Episode 5 Rip Off Britain

We asked you to tell us who's left you feeling ripped off,

and you contacted us in your thousands

by post, e-mail,

even stopping us on the streets,

and the message could not be clearer.

Things weren't right, it was costing me time and money,

and it was like, "Does anybody listen?"

I think these companies are more motivated by their share price

than they are by actually looking after their customers.

You've told us that with money tighter than ever,

you need to make sure that every pound you spend is worth it.

Oh, you are getting my money back, cos I just think I'm entitled to it.

So whether it's a deliberate rip-off,

a simple mistake,

or a catch in the small print,

we'll find out why you're out of pocket and what you can do about it.

Keep asking the questions, go to the top if you have to.

We do get results, that's the interesting thing.

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

Hello and welcome to Rip-Off Britain where as always

we three are on hand to fight your corner in those situations

that haven't just cost you time and money,

but have also probably caused you an awful lot of

grief along the way.

All the people we'll be hearing from today would say

that they've been treated unfairly

either because of small print that they don't think is clear,

or plain and simple bad customer service.

And I can tell you, we've got quite a few examples of that coming up.

I must say, it's been a huge mailbag and some of the problems are really

quite shocking, in fact, in one case it could hardly be worse.

Coming up - some of the most memorable stories

we've covered in the past.

The credit mix-up that's left this woman with no identity

and chased for massive debts that she simply doesn't owe.

There's times that I haven't slept because it's worrying.

I just haven't known how to clear my name.

And the second hand car dealer who proves that the industry

still has its share of rogues.

He got the money and the car,

we felt we're being taken for a fool.

Of all the holiday experiences you've been telling us

about for this series,

this next one has to be one of the worst.

It started with an ordinary family going in what should have been

a typical week in the sun,

but what happened next means that their lives

will never be the same again.

And on top of that, they're fighting an ongoing battle to find

someone to take responsibility.

Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt,

a destination that's become increasingly popular in recent years

thanks to its weather, clear blue waters, and value for money resorts.

Adele Maguire, her partner Benji and daughters Alicia and Tiana

had a great holiday three in 2010.

So when Adele was thinking of how to celebrate her 40th birthday,

she decided to take the whole family back,

and they found a great price on the website of hotels4u,

one of the biggest names in online bookings.

Going on the internet, booking it with hotels4u,

it was working out £600 cheaper.

So that's the route we decided to go down, and do our flights separate

and our transfers separate than doing a package holiday,

so we did it online.

Confident they'd found a bargain, Adele booked, paying over £1,600

for seven days all inclusive at the Tirana Aqua Park Resort,

then part of the Sunrise Group.

The holiday got off to a great start,

with the girls especially enjoying all that the hotel had to offer.

They didn't stop the whole time.

And the slides opened at 11 and I think they closed about five,

and we didn't see them from that time, just come back for lunch.

All went perfectly until lunchtime on the final day.

I was just lying on the lounger reading my book

and two little lads came running up towards me.

And said, "Your daughter on the other side of the pool,

"think she's had an accident." I went, "Oh, my God!"

Benji rushed over to find Tiana lying on the floor

with a crowd gathered around her.

To his horror he discovered that his daughter had had an electric shock

after trying to get some food from one of the serving dishes

designed to keep the food warm at the buffet.

When I touched it I knew I was being electrocuted.

I felt myself...

throw back, but my body wasn't in control, so I couldn't stop myself.

Other hotel guests had watched aghast

as Tiana had been thrown several feel through the air

landing heavily and indeed painfully.

I was crying and screaming cos it was so painful.

You know the crying when you're... SHE PANTS

..and you can't breathe properly.

I don't know, it was pure utter shock as well.

I kept seeing her eyes looking at me and saying, "Help me, Mummy, help me, Mummy."

I was holding her hand and well, I was screaming, crying.

I was trying not to cry

and get hysterical cos I was making Tiana more upset at the time.

But once we got up to the room we all calmed down.

The hotel called a local doctor straightway.

He was saying, "Oh, she'll be fine in a bit,

"here's some painkillers for her.

"Let her have a lie down for half an hour and she should be OK."

Our flight was booked later on that afternoon

and with the doctor saying that everything's OK to go,

you just put your trust in the doctor and we decided to go home.

So the family made their way back to the UK,

but Tiana still had a very severe pain in her hip

and on the flight it became unbearable.

