Episode 16 Rip Off Britain

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

'and you've contacted us in your thousands,

'by post, email, even stopping us on the streets

'and the message could not be clearer.'

They're in it for what they can get,

they're not in it to provide a service.

I didn't sleep. It upset me so much that I didn't sleep.

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

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

How do I get my money back? 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. You know, go to the top if you have to.

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

'Your stories, your money. This is Rip-Off Britain.'

Hello and a very warm welcome to Rip-Off Britain,

where it's our job to get to the bottom of why you've had a raw deal,

or indeed if you feel you're not getting the service you expect

and indeed deserve.

Whether it's by pounds or pennies, the people we'll meet today

all feel they've lost out and they want to know why.

So we'll be getting answers for them

and making sure that YOU know how to avoid the same sort of upset.

So there's plenty of good advice coming up,

because some of the situations we're going to hear about

involve everyday costs or annoyances,

the sort of things that really could very easily happen to any one of us.

But as you'll see,

they can end up causing a lot more bother than you'd bargained for.

'Coming up, their fares are going up

'and so has the cost of some of their car parks.

'Have the train companies found an easy way to earn more cash?'

Effectively, it's now going to cost £1,400 per year, per car,

for the same facilities that we were previously paying £500.

'The new homes with an unusual extra feature,

'a constant smell of sewage.'

If I had the opportunities to sell my house tomorrow,

I would go.

'And our experts are ready to tackle

'more of your problems at the Rip-Off Britain Pop-Up Shop.'

Something we need to be increasingly on our guard against

is certain companies promising that, in return for a fee of course,

they can win back money for us which we've paid out in the past.

Now we've flagged all of this up before -

the risks with some of the companies

that offer to reclaim mis-sold PPI payments.

But now there's something else to watch out for

and it's equally tempting,

but again, you may not get the return that's been promised.

So, if you've ever wondered if you pay too much council tax,

you're exactly the sort of person they're after.

'It was October 2010, when right out of the blue

'Jackie Roast got an intriguing phone call

'with a very attractive offer.

'It was from a company called Council Tax Review,

'who suggested that her house

'might have been put into the wrong council tax band.

'As a result, over the 13 years since she'd moved in,

'she may have been paying too much tax.

'And that was money that the company suggested

'THEY could get back for her.'

I didn't understand council tax banding,

but I thought it might be worthwhile so we'd listen to him.

'She arranged a visit from someone at the company to explain more.

'And when he came round,

'he made it sound like she had absolutely nothing to lose.'

He convinced me he would need £185 for the paperwork,

and then, should they be unsuccessful,

that would be refundable.

But whatever they DID manage to get me back,

they would take a percentage, which was 25%.

I thought, OK, that's fair enough,

if they're doing all the work, so I was all for it.

'It seemed perfect.

'If the company was successful,

'Jackie would pay less tax AND get money back.

'And if they weren't, they'd refund her fee.

'So she signed a cheque for £185,

'and left it to Council Tax Review to pursue her case.'

My impression was that they were helping people like me

that maybe was paying too much over the years

and they would get money back.

'The man had told Jackie that this wasn't a job

'she could easily do herself.

'But a couple of weeks after signing up,

'she realised that wasn't true

'and you shouldn't need to pay anybody else to do it.'

After my sister told me that she had been down to the council

and got HER money back of £3,000 without any assistance from anyone,

I decided to ring the Council Tax Review people

that I'd been involved with and ask for my money back.

'But Jackie's attempts at getting back

'what she'd paid out to Council Tax Review didn't get her very far,

'despite their promise that the fee would be refundable.'

It was one excuse after another.

The money's been spent,

the person who actually came to the house

would have to say whether I could have my cheque back or not.

They were fobbing me off. They were constantly fobbing me off.

'Well, now, after almost TWO years

'and endless phone calls to Council Tax Review,

'there's no sign of either a refund

'or that the company ever bothered to do the work

'they promised in the first place.'

I've retired this year, and my husband's due for retirement

and I was hoping that we would have a smaller banding to pay,

and that we would have that little bit of money back in the bank.

I feel angry.

I feel stupid that I'd allowed this to happen to me.

'But Jackie is by no means

'the only person taken in by Council Tax Review.

