Episode 6 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, email, 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?

But, unfortunately,

I think these companies are more motivated by their share price

than by actually looking after the customers.

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

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

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

Your stories. Your money. This is Rip-Off Britain.

Hello and welcome to Rip-Off Britain,

the series that really battles on your behalf

when maybe nobody else will

and you feel that you've really been let down

and then we try to get to the bottom of why it is

that all too often you just have not ended up with what you expected.

All the stories we investigate come directly from you

and the ones we're going to be hearing about today

have something else in common.

They each involve unexpected and serious problems

that have come up after moving house.

Let's face it, the whole process of moving

can be stressful enough at the best of times,

so the last thing you need

is to suddenly find that all is not what it seemed with your new home.

Especially if, as a result, you're going to end up out of pocket.

Coming up,

the energy efficient homes costing their owners the earth.

Over Christmas it very quickly became £10 a day.

And the choice was, we eat or we keep warm.

And we're on the road and on the case,

solving more of your problems at our pop-up shop.

Here's a problem that already quite a few of you have told us about,

but it is possible that a lot more of you could be affected, too.

Brand new homes right across Britain have been fitted with

a system that its makers describe as, "The most efficient

"and cost effective way to heat a home."

Well, if that's the case,

why are some of the people who have this system

being sent electricity bills that are hundreds of pounds higher than they expected?

Which means, in the case of the family that we're about to meet,

having to choose between paying for food or keeping warm.

Loves Farm is a 160-acre,

affordable housing development in rural Cambridgeshire.

An idyll for eco-friendly living.

At least, that was the idea.

Come on then. What pieces can we find?

Samantha Claussen, her construction worker husband

and their children were some of the first to move in, in May 2010.

They were delighted at the prospect of living in their brand new energy-efficient home,

which they rent from a housing association.

Well done!

We'd been repossessed in our previous home due to the recession,

so to be offered this house on this new estate

was a dream come true for us.

With another child on the way and the family counting every penny,

there was one particular feature of the house that seemed especially appealing.

We were told we had a great heating system

that was going to be economical,

and it was going to be green, which was perfect.

We had a report telling us that it was going to be around £500 a year

for our heating and hot water.

It couldn't have been better really.

And you can see why she'd think that.

The Energy Performance Certificate that came with the house

couldn't have been clearer about how much they could expect to pay.

So, there was no need for the family to dread the arrival of their first electricity bill two months later.

Or so they thought.

When our first electricity bill came through for £252 -

that was for just under two months - we were horrified.

At that rate, in another two months

their electricity would have cost them

well over what they'd been told they'd be paying for the whole year's supply.

Not quite as friendly, either to the environment or their pocket,

as they'd been led to believe.

So why were their bills so much higher than predicted?

Sam's house, like the rest of the estate,

was fitted with a heating system made by a company called NIBE.

Called an exhaust air source heat pump,

it replaces the need for a gas boiler,

but performs the same function using electricity instead of gas.

It works by taking the heat from the waste air leaving your house

and then pumps it back into your home

to help provide heating and hot water.

Very clever. And, all being well, extremely energy efficient.

But Sam's certainly wasn't.

She spoke to her housing association

who arranged for an engineer to visit.

The engineer came out to see us

and he told us that our ducts in the ceiling,

which recycle the warm air,

were not open properly and therefore not working.

At first, it seemed the explanation was that their eco-efficient system

had not been set up properly and, as a result,

the family's bills were almost four times higher than expected.

So, with the problem seemingly solved,

Sam was reassured that she'd soon be getting much smaller bills.

We set our direct debit for around £75 a month

and we felt that would more than cover what we needed.

But an unexpected call from her electricity company

soon proved that the problem had not been resolved at all.

Sam was told that her direct debit was not covering her costs

and, in fact, she was building up a big debt.

We owed in the region of £1,500.

Our only choice was to pay half of that or go on a key meter.

Once we were put onto a key meter it became absolutely clear

that this system was far from economical

and was, in fact, costing us a fortune to run.

Soon, Sam was struggling to keep with her bills

and was forced to make some very difficult decisions.

Over Christmas, it very quickly became £10 a day,

and I was horrified.