I was crying, screaming,

so they knew then that there was something wrong

and it was really painful, I was limping really badly.

By the time they landed at Manchester Airport,

Adele was so worried she called 999

and Tiana was rushed to hospital in an ambulance.

Only then did the extent of Tiana's injuries become clear.

The doctor saw the burns and she was just going to treat me for burns,

but she said that there was something else wrong, she knew

that there was something else wrong, so they sent me in for X-rays

and she couldn't believe that I had a fractured hip.

In the two and a half years since then,

Tiana has been receiving specialist care at Alder Hey Hospital

in Liverpool, but she's been told

she'll need a hip replacement operation when she's 17,

and doctors have prepared her for the fact that

she may have to rely on a wheelchair by the time she's 30.

They're going to leave me as long as I can

before they give me a hip replacement,

but I'm having a lot of pain now,

so they don't know what they're really going to do.

Since the holiday, dealing with Tiana's injuries

has been the focus of the family's attention.

But they also want somebody to take responsibility for what happened.

What we want out of this at the end of the day is for somebody to

just turn around and say, "OK, we're sorry.

"It was our fault."

Some kind of compensation for the way Tiana is now at the moment

and for the way it's affected our family.

Day to day life has totally changed for us now

because of what happened.

But trying to establish how to make any sort of claim

hasn't been straightforward.

Not just because the case is such a terrible one-off,

but also because of the way that the holiday was booked.

As the family got their flight and hotel separately,

it's all rather more complicated

than if they bought a package holiday,

and could have taken action against the tour operator

who put together the whole trip.

But Adele and her family hadn't realised that

different ways of booking can give different levels of protection.

Had we known, we'd have booked it through an actual package holiday

instead of trying to save the £600 doing it all separately at the time.

As it is, it's hard for the family to know where to turn to

and what questions to ask.

Pursuing the hotel's former owner in Egypt would be difficult

and the costs prohibitive.

A firm of specialist solicitors hasn't turned up a solution

and nor so far has their travel insurance.

It's obviously caused a lot of stress

on top of looking after Tiana.

We contacted the hotel where the family stayed.

It's now under new management and now has a new name.

The new owners say that they've invested a lot of money

in upgrading all areas of the property,

carrying out health and safety checks on a monthly basis

and complying with all relevant guidelines.

They stress that the property

has nothing to do with the hotel's previous incarnation.

The previous owners in charge at the time this happened

have not responded to our questions.

But we also spoke to the company Adele had booked through - hotels4u,

which is part of Thomas Cook.

When we first discovered this story in January, they told us

that they had only recently been made aware of what happened

and were waiting for more details from the family

so they could make a full and thorough investigation.

But they told us that their health

and safety department works with all their hoteliers

to ensure they comply with required safety standards

and that they their investigation so far had found

that no fault was found with the appliance at the time.

They told us that since this happened

they've booked over 10,000 satisfied customers at the same hotel

without report of any similar incident.

Although you can't predict what might go wrong on a holiday,

it really is worth checking exactly what situation

your travel insurance might cover you for.

You may find that the terms

and conditions are more limited than you think,

and in particular if you're travelling with children.

It's pretty standard for the amount of personal cover

to be significantly less for them than it is for adults.

But as Tiana's family continue to explore

how to take their case forward,

they're all having to cope with the effects of what has happened.

I hate not being able to do sports and dance

and I hate like, not being able to go out around town with my friends

unless I'm in the wheelchair.

I've got to kind of keep my chin up and just...

accept the fact that I'm never going to be normal.

I'm just going to be like this for the rest of my life.

Now, changing the subject, here's a question for you -

what's in a name?

Well, quite a lot

if you end up in the same horrendous position as our next viewer.

Many of the things that most of us just take for granted,

even something as simple as buying a telephone, she just can't do,

all because her name has been muddled up with somebody else's.

Susan M Brown couldn't get a mortgage.

Her store card applications were turned down.

And even getting a mobile phone contract was impossible.

I'm quite an independent person,

so not being able to get a mobile phone and not being able to -

even if I wanted to get a credit card, I couldn't.

The car, we've had to do that in my husband's name.

It's everyday little things that people take for granted.

Susan had lost her identity.

And it's all because of her name.

It is very frustrating, it makes me really angry at times as well.

And I have got upset at times.

There's times that I haven't slept because it is worrying.

I just haven't known how to clear my name.

Susan's troubles began eight years ago when her name changed.