'West Yorkshire Trading Standards

'received nearly 700 complaints about the company,

'all from people who'd been told that they too

'could be in line for thousands of pounds in rebates

'in return for that refundable upfront free.'

They signed up and paid the money,

and they were finding things weren't happening

at the pace they perhaps expected.

Basically, they tried to make a lot of complaints,

or they had made complaints to the company,

but they weren't getting anything done about those complaints.

'The man behind Council Tax Review, Jack Darrell Henry,

'was found guilty of a series of offences

'involving unfair commercial practices.

'And earlier this year,

'he was given a nine-month suspended jail sentence.

'He was also ordered to serve 150 hours of unpaid community service

'and to pay full prosecution costs of £12,500.

'The judge said that Henry had engaged in...'

'But while THIS company has been put out of business,

'there are concerns that others

'with similar tactics may spring up in its place.'

We've seen several examples of companies like this,

where effectively they are offering a service

which can actually be performed by yourself.

Not necessarily anything wrong with that,

providing you go into it with your eyes open.

Salesmen are good at gaining people's confidence,

that's the skill of being the salesman,

but there's also a skill attached to being a good consumer

and you've got to learn

that don't sign anything if you don't want to sign it.

Take the information away by all means,

but have a think about it first.

'The easiest way to find out

'if you're in the wrong council tax band

'is to contact your local valuation office yourself.

'It won't cost anything more than the price of the call

'and it's absolutely free if you do it online,

'something Jackie wishes she'd known when she first got that call.'

I don't think I'll ever get my money back,

I do know it was a con, it was in the papers.

It was a scam, and I could say bye-bye to my money.

Rail fares have risen this year by an average of 5.9%,

pushing many passengers to the limit.

But that's nothing compared to the price increases

we've heard about at some railway car parks.

Here's one where the new charges have really got the locals steaming.

'For the residents of Blackheath in south-east London,

'this is an essential part of the local community,

'the station car park.

'And it isn't just used by people catching the train.

'It's vital for shoppers, businesses,

'even teachers at the school.

'But regular users of the car park have told us

'that this year, the costs have rocketed.'

I've been using the village car park for 13 years

and I've come to the point where I've had to stop.

It's unaffordable, it's too much, and it's affected the whole village.

'The prices are ridiculous.'

For a small village, we're paying prices

that might be equivalent to Charing Cross or Leicester Square.

I have to park 20 minutes in that direction.

It's a 20-minute walk across the heath,

which is actually in Greenwich,

and when I finish work between 12 and one in the morning,

I then have to walk back across the heath to pick up the car.

Unacceptable and far too expensive.

'Michael Roach is head teacher of the local primary school.

'It doesn't have a car park,

'which is why staff have always parked in the station car park,

'right next door.'

'On the back of the price increases,

'we've had to radically change how we come to school.

'With less than two months' notice,'

they've had to radically shift their lives, their organisation,

not travel to school by using the car, use public transport,

make child care arrangements.

My concern for the long term is

it might put staff off applying for a job in this school

if they are reliant on their car.

'Of the increased charges, it's the 80% rise in the cost

'of the annual parking permit that residents are most angry about.

'Last year, it was £500. Now, it's 900.

'For local lettings agent Jane Cruickshank,

'parking here is essential to the running of her business.'

I pay for all of my staff's parking charges.

'At the drop of a hat,'

we need to pick up keys, head round to a property,

meet a contractor.

'So, what's behind the rising prices?

'Well, in February,

'Network Rail took over the running of the car park from the council

'and straightaway, the price of parking there shot up.'

'I can't now say to my staff,'

you've got to pay to come to work and use your car.

I've always included it as part of the package.

So for me it's, you know, it's been a financial strain.

'And even though the cost of that annual permit has almost doubled,

'it now only covers the station car park itself,

'and not, as it used to, the village's other parking bays.

'To use THOSE, Jane's staff will now need an extra permit

'from the council at another £500 a pop.

'So all told, to get exactly the same parking as before,

'she'll have to pay almost three times the price.'

Effectively, it's now going to cost £1,400 per year, per car,

for the same facilities that we were previously paying £500.

'Alex Tindle is a chef in a local Italian restaurant.

'He thinks the price hikes

'are stopping people spending time in Blackheath.'