In fact, when I realised this, I turned our heating off

and the choice was, we eat or we keep warm.

And across the estate

other residents were facing similarly tough choices.

Their houses had also been fitted with the same apparently energy-efficient heating system,

yet they too were being hit with huge energy bills.

Instead of saving them money,

the heating system was actually costing them a lot more.

Most estates, people talk about the weather, daily things.

On this estate, we all talk about the NIBE boilers.

It's very expensive,

it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, to be honest.

I've ended in tears, plenty of occasions,

on the phone to my electric company when they're saying,

"You've got to pay this," and I'm saying, "I physically can't."

In the system's user guide,

manufacturers NIBE say that it's designed to run 24 hours a day,

which is the most efficient and cost-effective way to heat a home.

That's why it's become a popular choice with developers,

who are now legally obliged to make new-build houses more green.

So how could a system that's supposed to be more economical

instead be forcing people into debt with their energy providers?

Experts who've looked at this system have told us

that its main pump simply is not big enough to heat most UK homes.

As a result, its back-up immersion heater can kick in.

And though that's only supposed to be used sparingly,

in the homes of Sam and her neighbours,

it seems to be doing most of the job.

Using much more electricity and causing very high bills.

So why did the housing association

agree to this system being fitted in the first place?

NIBE came down, did presentations to our technical staff,

provided us with comparable information of how their system costs

weighed against conventional electric and gas systems,

gave us examples of heating bills from the system

which was claimed to already be in use,

all of which was quite convincing.

And it's just that the subsequent experience of our tenants

was that none of this was the case.

The housing association is so concerned about the effect

that all of this has had on residents like Sam,

it's paid out over £45,000 so far, to help with their high bills.

We understand that our residents are very angry, in some cases,

about the experiences that they've been through

because of the NIBE system and rightly so, frankly.

We as a housing association are very, very frustrated

that our residents have had to experience all of this

and that it has taken far too long to get it resolved

with NIBE and with the contractors.

We spoke to manufacturer NIBE.

And they told us that though they're concerned

to hear about individual cases where consumers are unhappy,

there are many thousands of exhaust air heat pumps in use across the UK

and independent research shows them to be both effective and economic.

As far as they're concerned,

any problems are almost always due to poor specification,

installation or maintenance, and not the systems themselves.

NIBE are adamant that they did not give the housing association

any information as to the expected running costs of the units

and they thoroughly reject any allegation of misrepresentation.

They say they were given the wrong specifications

for around 12 properties at Loves Farm,

and that residents were not trained in using the system.

So, while they don't consider themselves responsible,

they say they are working hard

to ensure these problems are resolved quickly.

Meanwhile, the development company that installed the NIBE system at Love Farm

agrees that not all were correctly fitted

and says that they're pursuing every avenue to find a satisfactory solution.

-Where's the digger?

-There.

-Well done.

For Sam, that can't come soon enough.

Already struggling with the effects of this for the last two years,

she's desperate for it to be sorted out before another winter comes.

We have had to make stark choices between heating and other costs.

We have other bills that we've had to pay later.

We have small children who deserve to be warm and have hot water

and that's not something I have always been able to provide for them

and that's not right.

Well, later in the programme, we'll be visiting another estate

that's had exactly the same problem

and discovering what happened there when the residents decided

that, frankly, they were not prepared to put up with it any longer.

Next, a couple who had a plan to create a house with a difference

in one of the most beautiful parts of the country.

But after they chose one particular company to help,

not only has their grand design come to nothing,

they've ended losing tens of thousands of pounds.

The isle of Gigha off the west coast of Scotland may be cut off from the mainland,

but nowhere is too remote to end up losing your money.

As Tony Philpin and his partner Jayne have found out

after coming up with an ambitious plan to completely change their life.

Well, we decided that in 2005/2006

that the entire life savings

were going to be put into a sort of fairly major project

to build ourselves a sustainable house.

They'd build that sustainable house from a kit

which would be sent to them to construct on site

once they'd laid the foundations.

Utility in here.

Jayne and Tony knew the project would involve hard work and dedication.

But the prospect of creating an eco-friendly home

in such a beautiful setting made that all seem worthwhile

They thought they'd found the perfect company to help them realise their grand design -

the Glasgow-based SIPit Scotland.