I got remarried. Before that I had been Susan Margaret Eamus.

And I married in May 2005 and became Susan Margaret Brown.

In January 2007, I had a letter from Dorothy Perkins saying

I owed nearly £500.

As she'd never even had a Dorothy Perkins store card,

this really baffled Susan, and of course she just threw the bill away.

She assumed it was simply a one-off mistake.

Then about a month later I had a letter from a debt collection agency

saying that I owed nearly £1,500,

which as you can imagine was quite a shock and a lot more money.

So I rang them and they said, "Sorry, we've been given the wrong details.

"It was Experian that gave us your details,

"you need to contact them

"and let them know that they've made a mistake,"

which is what I did.

It appears that THIS Susan M Brown's credit file had been muddled

with another Susan M Brown's file.

Experian, which is Britain's biggest credit reference company,

worked alongside Susan to clear her file

and advised her to contact the other credit reference companies.

And while at first this did seem to help,

the problem I'm afraid soon returned.

At the beginning people said,

"OK, yes, sorry, we've got the wrong person.

"We'll take your address off our file."

But then it continued.

However hard she tried, she just couldn't convince everyone

that she was a different Susan M Brown to the one they thought.

The problem that I faced is that the lady that owes the money,

we share the same date of birth.

We found 484 Susan M Browns on the electoral roll.

But the two that had been mixed up

just happened to share the same birthday.

Determined to clear her name,

our Susan M Brown went to great lengths to prove who she was.

There was a consumer advice guy that I went to

and he advised that I changed my name by deed poll to Griffith Brown

which is what I did, but that hasn't made any difference.

The letters are still coming through

and people have said that's an alias that I use

and I'm trying to hide behind another name.

I went to Citizens Advice, they just gave me a printout of things to do.

But on there it said that I could give a notice of correction

to Experian and Equifax, which is what I did -

I typed a letter and just said you've got your facts wrong.

I've sent them photocopies of my birth certificate,

my marriage certificate,

all the documents I've got proving who I am,

and I've sent that to numerous debt collection agencies.

And the whole sorry saga was even affecting her marriage.

David was even doubting me and thinking that

I did owe this amount of money, and that I hadn't been honest to him

about how much debt and everything I was in.

Yeah, that was tough, that's a real tough thing to face.

And the demand letters just kept on coming.

I was threatened with either arrest or bailiffs

and then you start to think,

"Well, actually, this is not going to go away."

There was a time when I had a solicitor wrote to me

and said they were going to attach litigation to me and to my property.

I've had letters saying they're going to bankrupt me.

It's been quite a horrible journey really.

So five years down the line, still battling to prove who she is,

Susan contacted Rip-Off Britain for help.

On her behalf we again got in touch with Experian to find out why

this problem just won't go away.

Hi. Hello.

Certainly, as far as your Experian report's concerned,

there's no longer any confusion.

There's no data on there about the other person.

But of course some of the organisations

that are still looking for their customer

might still have your details

and as a result might still be getting in touch

or even passing those details onto other organisations

that they're working with.

But James says that there is an organisation

that might be able to help -

the Credit Services Association or CSA.

They will look into any malpractice that's alleged against their members

and they'll take that very seriously.

If you're still being contacted and the organisations aren't listening

to your very clear information that they've got the wrong person,

then certainly I'm sure the trade body would be very interested

to have a look at that for you.

I now know that there is somewhere else I can go.

Hopefully if I report all the issues that I've had to them...

that will be an end of this situation.

The Credit Services Association told us

they're working to resolve Susan's case.

And their members are sorry for any distress caused.

They say that cases like this are uncommon but by no means unique,

and they're trying to find a permanent solution to this issue.

It's robbed me of my identity.

I'm seen as somebody who's a bad debt

and somebody not to trust.

And that's hard, that's tough to live with that.

And since we first featured Susan's story,

the good news is that her credit record is being restored

to a clean bill of health

and those letters chasing her of debts that didn't belong to her

have stopped at long last.

Next - a couple who made a purchase that they really thought

was going to improve their lives,

they bought a car.

But in fact it did nothing of the sort

because although they couldn't wait to hit the road,

once they did, they soon came to a grinding halt.

Every day last year an average of 18,500 second-hand cars were sold

in England, Scotland and Wales.

And it's not long since Dr Nabil Kabbas

and his wife Hyatt bought one of them.

No more public transport for them, you might think.

So why then are they waiting for a bus?

