross is going to give them a crash

course in how to get the best value out of their machines, explaining

each of the buttons that could revolutionise their washing.

Confusion over how many buttons there are and what they do. For

example, speed perfect. It is more for an emergency that I need to wash

a few items quickly. The eco-setting could save you up to 20% over the

energy that washing machine uses. What else is confusing? What reduced

ironing does is it will continue to slightly rotate so when you pull

them out they are not quite as squashed as they are immediately

after the spin cycle. Unfortunately, we don't all have a Ross on hand. We

have some tips on cleaning your clothes without even needing to

switch it on. This woman is from the love your close campaign for that

she has some fantastic ways to spruce up your clothes and help the

environment. Jeans, if you wash them, they can lose their shape and

fade. You can put them in the freezer. Get a freezer bag, fold

them up and leave them overnight. That kills the bacteria and gets rid

of any smells so that they will keep their shape. You might want to take

them out again before putting them on. If you have too fresh in

something, you can do it at home with things you find in the kitchen.

One way is to use cheap vodka and put it in a spray dispenser and I

will get rid of the smells. Finally a cooking ingredient which can help

more than just your baking. Bicarbonate of soda is a great

ingredient. You can rub it on to the stain and soak it into cold water.

That should do the trick. Back at the masterclass, Bob and Nicky feel

ready to unleash the potential of the washing machine say have finally

begun to understand. I have to see how it will go. I know my settings

now. I will look at the labels more and look at the manual. It is a

really good insight into the machines and the settings and why

they are there as well. I might just hijack that man and

take him home. I am not convinced that is the most cost-effective use

of vodka. I am sure manufacturers would save their manuals are very

clear. In today's papers The Sun says

Own Brand Is Better For You - That's after a comparison found that

some branded products can have more sugar,

fat, salt and calories than the supermarkets'

own brand equivalent. The Mail reports that a record

2.1 million used cars were sold in the first three months

of this year. If that trend continues let's hope

the dealers were watching our item earlier in the week when we reminded

them what the law says they need to tell customers about any

outstanding recalls. Look at this story also in the Mail.

I love scented candles. Now I find out they might be polluting my home.

Apparently they released particles linked to heart and lung disease. If

I pop my clogs, I have these moments. We are thrilled to be able

to get one man ?3,000 that he and his wife had

all but given up hope the person we are about to meet

needs no helpful touches on top of things. This scam takes advantage of

our fears over cyber crime. Fiona is with our technology Guru. It is all

about and e-mail you received just two macro days ago. What does it

say? It was from BT and it was from the cyber attack and to upgrade

security. Such an authentic looking e-mail. The logos were identical to

BT. The magenta clicking link was the same. The signature of the

managing director. I thought, well, that was the right thing to do, for

them to upgrade. Then I thought, perhaps that's not quite right. I

read the wording. There was one particular word that I thought, that

doesn't seem right. I was going through more carefully then. I know

you did not fall for it thanks to a very clever trick. Tell us about

that. It came from Beattie internet. When you click on that, it tells you

where the link comes from. Hovering with your mouse. That was very

clever with you. Thank goodness you went ahead and did that. David, what

is your take on all of this? This is the latest in a long line of

phishing attacks. They want you to click onto a link to try to get some

of your personal details or install malware on your machine to make more

of the attacks happened was that you did the right thing by hovering on

the link and noticing it did not seem to go to the address you would

expect it to go to. There are a number of things. Checking to see

and there was a spelling mistake. All of this paints a picture that

this is not a genuine e-mail. Treat any e-mail you get like this with a

healthy dose of scepticism. I believe you have something else to

show me. Action fraud set and out any manner like this, it is not

genuine. I imagine you are still in a state of delayed shock, thinking

how close you came. I am. I was watching Rip-off Britain at the

time. When I saw the e-mail address, I thought, that is the answer. Will

contact you let the general public know. That is what we like to do.

Back to the studio. One of the real joys of the

programmers seeing people taking our advice.

Some people say they love this programme because they love all of

the advice our experts give and they follow it. As a result they do not

get hacked, scanned, and they save money. Over the years I saved ?2000

on bank charges that should not have been paid with my house and contents

insurance last year. I saved nearly 40% of the same insurance company

for my house and contents. All sorts of things. Listening to our own

advice. When my car was due to be reinsured, the insurance company

with whom I'd been for about three years suddenly almost doubled the

premium. I went online, I went to various companies on the telephone,

and ended up with one who came back almost half price. You do have to

query it and stick with it. All week we have been sharing tips and

secrets from very familiar faces. Here is our final one this

stop Fiona Phillips has been a very familiar face on this programme, as

well as appearing in a documentary about stress. According to latest

surveys, half of us feel we are too stressed. I am definitely one of

those people. Away from the screens, what she liked as a consumer? Do you

complain a lot? I never complain. Given if I have had an awful meal in

a restaurant... The weight will come along and say, is everything all

right? I go, yes, it is lovely. My mother was like that. We always

don't like to hurt people's feelings. If you are dealing with

your household bills, are you good at complaining? I am terrible. My

bills are all estimated every time I see them I am furious. The person I

am most annoyed at in all of this is me. I could be doing something about

it. Have you ever got yourself into debt? When you are only 18 you have

to have a guarantor to open your first bank account. My guarantors

when my mum and dad. Yes, unfortunately, I had got myself into

a bit of a mess moneywise. My mum phoned me and she was Welsh, my mum.

Everyone would say I have a lovely man in the front room says he is a

paler. The bailiff was saying, I'm afraid your daughter is this and

that. They were responsible for it, or otherwise there were going to

take the furniture. So, they paid you up. I did pay them back. I think

you would have to watch the programme a bit more often to teach

you how to complain and not be so nice. I would not like to get anyone

into trouble. Even though they completely rip me off. You are too

nice. Anyway, that is a good thing. Maybe. She is a good girl but she

needs to learn. Well, we're rapidly running out

of time so let's dive into some of the questions you've been sending

us this morning. I plucked up the courage to contact

BT over my poor broadband coverage and struck a good deal with them.

Following the fake BT e-mail, lots of you are telling us you have had

similar e-mails, supposedly from H some issues about driving licence

could be used to be in colour until 2007 but they are now done in black

and white. James Taylor says we are told to have numerous PIN numbers

and passwords and to keep changing them that she is Janet, sorry. She

cannot remember so many. I am with her on this. What is the advice?

Don't try to remember them and do not use the same one on your

different accounts. Use a secure password manager full you might pay

a small fee. There are a handful of reputable ones online you can hunt

out. Wendy went on holiday and there was lots of building work in the

hotel next door for that she was not offered any refund or a change of

hotel? Presumably it was a package holiday booked through ABTA. They

should have told her in advance there was building work which would

impair the holiday. If they didn't, they should have given her an

alternative hotel or whatever. It sounds as if she should be taking

this up with ABTA or with a lawyer. That is telling it like it is. That

is it from us this week. We have had such a ball being here. We are so

grateful to everyone who has been in touch. I am thrilled to say we will

be doing another week of life programmes later this year we will

be back with a brand-new series of food programmes. That starts the

week after next and is full of good information. For now, from the three

of us and all in the studio, divide. Thank you. -- goodbye.