People don't feel relaxed to stay in the restaurant for as long as they would've done.

They can't enjoy a leisurely lunch or leisurely evening meal,

because they feel more pressured about their car parking

and fitting in with the...

the times of that parking and the restrictions around it.

So we might find that

they want to substitute staying for a dessert or a coffee

with picking up their car and moving on.

Network Rail is what you could call the "fat controller"

of the UK's rail industry.

It owns and operates ALL of Britain's rail infrastructure.

But it only operates a few of its car parks.

Many of the rest are run by the

train operating companies themselves.

We're getting used to them putting up their fares.

But are they putting up their parking charges too?

In some cases yes.

Over the last three years,

First Capital Connect's car park prices have risen

by an average of 12.3% -

they say because of the significant improvements they've made.

South West Trains have upped their parking rates by 6.5% this year,

again saying that's because of multimillion-pound investments

to benefit passengers.

And at stations run by South Eastern Rail which charge for parking,

the cost has increased by an average of 50 pence a day,

which doesn't sound much, but park there every day

and you could be stumping up an extra £182 a year.

They say the revenue raised from their car parks

barely covers the costs.

But John Page, from the transport union the TSSA,

thinks rail users are being ripped off.

We think it's excessive,

we think rail users are effectively being robbed.

We simply think the Government needs to regulate parking

at train stations in the same way they're regulating the fares.

The residents in Blackheath would certainly agree.

So how does Network Rail explain the price hikes there?

They told us that all profits from car parks

"are put back into the running of Britain's railway",

and in this case, the money raised will help them carry out

a major programme of improvements to the car park

which will benefit all users.

They point out that while some charges at Blackheath have gone up,

others have gone down, with prices for parking

between five and eight hours a day reduced by almost 50%.

They say not only are prices in line with those at other stations,

but there's been an increase in demand

and despite what residents claim, the economic vitality of the village

has not been affected. But in any case, they say this is, after all,

a station car park, so it's right they tailor their prices

to suit the needs of rail users.

But many locals aren't convinced

and reckon the new charges are completely out of order.

My biggest beef is the fact that there's been little or no

consultation on this, there's not been a due process to allow

the local community to really consider the enormity of this.

I feel our voice hasn't been heard.

When you buy a home, especially a brand-new one,

there's a lot in this day and age you might just take for granted.

You could be forgiven for expecting things

like hot and cold running water for one,

or an uninterrupted power supply.

And there can't be many people around who wouldn't add to that list

a functioning way of disposing of sewage.

After all, it's probably not since Victorian times that most of us

have had to put up with that overwhelming stench,

which is why the residents in one housing estate in East Yorkshire

are finding the smell around their homes very hard to stomach.

Scenery like this is why, to some,

Yorkshire is known as "God's own county".

Its wild moors and rugged countryside make it the perfect place to go

for a breath of fresh air.

But around this estate in Low Catton,

the air doesn't smell particularly fresh.

And the last thing the residents want to do is take a breath of it.

For almost seven years, they've put up with

a foul stench around their homes that simply won't go away.

Oh, gosh, it smells!

In 2005, Anne Jackson bought a shared ownership home.

Whilst she owns 50% of it,

she pays rent on the rest to her local housing association, Chevin.

Anne noticed the smell just months after moving in.

I can't go out into the garden when the smell is so bad

because it's very nauseating.

You know, you couldn't have a barbecue.

You couldn't sit out and have a picnic.

Anne got a letter from the Housing Association saying that they would

be doing some work on her sewage treatment tank.

And it was then that it dawned on her that the smell was sewage!

I'm very embarrassed when family and friends stop by,

because of the odour of the bad egg smell, which is really, really bad,

and poo smell. It's disgusting.

Because Anne's house was a new-build,

she was confident that all would be resolved through Chevin.

I kept getting letters, July, and October in 2005 to say there

were works being carried out

but not explaining exactly what kind of works.

Whatever it was, none of it worked and that awful smell remained.

I have contacted three or four different people

and my emails have been passed on to other people

within the Housing Association saying that they will respond,

they will help and it doesn't.

Finally, in 2010, what seemed to be a breakthrough.