It all started back in September 2009.

The couple both suffer from ill health and needed a car.

Their friends and family lent them the money to buy one.

I couldn't believe how lucky I am to have such a nice family

and friends, that they collected money for us to buy the car.

I'm really thankful for ever for them.

With the cash sorted, all they needed now was the perfect vehicle.

They looked on the car trade website Auto Trader, and there it was,

a seven-seater Mercedes,

ideal for the couple and their four children.

They immediately phoned the dealer,

John Staniland of The Old Stable Car Sales in Worksop,

not to be confused with any other businesses with similar names.

And very quickly all the arrangements were made.

The arrangement was that he will deliver the car

because we couldn't go there, it's too many miles for us to travel.

The deal was Dr Kabbas would pay John Staniland

a £2,000 deposit with a debit card over the phone.

Then the remaining £4,300 would be due in cash on delivery of the car.

We felt so excited because we thought, "Well...

"it's too good to be true, now we have a car!

"We can be independent, our problems will be solved."

The dealer delivered the car to their home as promised, and although

the couple wanted to take it out for a test drive straightaway,

they were told that wouldn't be possible

as they didn't yet have insurance.

And as the car came with a three-month warranty,

they weren't too worried,

so Dr Kabbas handed over the remaining money,

all £4,300 of it in cash.

We were so sure that's the car we wanted and we were just quite happy.

The following day, with the car now taxed and insured,

the family took to the open road.

But after just minutes,

the car broke down as it approached a busy roundabout.

It was jerking and the children were screaming.

The cars were going to hit us, it was a very bad experience.

I was really shocked.

I didn't know what to do.

I just wanted to cry.

Horrified, they took the car to a local Mercedes garage

where they were told the last thing they wanted to hear.

Both the engine and the gearbox were faulty

and it would cost around £3,000 to fix them.

I couldn't believe it.

I was just in tears.

How can I afford this amount of money?

And remember, they'd only bought the car the day before.

Still, at least it had come with a three-month warranty.

They phoned the dealer, John Staniland,

asking for the car to be fixed or their money back.

Every time he made excuses, he didn't pick up the phone.

He's just busy, he's on the road driving...

The couple contacted Trading Standards, who advised them

to write to John Staniland requesting their money back because

the car was faulty.

They were also advised to employ an independent vehicle inspector

to establish exactly what was wrong with the car.

On road testing the vehicle initially it was fine, but within minutes

when the engine started to warm,

it suffered from catastrophic power loss and it was unsafe to use on the road.

Now, you might think that a dealer would want to put right a dangerous

car, but even with Trading Standards on his case it took John Staniland

over a year to even agree to fix it.

And when he did finally come and collect the car,

in April 2011, that was the last they saw of it.

The thing is he's got the money and the car

and we felt we were being taken for a fool.

In desperation, nearly two years after they'd parted with their cash,

Dr Kabbas decided that the only option was to take

John Staniland to court.

They hoped they'd find out what had happened to their car

and their money.

Unfortunately, he didn't show up.

But it did seem as if their luck was beginning to change.

The judgment was in our favour to Mr Staniland to give us our money back.

We thought justice had been done but, sadly enough, it wasn't.

Despite being ordered by the court,

John Staniland did not return any of the money.

Refusing to give up, Dr Kabbas paid a bailiffs' company to enforce

the court order.

But even they returned defeated.

They said they went to his place a few times

but they can't speak to him

because he had a very tall fence - six foot.

They sent him e-mails, tried to telephone him

and things, all in vain.

They could not locate Mr John Staniland.

And in March of last year there was a further twist.

The couple received a letter from the DVLA saying that someone

was trying to register the car,

leading them to believe that John Staniland was

selling on the car that they owned.

What a surprise, he's trying to sell the car.

He's got the money, the car and he's trying to resell it again.

We asked John Staniland to explain himself.

This a message for John Staniland...

But he hasn't bothered to answer any of our questions,

and we know he got at least one of our letters because we

delivered it to his premises ourselves.

And when we did,

we could see exactly what the bailiffs were up against.

DOG BARKS LOUDLY

So, Dr Kabbas and his family have been left high and dry.

And with the police unable to help because it's a civil matter,

the family are still without their car or their £6,300.

I was a little bit disappointed because we lost the money

we got from family and friends, we let them down.

The way I feel at the minute - I'm disgusted with the whole ordeal.