They'd make and store the kit off-site,

while Jayne and Tony worked on the foundations on-site.

But after two years of planning,

when they finally came to sign the contract,

they noticed the company name was slightly different.

We had been dealing with SIPit Scotland for a couple of years

and then discovered when it came to the contract stage

that we were dealing with the Sip Construction Company.

The couple spoke to the company director who reassured them

that, though SIPit Scotland had now ceased trading,

the new company would complete the job in the same way.

So Tony and Jayne agreed to pay £55,000,

with the first 10% due immediately.

But bad weather soon caused their on-site preparations to be delayed.

We had the worst winter here for, I think, 60 years,

as some of our older friends were telling us,

and that meant that we basically couldn't do any work on-site for six months.

But that didn't mean the whole project needed to be held up.

The agreement had been that the SIPit Construction Company

would make the kit at their headquarters,

and keep it there till it was needed.

So the couple paid the next £20,000 instalment,

confident things were still on track

and that they could concentrate on getting the foundations ready.

The couple's preparations were complete.

The company's boss, Tim Allan, visited the site

to check the logistics for delivery

and Tony and Jayne paid another £16,000 ready for that to happen.

As soon as he'd received our 16,000 payment,

he became extremely difficult to get hold of and we rang,

emailed and tried ringing his mobile - no reply.

we spoke to his assistant on several occasions.

But then on 4th December, they received an email and text

scheduling the first delivery for the very next day.

This has got to come down.

When the first parts of the kit arrived,

the couple were surprised that there appeared to be pieces missing.

But it was another delivery four days later

that really upset Tony and Jayne.

We had a late post on Friday and Tony was in the yard

and I just looked and I just thought, "Oh, my god!"

and just shouted to him that this letter from the accountant

said that he had ceased trading.

So Tony and Jayne haven't got their house

or the money they handed over for it

and it seems there's not a lot they can do about it.

When a company like this stops trading and has no assets,

it means creditors like Tony and Jayne are unlikely to get their money back.

And because their contract was with a private limited company

and not an individual,

they can't pursue the company director for it either.

It's left us feeling that the law,

which should protect us, has actually sold us down the river.

We contacted Sip Construction's managing director, Tim Allan,

who says the company had to cease trading after incurring

numerous bad debts during extremely poor economic trading conditions.

He was unable to raise further funds to allow the business to continue,

but says he fully appreciates the implications of all this

and is extremely disappointed not to have had the opportunity

to work on this project

through to completion.

He disputes details of what Tony and Jayne have told us,

for example about being hard to get hold of, but hasn't made clear

whether the remaining parts of the house were ever constructed.

It's been such hard work so I feel so cheated

that we can't go much further.

We've lost over £30,000 from our life savings.

Now, where do you make that up at our age?

Well, if you're handing over large sums of money,

whatever they're for,

think about whether you'll be protected if things go wrong.

Remember that paying with a credit card can help with that.

And if you're dealing with a smaller company

whose name isn't familiar to you,

if you can, do your research before handing over your money

so you find out everything you need to know before it's too late.

Still to come, a quiet cul-de-sac with beautiful views.

So what's made some of the people who've moved here

now wish that they hadn't?

We felt devastated. All this, um... It just upsets me.

We're here at the Metrocentre in Gateshead

where, for one weekend only, we've set up our very own pop-up shop.

Well, when we say shop, we're not actually selling anything.

It's more like a kind of clinic for consumers with problems.

And you know what the great thing about this is?

That we get an opportunity to meet all of you face to face

and, where possible, solve your problems on the spot.

That's good advice, thank you.

That is definitely the thing to do, and that should solve your problem.

Ann Marie and her mum have popped in for some advice

from telecommunications expert Dominic Baliszewski.

They thought switching broadband companies would be hassle-free,

but have been left waiting for an authorisation code

from their existing provider.

We asked for it about two or three months ago, if not more.

Nothing's coming through, and we're just getting sick of it now.

They actually are obliged to give it to you within five working days.

What you need to do is contact your provider.

I would do it by writing,

because you're going to have a record of it then.

And quote that and say, "You are obliged to provide me

"with this within five days."