Believing that the smell was being caused by a lack of oxygen

to Anne's sewage treatment system, the Housing Association

installed a compressor and vent pipe to her garden wall. But she says

that only made the smell worse. And what's getting right up Anne's nose

is that she's actually paying Chevin Housing Association

to maintain the system.

I pay £55 for maintenance and service charges to Chevin Housing

per month and I don't feel that money is being spent

on resolving the issues.

Just across the street, Ted and Carole are also kicking up a stink

over the smell. Seven years ago, they bought their house outright

from Chevin Housing Association, who at the time

said there had been a problem

which they were in the process of rectifying.

On the day we moved in, we had a letter from Chevin

saying they'd fixed the problem with the septic tank.

They obviously hadn't because we've still got the same problem.

With the Housing Association's attempts to fix things

proving unsuccessful, Ted and Carole felt they had no choice

but to try and sort things out for themselves.

But that doesn't come cheap. In fact, it's cost them £15,000.

It's a heck of a lot of money on solicitors' bills, engineers' reports

and emptying the tank ourselves now which we've got to do and we didn't

expect to be doing that, not with a new house. I just feel it's

money that's gone down the drain or down the sewer, if you like!

Now Chevin did throw Ted and Carole a lifeline, offering to redirect

their outlet pipe to the village drain. But there was one proviso...

There was a clause to the offer. We had to sign away any right

to come back to them even, erm, even if the problem wasn't cured.

So by agreeing to this offer,

if it turned out that the Housing Association couldn't sort out the smell,

residents like Ted would have been signing up

to paying for all future work themselves.

And either way, local engineer Jim Taylor

reckons that the work required would be more complex than anybody thinks.

The sewage treatment plant isn't working satisfactorily.

It's too near the house. It hasn't got a free outfall

into the village drain but even then

the village drainage system is unsatisfactory.

To replace the sewage treatment plant

will cost of the order of £25,000

and won't solve the problem entirely.

There would need to be sewers in the village and a sewage treatment plant

and I hate to think how much that would cost.

One reason the smell has hung around so long is down to a disagreement

over who has responsibility for the pipes taking sewage from the houses

to the village drain. Now the Housing Association says that is

where the problem lies

and it's therefore the local council's responsibility, not theirs.

But the council says it's not a matter for them.

So there you have it - stalemate. And we really do mean "stale".

We're really not bothered whose fault it is but we know there is a

fault and we just want it solving.

If nothing was done...oh...

we'd be totally devastated,

totally devastated and we'd just, like, be back to square one again.

It's just unbearable. If nothing's done about it, we're here for life

cos we won't be able to sell. We feel very let down.

If I had the opportunity to sell my house tomorrow, I would go.

So could we help clear the air?

We got in touch with the housing association, Chevin, who told us that

a specific drainage system had been designed for these houses because of

the lack of mains drainage in the village. At the time, they were

confident that the system was appropriate, was properly installed

and should have been effective

and it was in that belief that plots were sold and let.

And though they accept that's not been the case, they've reiterated

they think the cause of the problem

is outside that drainage system itself and therefore

any changes required are not their responsibility.

Despite this, they have carried out a number of improvements

to try and sort things at no cost to the residents, and come up with what

they hope will prove to be a solution. At a recent meeting,

residents were told that Chevin would not only cover the cost of the

work involved, but monitor the new system for its first year

and remedy any faults. The Housing Association is also in talks

with the local council and water company

to try and find a way forward.

However it does seem that our interest has sparked

a further flurry of activity on this. So let's hope that this time,

residents really can look forward to the end of a problem that for years

has made their lives a total misery.

Well, finally it seems that the residents of that estate could be

looking at a solution. And obviously, we hope before long

they'll be able to enjoy breathing a deep sigh of relief

and the whole unpleasant business comes to an end.

Our Pop-Up Shop in Gateshead gave you the chance to call in

and tell us all about your consumer concerns in person.

-And here he is - Herbert. I've been talking about you.

-Have you?

-Yes.

This is a true rogue scenario.

It's like somebody just stealing your money.

Our team of experts have pointed people in the right direction

after they've been left feeling ripped off.

They're just using it as a loophole to not have to pay you out.

And we've been offering a few tips of our own.

And what's our little joint slogan?

Always read... BOTH: The small print!