It's now a year since we first featured this story

but, astonishing as it sounds, it does seem as if there is nothing

more they can do, and sadly the money Dr Kabbas lost to John Staniland

looks lost for good.

Still to come - the knock on the door in the middle of the night for

money you don't even owe.

I just feel a victim of somebody else's failings, basically.

Welcome to our Rip-Off Britain pop-up shop here at

the Metro Centre in Gateshead. We have a wonderful team of experts

waiting to give advice to all our consumers with any problem

whatsoever.

So, I think we should get the doors open

and get this show on the road, girls.

And, as the shutters went up the consumer complaints soon came flooding in.

So, how much did you lose? Just under £1,400.

If neither party wants to accept liability then, I'm afraid,

you are going to have to go to court.

After enjoying a great holiday in Greece, Philip

and his family decided to try and book the same trip again -

this time, directly with the hotel itself in the hope of getting

a better deal.

The hotel manager e-mailed us and said, "Yes, that's great.

"If you go online, book with us, pay a deposit of 15% -

"I guarantee the best rate."

So, that's what we decided to do.

So, we went, Googled the hotel name, went through to the website -

very convincing website,

looks exactly what we expected it to look like.

Paid a 15% deposit.

A few days later the hotel manager e-mailed me to say,

"I still haven't seen your deposit, did you definitely book?"

So, I sent him an e-mail copy of my receipt.

And he said - "That's not our website."

It actually turned out to be a third-party agent, so

I contacted them to find out if I could have a refund.

The hotel manager said, "You need to cancel that and book through a different website address."

But they've said it's a non-refundable deposit.

So, how much are you talking about at this stage? It's 900 Euros.

900 Euros!

Nearly £800!

This is a very straightforward rip-off which involves

a hotel website that is effectively passing itself off as the real

hotel website, when in fact it's just a booking agency that

is going to cream off 15% - in your case nearly £800.

I'm really sorry but, buyer beware, especially when you're online.

But there was more encouraging news for Dave, who'd popped in for

some advice on his ongoing dispute about his badly-fitted new kitchen.

Basically, we decided to go ahead purchasing a kitchen after having

a cold caller.

Basically, we were told it was a 14-day cooling-off period.

We decided after eight days it wasn't for us.

Someone from the company came round and said

categorically in the small print that it was seven days' cooling off.

Since then you decided to go ahead and have the kitchen installed?

Yes, we have, because we were pushed into it.

My wife asked the question, "What would happen if we didn't go ahead?"

He said, "You don't have a leg to stand on because of the

"cooling-off period."

Tell me what the worst problems have been.

Incorrectly-fitted washing machine, electric cooker.

The dishwasher has been refitted four times.

If you didn't receive the documentation, giving you your

cancellation rights... Yes.

..until the day you tried to cancel the order,

that's actually when your seven days starts,

not from when you signed up. I know you have been in touch with

Trading Standards but I suggest you go back and say,

"Give me a template of a letter I should write to them"

to make sure you spell out very clearly what you

will and won't pay for. Yeah.

When money's tight it can be bad enough keeping on top of your

own finances, let alone being dragged into somebody else's.

So, imagine suddenly being told you had to pay off a debt that

belonged to someone else

and there was nothing at all you could do about it.

That's what happened to the person we are about to meet, and thanks

to a particular type of loan, it could happen to you, too.

I was lying in bed, it was the middle of the night.

I was fast asleep and I just heard this almighty hammering on

the door.

For Jo Day, that loud knocking one wintry night was to prove a very

rude awakening indeed.

I just quickly put some clothes on, came down the stairs...

and opened the front door and there were two men

standing there saying the car was being seized because there was

a loan outstanding on it.

So, shocked and confused, I just gave them the car keys.

Terrified, Jo had no idea at all what was going on, but these men

were debt collectors chasing a loan she'd never even heard of.

Living alone with my daughter it was a scary episode to go through, to

have two huge men banging on my door at that time of night

demanding my car keys.

The men left her with a letter explaining there was a loan

held against her car and it needed paying.

Jo was shocked because she'd never taken out such a loan,

and she'd only got the car - a second-hand Nissan Micra -

a few months earlier.

But from that letter she was able to start piecing together

what had happened.

The car had been a birthday present from her parents in July 2011.

Mum and Dad saw the car advertised on the side of the road.

It was being advertised for £500.