There's a standard letter on Ofcom's website -

they're the industry regulator - that you can use,

you can download and you can send it in.

If you still have problems, you can contact the industry regulator.

Every provider has to be registered with one of the two of these,

and they'll be able to step in and resolve this for you.

Thanks very much.

When you're buying a new house,

you really don't want any nasty surprises later.

Which presumably is why you pay to have a survey done,

so that you can find out the worst

before deciding whether or not to go ahead.

Well, this next couple did exactly that.

But even so, there were still serious problems

that only crawled out of the woodwork after they'd moved in.

Debbie and Martin Hope like getting their hands dirty.

So when they were looking for a new home, they wanted a project,

a place they could look forward to doing up themselves.

And they soon found the perfect place.

What attracted us to the house

was the fact that it was an older style property rather than a modern property,

so it had character, which is really lovely.

It felt comfortable. We had lots of space, a big garden.

It was probably my ideal home.

Excited at the prospect of moving in, the couple

were ready to get a survey done to identify potential problems.

That's important enough with any home, but vital

with an older house like this one.

When I was looking for a surveyor, I checked a few out on the internet

and I came up with one that had a good read-up.

Debbie and Martin felt reassured by the website

of the company that they found, which, as well as making

big promises about their skills and service,

also proudly displayed the logo

of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

He was RICS registered and offered a specialised service

for older properties, which was exactly what we needed.

We opted for a RICS survey because we thought at the end of the day

they would be some form of come-back had there been a problem.

Being registered with RICS means a commitment

to the highest professional, technical and ethical standards.

Confident they'd found the man for the job,

Debbie and Martin booked the company's full survey and report

at a cost of £646.25.

I didn't want any surprises, really.

We just wanted some guarantees that,

although there might be some work to do, it wouldn't be too much.

When the survey came back, while making clear it was not

a definitive statement of every single defect,

it didn't give Debbie and Martin too much cause for concern.

It did highlight a number of issues, including

damp at ground-floor level,

although the survey said this was not necessarily

something to be particularly worried about.

A beetle infestation was described as extensive,

but relatively easy and inexpensive to put right.

And though the survey stated that the house needed

quite substantial refurbishment,

it said there was nothing seriously wrong with the property.

So Debbie and Martin bought it.

But before long, they wished they hadn't.

We first discovered there was a problem

when we had people round to put the central heating in.

When the plumber was installing the pipework,

he was notching the joists out, and the joists were crumbling away,

turning into dust. One of the joists

actually completely disappeared up the hoover.

It was quite frightening to actually see it happening

in front of your eyes. I couldn't believe what was going on.

The survey had been correct

when it said there was extensive insect infestation.

But when it suggested that treating it

would be a precautionary measure and relatively inexpensive,

it does seem to have rather underestimated the problem.

All the joists in the whole house have got to be removed and replaced.

All the lintels that are above the doors and windows

have all got to be replaced.

The whole lot's got to be done.

After spotting other issues that worried them,

Debbie and Martin called in another surveyor,

Nick Datson, to take a look.

And he's come back to explain what he found.

When I conducted the survey at Debbie and Martin's house

I found three main issues which should have come up on any survey.

The first one was the front wall was bowing,

not to a fantastic degree, but it was bowing,

which could indicate a lack of lateral restraint to the front wall.

The second issue was that the rear bedrooms

have falling floors into the centre of the room.

Neither of these issues was mentioned in the original survey.

In fact, it said that the floors were reasonably sturdy and flat,

although also stressed that floors are

one of the hardest areas to comment on,

because the presence of furniture and carpets

means that defects may be hidden from view.

And the third thing that most worried Nick

was the damage caused by that infestation.

When I conducted my survey,

Martin showed me a piece of wood from the floors

where we're standing,

and it was riddled with woodworm, which would alert the surveyor

to a problem, potentially, with the joists, if it's in the floor,

and this could lead to certainly a heightening of your awareness

that there might be a problem of a bigger nature

than you can possibly see at present.

And he thinks the same about the damp.

So how much does Nick reckon all this would cost to put right?

From my assessment of this property,

the cost implications for Debbie and Martin

could be in the region of £30,000 to £40,000.

I don't know how we are going to afford it all.

I don't know what we're going to do.