But failing to read the small print

when buying a birthday surprise for her boyfriend online

has left Laura well and truly out of pocket.

They charged me £19.95 for the next few months without my authorisation.

And you ended up paying...

-How much did the present cost you in the first place?

-£10.25.

-And you ended up paying how much for it?

-£170.

Good heavens above!

How were they able to keep taking money out of her account, Sylvia?

Certain online companies offer a voucher scheme

effectively where you sign up online to get discount rates.

You get the first 30 days free, then any subsequent month

you're agreeing to pay them, in this case, £19.95

until you cancel with them.

-So you thought you were buying a one-off item...

-And that was it.

Did you... I hate to ask this

but did you read the terms and conditions?

Not really but then I don't on most things that I buy.

So how did you finally manage

-to stop this money going out every month?

-I cancelled my account

and went to another bank. That was the only way.

So you actually cancelled your bank account! I know that this

company's been running for quite a long time and I'm aware of a

number of similar complaints. In terms of what you do about this

money you've spent, you are going to have to try and say that

they misled you and you were not aware and didn't see the small print,

but I think it's going to be extremely difficult.

-And, Sylvia, what's the situation with the bank?

-In terms of the bank,

the Financial Services Authority have issued guidance -

Bank Accounts Know Your Rights - and you can get this information from the

Financial Services website. So effectively once you have

told the bank that you are not authorising these payments

they should have stopped it on your behalf. You shouldn't have had to

close your bank account and if you go back to the bank and say look,

this says clearly you should have stopped it when I asked you to,

they will be liable for any payments made after that date.

-Did your boyfriend like the present, Laura?

-He did. Yes.

So at least we can say you might get some money back from the bank,

the rest you may have to put down to experience,

-but at least your boyfriend liked the pressie!

-Yes.

And after following Sylva Rook's advice and contacting her bank,

Laura has now had most of the money which was taken out of her account refunded.

Still to come - why paramedics like this man may have been left

hundreds of pounds out of pocket after they stopped being paid.

I'm a professional, I've worked hard, I've helped a lot of people,

and my reward for that is I've been totally ripped off,

that's the only way I can describe it.

-JULIA:

-With house prices falling in the UK

and a stagnant property market,

many people are opting to improve their homes. What happens if your

builder walks off in the middle of a job and you can't get him

to finish the work he's supposed to have done?

It's now six years since Inez Howard decided she wanted to create

more space in her home at Egham in Surrey

and approached a local builder to build her an extension.

I found a builder by seeing him working on the other side

of the road and I asked if he was decent and they said yes.

And I approached the builder and he gave me a price.

Reassured by the work he'd done nearby, and happy with the quote

she'd been given of £44,000, Inez went ahead with the project,

agreeing to pay the builder in instalments

over the next three months.

When the job started, everything was all right, I was happy with him.

He was friendly and he said he can do the job in 12 to 14 weeks.

But soon, Inez began to worry about the number of jobs

the builder hadn't completed. And worse still,

there were problems with the standard of his work.

When I told him about anything, he weren't...he said,

"Yes, yes, I'll finish it", and he didn't.

The bathroom upstairs wasn't right.

The bath was on the wrong side of the wall to start with.

I had to ask him to move it. The windows was not put in right.

The roof was wrong. The leak upstairs...water came in...

By this point, Inez had already paid her builder £36,000,

so she withheld the remaining £8,000 until he'd finished the work

to her satisfaction. But the builder refused, leaving Inez stuck

with half-finished rooms and one big mess to clear up.

Oh, I feel terrible about him. It really, really shocked me

to see a man could do something like that to anyone.

And as if that wasn't enough, the builder then wrote to say

he'd start legal proceedings against her if she didn't pay

the rest of the money.

I felt distressed when he wrote to me and said he wanted his money

and last letter before action and asking for more than the £8,000 -

that really shook me up.

Inez had legal cover under her house insurance, so she set about getting

official reports on the state of her property.

And that's when the bad news really hit home.

One inspection revealed that the plumber provided by the builder

had left her boiler unsafe. And an independent electrics report

highlighted no less than 20 items that needed fixing.

I did not think I would be living as a pensioner in this state.

I wanted to improve my standard to live happy and being able to go

on holidays as I like and so on and come back to a comfortable place.

That was my intention when I started thinking about doing an extension.

And it turned out to be a disaster.

A disaster that's still rumbling on six years later.

Inez and her builder have reached stalemate. He won't finish the job

because she hasn't paid him in full, while Inez wants her money back.

But because her insurance company didn't think the builder

had enough funds to repay her, they stopped paying her legal costs.

So Inez has ended up forking out a further £9,000 to try to get back

the £36,000 she's already spent.

It was a waste of money, really.

I felt as if I should've just give him the money

and he didn't start the job at all. It would've been a better solution.

Inez has managed to do some work to fix the leaky roof

and repair the dangerous electrics. But the surveyor's report

she's had done suggests the cost of finally finishing her extension

will be even more than the small fortune she's already paid.

Seeing the list of things that had to be put right, I was shocked

and nervous about the price and everything which was about

£50,000 to £60,000 to put right.

When we contacted the builder, he told us that he's "a good builder",

and "an honest man". He disagrees with what Inez has told us,

saying during the job she kept changing her mind,

or requesting extra work.

And he disputes the faults she's identified,

or, in the case of the boiler, his responsibility for them.

He says he threatened legal action not to cause undue distress,

but to get the money he claims he's owed and insists if he gets that,

he will finish the work.

It seems extraordinary that after stories

about problems with builders,

this kind of situation is still happening.

Though there are various schemes designed to help, so far no-one's

managed to come up with a foolproof way of ensuring you can be

completely confident about your choice of builder.

With her house in such a mess, Inez says she can't live in it

and has had to stay with friends and family. And she's devastated

that despite her efforts to find a reputable tradesman,

the house she once loved still looks like a building site.

Very unhappy and I trusted this man thinking I would have had good work,

and even if it had cost me extra, I would have willingly paid

to have a decent job, I never went in for a cheap job,

I went in for a good job.

Well, as Inez knows only too well, it isn't easy to resolve

this sort of dispute. There are a number of insurance schemes

that have been set up offering protection if you do get into

this type of situation. David Hill is from the industry trade body,

the Federation of Master Builders, which offers one of these schemes.

If you're thinking of carrying out building work or

building a new house there are certain things

that you need to look out for.

Choose your builder carefully -

take up references and use somebody from a trade association.

Trade associations carry out rigorous checks

in order for builders to become members. Those checks can include

financial checks, due diligence for public liability insurances

and VAT registration, professional references

and independent inspections to maintain the quality of work.

Use a building contract - small works contracts are available

free of charge and downloadable

from the Federation of Master Builders' website.

Use a low-cost independent inspection service to make sure

that building work is progressing in accordance with regulations.

Most companies you tell us about haven't set out to rip you off,

so when you feel that is what's happened, it may be that their terms

and conditions just weren't clear enough or there's been

a genuine mistake they've been slow to put right.

Whatever the explanation,

when things go wrong you need to know what to do

and where to turn. So, we've put together a booklet of tips

and advice. You can find a link to the new free guide on our website...

Or to receive a copy in the post, send a stamped, self-addressed

A5 envelope to the address we give you at the end of the programme.

Well, as you can imagine

we get a lot of letters and emails here at Rip-Off Britain,

and we're really grateful for every one of them. But the letter that

sparked this next story really stood out - and the minute we saw it

we just knew we had to find out more.

Joseph Warner loves his job. It's one that makes a real difference

to people's lives, because Joseph is a rapid response medic.

I think I am very passionate towards being a paramedic,

because I know people need to be helped.

I don't think I could spend 41 years in it if you didn't enjoy it.

It's like every job - you have bad times, you have good times.

The secret is just to work through the time that's difficult

and then get back to what you do best.

Although he was originally employed by the NHS, for the last four years

Joseph has worked for five of the different private agencies

that supply fully trained medics to help answer emergency 999 calls.

-That's me away.

-Bye!

And one of those agencies employed Joseph for ten months

up until August 2011.

I got a contract in the Newcastle area. The reason I went to this

agency was because it was closer to where I lived at home and it would

then let me spend more time with my family.

Joseph enjoyed his work in Newcastle and in the beginning

everything ran smoothly. But alarm bells rang when in June 2011

his pay didn't come through as normal. When he chased it up,

he was assured all was well.