Like me, my dad doesn't know anything about cars so he got his friend

who's a mechanic to come along, check the vehicle,

have a look under the bonnet, check the tyres and the bodywork.

His friend said it was perfect.

In fact, there was a problem. But it wasn't mechanical.

And Jo only found out about it when she came to re-tax the car

three months before the bailiffs came knocking.

When the tax was due to be renewed, it was then that I realised

that I didn't have the full V5 document that you need

when you're taxing the car.

That V5C document, more commonly known as the logbook,

is the certificate issued by the DVLA when a vehicle is registered.

It contains the car's details and information about any previous

people who've had the car, known as its registered keepers.

I phoned the DVLA to see if the car had been registered in my name,

just to see if the logbook had got lost in the post et cetera.

They confirmed that the vehicle wasn't registered in my name.

When Jo's parents had bought the car they had been given, as is correct,

part of the logbook.

What the seller should have done next was to send the remaining part

to the DVLA, notifying them of the new registered keeper, Jo.

In this case, that hadn't happened,

so to try to put things right Jo sent the part of the logbook

she DID have to the DVLA along with some identification.

I received a letter back from them a week or so later to say

that they had received the paperwork I'd sent in

and my new logbook would be with me shortly.

Days later she received the logbook from the DVLA. At last, the car was

officially registered in her name.

But it was because Jo was now traceable as the car's keeper

that a few weeks later she received that frightening visit from the debt collectors.

By them having that information they were actually able to come

to my home...

in the middle of the night and take that car away.

Jo realised that the reason the previous owner hadn't sent their

part of the logbook to the DVLA was because they didn't have it.

At some point in the past it had been used to take out a so-called

"logbook loan", with that vital certificate handed over as security

to borrow cash.

If I'd have known there was money outstanding on the car

I wouldn't... My dad wouldn't have bought it for me,

that's as simple as that.

30,000 logbook loans are recorded in the UK every year,

and the industry is said to be worth around £40 million.

It may seem an easy way to get money, but the repayment rates can be

eye-wateringly high.

And although they had no idea at the time,

when Jo's family had bought the car they'd been landed with the loan

attached to it too.

Having spoken to the logbook loan company

they said there had been various owners after the logbook loan

had been taken out but they had been unable to track the car down

and actually seize it.

I had no knowledge whatsoever that there was any finance outstanding

on the car. I hadn't received any letters, no phone calls,

nothing to point out that this loan was outstanding on the car.

I just feel a victim of somebody else's failings, basically.

They took that loan out, they didn't honour their agreement

and now...I've been punished for it. It's just not fair.

Jo was staggered to find that the only way to get her seized car back

was for her to pay off the £500 loan.

My sister transferred £500 to my bank account, I then paid

the logbook loan company over the phone using my debit card.

It was then they told me where my car was

and where I could pick it up from.

So, after buying the car for £500, Jo was forced to pay another

£500 to collect a debt that wasn't even hers.

£500 to me is my month's rent, er, a week away with my daughter...

um, you know, it was quite a sizeable chunk.

I'm a single mum. I don't earn a great deal.

It was just soul-destroying. I just felt cheated.

The logbook loan company Jo paid the money to is called Mobile Money.

They say they'd normally expect their recovery agents to work

in daylight, and accept that the time and nature

of this visit were not the most appropriate.

They apologise for that and say they stopped working with the

recovery company as a result. Even so, they say they were acting within

the law, and the relevant code of practice.

They stress advanced notice wouldn't normally be given to recover assets,

and urge purchasers of second-hand vehicles

to be mindful of the fact

that the seller...

But since Rip-Off Britain intervened, Mobile Money have now sent Jo

a cheque for the £500 she had to shell out to get her car back.

Nevertheless, it's an experience Jo won't forget in a hurry.

I was furious I was having to pay somebody else's debt.

It just doesn't seem fair or just that I had to do that.

Erm, but I had no choice, I needed to get my car back.

Basically, I was backed into a corner and I'd got no choice,

I had to pay that money.

In a typical year almost nine million parking tickets

are going to be issued in the UK.

And, while it's always frustrating to get one, it's even worse

when you had no idea that you were parked illegally in the first place.

Which is exactly what happened to our next viewer,

along with thousands of other drivers who all fell foul of parking restrictions in the exact same spot.

Coincidence? Or a sign that something is not quite right?

Passing your driving test is a rite of passage.

It should mean new horizons, independence and freedom.