I really don't know what we are going to do.

We made the decision to buy the house

on what was told us in the survey.

Had the survey told us the problems that we've recently found,

we would never have bought the house.

Debbie and Martin also discovered that,

despite what they'd read on the company website,

their surveyor was not registered

with the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors after all.

Which means that, not only was the reassurance

they'd got from seeing that logo misplaced,

but because the institute does not regulate non-members,

there was very little they could do to sort things out.

Once we'd informed RICS that the surveyor we had employed

wasn't actually a member and got them to double-check it,

they told us they would deal with it

and make sure that he didn't use the logo any more,

but there was nothing that they could do to help us other than talk to him.

When we contacted the company who did the survey,

they said there will always be restrictions that apply

to the practicality of doing the job,

and that it's often only

when the property has been opened up after purchase

that the significance of expected defects can be refined.

They say, in this case, the subsequent problems

were outside the scope of the survey,

so it is unfair to say these should have been spotted.

They insist that the report

was done totally professionally, thoroughly and diligently,

and was explicit about the condition of the building,

the limitations of the survey, and the need for obtaining quotations

before proceeding with the purchase.

They disagree with the comments made by surveyor Nick Datson,

and say that as they were clear

that the property needed a lot of work,

Martin and Debbie should have had

a contingency fund for unexpected items.

And as for the logo of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors

that was on the surveyors' website?

Well, we spoke to RICS,

who confirmed that any company displaying their logo

must have at least one employee who is a current RICS member.

And whilst this firm of surveyors did at one time have this,

when they carried out Debbie and Martin's survey, they didn't,

and therefore should not have been using it.

Although this logo has now been removed,

it's too late for Debbie and Martin.

For them, that logo gave them confidence

in the surveyors that they picked.

A confidence they now feel was misplaced.

I've been in tears before, and you've sort of said,

"Come on, we'll be fine. We'll get through it,"

but, yeah, it's really upsetting, really upsetting.

Earlier in the programme, we heard from families whose new homes

had been fitted with a heating system which they'd hoped

would bring their bills down,

but in fact turned out to be pushing them up,

so much so that some of them told us that they had to make

tough decisions about whether they could afford to keep warm.

Well, that same heating system

has been installed in new estates across the country,

and one has already been forced into taking drastic action.

The 69 houses here on the Castlefields Estate in Runcorn

are among thousands of new homes across the UK

fitted with what sounds like an ingenious way to heat your home -

an eco-friendly system that, if used correctly,

can lead to significant savings in heating costs.

So why are these homes having them all ripped out?

When Karen Gerrard moved into her new house here,

the idea of paying less for her energy

was a huge part of the appeal.

I couldn't wait to get a house and a garden, cos I want to start a family,

and when we heard about the energy efficient and the solar panels,

I thought, "Well, it's a bonus. It's going to be cheap to live there."

That was certainly the idea.

Designed to provide affordable and sustainable housing,

the homes on the estate were kitted out

with what's called an exhaust air source heat pump system.

Made by the Swedish company NIBE,

it's exactly the same heating system we heard about

earlier in the programme on an estate in Cambridgeshire.

And here in Runcorn,

some residents started experiencing the same problems.

Instead of saving money as they'd expected,

Karen and others began receiving huge energy bills.

Karen was told her electricity would cost around £320 a year.

But in fact, her bills added up to £1,200.

I thought, "How are we going to pay that?"

I thought there must have been a mistake,

so we phoned the electric company

and they just didn't even care, really. They just wanted the money.

Just over the road, Denis Cullen, who pays monthly,

had also received a bill that was higher than expected.

I had got a bill for £88, which I thought was a bit extortionate,

and I was used to a £50 bill.

As far as the heating would go,

I was told this property would be approximately three times cheaper

than any other system.

And it's because it's considered so cost-effective

that over the last six years,

an estimated 15,000 of these NIBE systems

have been fitted in homes across the country.

But here at Rip-Off Britain, we've heard from desperate residents

on estates up and down the UK who've told us that

their eco-friendly heating has done the opposite of what they'd hoped

and pushed their bills up instead of down.

So what's gone wrong?

Geoff Morgan is an independent heating engineer.

He says that the system is at its most efficient

in homes with a very high standard of insulation,

which is much more the case in Sweden,

where NIBE is based, than in the UK.

In a home that isn't insulated so well,

the system's heat pump may have to work overtime -

forcing it to rely on the expensive back-up immersion heater.

When these are used in Sweden,

the heat losses of the houses

are much, much less,

and the heat pump does a much bigger job,

and the immersion heater does a very small amount of topping up.

So in the homes that we've heard about,

a system that residents had hoped was energy efficient

has turned out to be totally inefficient,

racking up huge bills in the process.

On the Castlefields Estate, the level of complaints

led housing association Plus Dane

to try to get to the bottom of what was going on.

But that meant upheaval and uncertainty for residents.

Different people were telling me different things all the time.

We had loads of fellas down from,

I think Sweden, I think they came from,

saying we were using it wrong,

and they put meters in every bedroom

and laptops everywhere and wires everywhere.

In May 2011, a lifeline was thrown to the residents.

Plus Dane said that though they didn't accept liability

for all this, they would pay their electricity bills

from the time they'd moved in five months earlier.

It was a huge help. But it didn't solve the problem.

The bills were still coming in high. I was saying,

"What are you going to do about these bills?"

In December 2011, after a year of sky-high bills

and at the start of another winter,

the housing association decided to take more drastic action.

We were called for an emergency meeting,

and within ten minutes, the manager

that was sent from Plus Dane

had agreed that by spring 2012

the NIBE systems would be taken out.

Agreeing the system didn't seem to be performing

the way it was supposed to, in March this year,

Plus Dane started ripping out all the estate's NIBE heat pumps,

replacing them with standard gas-fired combi-boilers.

Although cheaper for the residents to run,

that came at a cost to the housing association of £145,000.

And that was on top of the money

they'd agreed to compensate each household

until the system was replaced.

It's a huge relief for residents like Karen.

I'm so made up that we won't get all these big bills coming in any more.

It was stressing us out trying to find money to pay the bills.

It was terrible.

The housing association's

told us they're negotiating with all parties involved

to see how they can recover their costs.

They say all the indications had been that these systems

would perform well and achieve the low energy ratings required,

but the costs were considerably more than the manufacturer claimed.

Meanwhile, Geoff Morgan is concerned

that some of the other 15,000 households with the NIBE system

may also be paying a high price

for what they thought would be a low-cost energy solution.

All sorts of people have been persuaded

to use these systems in the belief they are low running cost.

At the end of the day, the systems, quite simply,

have not produced the expectations of running costs.

But manufacturers NIBE told us they don't promote their systems

on the basis of cost saving,

although they insist big savings can be made

when it's installed and used correctly.

They disagree with the opinions of Geoff Morgan,

saying there is ample independent research demonstrating

the efficiency and effectiveness of this system in the UK,

and point out that they're one of Europe's leading suppliers

of heating systems and a leader in renewable technologies.

They reiterate that when problems occur

it's almost always due to

poor specification, installation and maintenance,

and that residents are often not shown

how to use the system properly.

They've suggested incorrect usage

was a particular problem on this estate, and as such,

the systems didn't need to be removed.

But residents like Denis

say they wish they'd never had it in the first place.

Somebody somewhere agreed to buy a system

which they believed would be right for the tenants.

In fact, the system was completely the opposite.

If you were choosing what you'd want from your dream home,

I think a lot of us would put peace and quiet

and a beautiful view right over countryside

at the top of our wish list.

Well, this next group of neighbours were all lucky enough to find that.

So why just ten months after moving in

are they now desperate to sell up and move on?

Millbrook Meadows. An idyllic new housing development

in Axminster, East Devon.

For some of the people who live in this sleepy cul-de-sac,

it's the uninterrupted views of the countryside that make it special.

In fact, the Reverend Geoff Walsh says it was one of the main reasons

that he and his wife moved here in January 2011.

My wife and I were delighted to be able to find this house here

in a quiet cul-de-sac with the open views

and the play area for our grandchildren

when they visit, cos now we've got 15.

Their neighbour, Pat Bullock, who moved in six months later,

is among others on the estate who'd say the same thing.

I moved here in July 2011. My daughter lives down here,

quite close, and I saw this property and immediately liked it.

It's got lovely views, top of a cul-de-sac, top of a hill,

and it's really nice.

So these residents were horrified to discover in February

how much all of that was about to change.

The housing developer Wainhomes was going to build more homes

right in front of theirs, obstructing their cherished view.

And their quiet road was going to be altered in other ways, too.

It was only in February of this year

when the sales office opened,

we discovered that it was all going to be happening

and our cul-de-sac was going to be used as a through road

and our green area for the children to play on

was going to be built on with more houses.

We felt devastated. We had chosen this house

because of the views and the quietness

and the access for the grandchildren and the facilities.

The residents contacted their local planning office,

who confirmed that a development of 98 properties

was to be built on the land directly in front of them.

I moved to be in a quiet end of a cul-de-sac, lovely view,

but it's now going to be completely different.

It's really going to destroy the quality of life we have at the moment.

It was peaceful and quiet, and now it's going to be

a totally different situation, which I feel very, very let down about.

So why were the residents so surprised about all this?

Hadn't the plans been flagged up when they were first considering buying their homes?

Yes, they were, says the developer, Wainhomes.

No, they weren't, say the people we've spoken to.

Or at least, not in a way that meant they understood the full extent

of the future development and what that might mean for their homes.

I was told there would be some building,

but it wouldn't be in my line of vision,

and I was quite happy with that.

When big changes happen to where you live,

the effects could be way beyond what you see through your window.

Estimates we've seen suggest that

a house with uninterrupted views like this

could be worth anything between £14,000 and £34,000 less

once that view has gone.

Although that's not what bothers the Reverend Walsh.

He's more concerned about what the view is worth to him now.

When I retired here, I just wanted to relax and enjoy it,

and so all this, um... It just upsets me.

The developer of Millbrook Meadows, Wainhomes,

told us that they've always provided home buyers

with enough pre-purchase information

to help them make a suitably informed decision

to purchase a property.

In this case, after talking to the sales representatives involved,

they believe they gave reasonable notice

and correct advice as regards

what building work may be undertaken

and what road layouts may be changed,

and there's no evidence to suggest otherwise.

They're happy to explore with residents any concerns,

but are confident buyers were expressly told

that future development would occur.

But to avoid this sort of confusion, it's crucial

that when you buy a home you ask all the right questions,

and not just from whoever is selling it to you.

As property lawyer Andrew Garvie explains,

there's plenty you can try and find out yourself.

If you're buying land or a building

that has open space near to it,

raise this with your solicitor at an early stage.

Have them make an enquiry, speak to your solicitor about searches,

what searches you might think are appropriate, including a local search.

Perhaps a planning search, which might tell us more

about a radius around the property itself.

Think about contacting the local authority yourself.

Speak to a planning officer.

Perhaps access the local authority website.

A five-minute job could save you a lot of heartache.

Meanwhile, back at Millbrook Meadows,

some residents say if they'd realised there would be new houses

obscuring their view, they'd never have bought here in the first place.

I feel absolutely gutted by it.

It's a totally different environment to that which I moved in.

Here at Rip-Off Britain, we're always ready

to investigate more of your stories.

Confused over your bills?

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We should read it, but it's not in plain English.

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Unsure what to do when you discover you've lost out

and that great deal has ended up costing you money?

You get home, you get your bill and it's like £70

when it's meant to be £35.

And it's just basically, you get ripped off, don't you?

You can write to us at...

Or send us an email to...

The Rip-Off team is ready and waiting to investigate your stories.

Well, I'm sorry to say that's all we've got time for today,

but don't forget that our website always has

all sorts of advice on it to help make absolutely certain

that whenever you hand over your hard-earned cash

you have done everything possible to avoid problems later on.

And how many times have we said that on the programme?

All the time.

And how many times have we given you the address?

It is, as always...

And please keep sending us your stories to investigate.

You never know, next time

we could be tackling your problem on the programme.

And genuinely, we love getting your mail, so do keep it coming in.

In the meantime, thank you very much for joining us,

and we'll see you again soon

when we'll be trying to resolve more of your problems

and stop that awful feeling of being ripped off.

So until then, from all of the team, bye-bye.

-Goodbye.

-Bye.

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