They said they were having banking problems but they would get

to it. As a result of that, we were paid 13 days late.

So that was a warning to us. We got assurance from this particular agency

that it was just a glitch and it would never happen again.

But in fact the next month, the situation got worse.

Rather than being paid late, Joseph wasn't paid anything.

And when he raised the problem with the agency, he was told that the

problem was down to the company moving to a new bank.

The main man, the manager, stated that I wasn't experienced

in running a £4 million company, so therefore I didn't know the problems

of changing banks, that we would definitely be paid,

that there wasn't any problems. This persisted for almost two weeks -

continually phoning, leaving phone messages which wasn't returned,

phone calls that weren't answered. If they did answer the phone,

they would then lift the phone up, as soon as I said who I was

they put the phone directly back down again.

Two weeks turned into two months without pay.

And then Joseph got some even worse news.

We got a phone call from a friend to say that the office had been closed,

so the emails weren't getting answered, they weren't receiving

the emails and the phone lines were dead.

So there was no way to contact them whatsoever.

In desperation, Joseph tried going down to the agency's office,

where his worst fears were confirmed.

The office was empty, the office was locked, there was no phones,

no faxes, no office equipment, it was just a shell.

I had great difficulty because one, I was owed a lot of money,

two, I had already spent a lot of money on expenses

and that to contribute to going to work without being paid for it

and three, I no longer had a job. But I still had a mortgage,

I still had my family to feed, I still had the bills to pay,

but I was unemployed through no fault of my own

and I was owed all this money.

The total impact on me not being paid by this company was £9,792.

That's what they owed me,

not counting the expenses that I was paying out to get there,

the £750 per month. The result of the persistence with the company was that

I managed to retrieve £2,000,

but it still left me £7,792 out of pocket.

And that was money Joseph and his family could not afford to lose.

£7,792 means to me six months' mortgage, six months' bills,

a holiday for the family. And that is a dramatic stop all of a sudden -

no warning, nothing, you can't meet the bills, you can't go out

and buy food, there is no money in there coming in

and there's only money going out.

I'm a professional, I've worked hard, I've helped a lot of people

and my reward for that is I've been totally ripped off by this agency.

The agency Joseph worked for has left plenty of other people

in exactly the same position, although its former director

has since opened up another agency under a different name.

Joseph now works for an agency called Blue Star Medical Services.

Its director of operations, Chris Knox, feels that the industry

needs tighter controls.

Within the private sector there are a large number

of private ambulance services that are now

vetted by people, so not only just the NHS

but by the Care Quality Commission. But there are a large number

of private ambulance services not running properly -

the way they treat staff, clinical standards, all things like that...

it does need more closely vetting.

We weren't able to get any answers from the agency's former director,

but the company's chairman told us that they'd ceased trading due to

financial pressure put on it by the banks. He says it's

tragic that people are owed wages and apologises to Joseph, but says

unfortunately the money is very unlikely to be paid.

So while Joseph is happy working for his new agency, he feels that more

needs to be done to protect workers like him.

There is no system in place to protect people like me. The system

protects people like them - they just need to move next door, set up

another company and continue as if nothing happened. Me, it's took me

a year and I'm still not over the fact

I've lost this massive amount of money, over £7,000.

GLORIA: Here at Rip-Off Britain

we're always ready to investigate more of your stories.

We're particularly keen to hear from you

if you've been travelling abroad or on holiday. Have you experienced

problems when holidaying abroad, did your airline let you down,

have you been stung by hidden charges when booking your holiday online,

or maybe your travel insurance

hasn't provided you with the protection you'd hoped for?

You can write to us at...

Or email...

Don't forget, the Rip-Off team

is ready and waiting to investigate your stories.

Well, these days especially, we all want to make sure that not only does

our money stretch as far as it possibly can, but that it's buying

us exactly what we thought it would. So it's extremely annoying

-when things don't turn out that way!

-But remember, our website

has plenty of advice on how to make sure your money is working hard

for you and not just someone else. The address, you remember...

And that's an address to make a note of. But do keep telling us

who's left you out of patience or out of pocket and we'll see

if we can find out why. What we're out of now is time, but we will

be back to investigate more of your stories very soon.

So I hope you'll join us. But until then...

ALL: Goodbye.

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