So, when 19-year-old Jamie Porter got his licence

he couldn't wait to make the most of it.

I love having my car and it helps me get around.

I'd say I'm a safe driver as well, but having a car makes my life

so much easier for going places

and getting to work on time in the morning and going home.

Jamie may be new to the road, but already he's received something

that all drivers dread - a letter saying he'd fallen foul of the law,

and he didn't even know he'd done it.

I came downstairs and found a letter from London Borough of Hounslow

addressed to me and I opened it up and they told me that I had...

..received a fine for parking in this bus stand

and I was just gutted about it, really.

It came as such a shock to me.

The fine was for £110. And Jamie had got it after dropping off

a friend at Feltham Bus Station one evening in April 2011.

He'd pulled into what he'd thought was a lay-by

but it turned out to be a bus stand.

At the time I was just dropping my mate off at the station,

he needed a lift and I didn't know the area at all.

So, erm, I just assumed that I could just drop my passenger off there

and drive away, not thinking twice about it.

So, why did Jamie think it was OK to pull in where he did?

Well, he said he'd clocked a sign saying that

restrictions on stopping there ended at seven in the evening,

and he'd stopped at 7:21 so assumed he'd be fine.

Unhappy about the fine, he went back to double-check the signs

with his dad Jim.

And Jim thinks it's easy to see why any driver here

might be caught out.

There's a sign up there at the end of it

and it says you can't stop from 7am to 7pm, yet there's another

sign over there that says you can't stop at any time.

There's warning signs that are supposed to advise you that

you can't stop or that you will be filmed,

but as you can see over there, the sign is hidden behind a sign.

There's a sign behind me that's facing this way. So when you are

approaching from the other direction there's no way you can tell

which signs are what or what means anything.

So Jim and Jamie appealed against the fine,

arguing that the signage was unclear.

They quickly received a response from Hounslow Council,

who sent in footage from their CCTV cameras showing Jamie

in the no-stopping area.

The CCTV video showed me stopping for 19 seconds

and, erm, I drove off and I thought nothing of it at the time.

Jamie doesn't dispute that he was there - the question is,

whether he should have been fined?

Hounslow Council was adamant he'd stopped illegally.

They rejected his appeal and that £110 fine remained.

As far as I'm concerned, Jamie wasn't at fault.

There's so many signs here that make it so obscure

that people can't really tell whether they can stop here or not.

And Jamie isn't the only driver to have been caught on camera

stopping in exactly the same place.

One of them even put in a Freedom of Information request to find out how many fines

had been issued at the same spot,

and discovered that in less than two years the council has made

£409,688 from fines at this spot alone.

But Hounslow Council doesn't see it that way.

They told us it's...

..and that, additionally, separate signs warn drivers

that CCTV cameras are in operation.

They're confident that all the bus stands are...

..and say that, to avoid a fine

all that drivers need to do is drop off in the car park

directly opposite.

They've explained that the income raised is spent on improving

transport opportunities for the borough's elderly

and disabled residents.

At the time of Jamie's...

..they've said no stopping was allowed at any time,

but...

So, now, outside the hours that the coach service runs...

Which is all fair enough, but if the signs really are as clear as

the council maintains, is it really just a coincidence that Jamie

and more than 8,000 other people who have been fined

are convinced that they're not?

And while Jamie still feels that he's been treated unfairly,

he's determined not to let the same thing happen again.

No, I'll make sure that I am more aware, and definitely keep

an eye out for all kind of signs, whether they're hidden or

they're open, and be more careful where

I drop my passengers next time.

I don't think I'll be going near the bus station any time soon.

Here at Rip-Off Britain we're always ready to investigate more of your stories.

You can write to us at...

Or send us an e-mail to...

Well, I guess we all know that sometimes things

do happen and it's nobody's fault, but as we've been seeing today there are plenty of situations

where, in truth, more could so easily have been done to make sure

that you really did have the full picture before you ever

handed over your cash.

Yes, because if something's been sold a certain way it's not

unreasonable to expect that that's what you're going to get.

So, if it's not the case or for some reason things turn out to be

less straightforward than you expected, it really should have

been flagged up in advance.

Totally. And not left for you to find out

when it's just too late. But do keep your examples of this

kind of thing coming in to Rip-Off Britain, and who knows,

it could be your story we're trying to get to the bottom of on a future programme.

But until then, thanks very much for being with us and from all of us, bye-bye.

Goodbye. Bye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd