Episode 19 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 street, and the message could not be clearer.

There's too much focus on profit and less on customer care.

It's so hard to complain. Companies make it so difficult to complain.

You told us, with money tighter than ever, you need to be sure that every pound counts.

All my money is very hard-earned, so when I go to spend it, I expect value for money.

Whether it's a deliberate rip-off, a 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.

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

Hello and thanks for joining us once again on Rip—Off Britain,

the series that sets out to make sure that your money goes exactly where you would expect it to

and buys you what you thought it would.

But as you'll see today, the sad reality is that your cash isn't always as safe as you'd hope.

There are always people coming up with new ways to try and relieve you of it,

but money can be lost for all sorts of reasons and not all of them are malicious,

so when you've been left out of pocket, it isn't always easy to know what to do or where to turn.

As we look into more of the stories you've asked us to investigate,

we won't just unravel what's happened to any money that's gone missing.

We'll also try to make sure your cash stays where it belongs and if something goes wrong,

you know exactly what to do.

'Coming up, how this couple's plans of saving for the future have instead left them with nothing.'

Looking back, I've got a whole raft of questions I should have asked, but I didn't at the time.

'Why one of the biggest threats to national security probably isn't what you think.'

I was angry when I realised I'd been scammed for this amount of money.

A lot of it was personal pride that I hadn't checked up.

'And our pop-up shop draws in the crowds in Liverpool.'

We're used to you telling us about situations where things just haven't worked out the way you'd expected,

but what happened to this next couple could hardly have been worse

and the real shame of it is they only got caught up in the whole sorry mess

because they were trying to make sensible choices for the future.

But it's ended up with them losing a small fortune with absolutely nothing to show for it

and rubbing salt into the wound is the fact that despite everything that they've lost,

they are still having to pay a monthly fee

for what, as far as they're concerned, is no good reason whatsoever.

Of all the many kinds of unwanted cold calls,

regulator Ofcom says 4% are about pensions and with good reason.

Around a quarter of us have a pension we've forgotten about

after changing jobs or even after losing the paperwork,

and that adds up to almost £3 billion stuck in unclaimed pension pots.

It's not something Ian and Karen Ross from Basingstoke had thought about until one evening in 2011

when they got a cold call offering to help them find those pots and make use of the money.

It was a very personable guy on the phone and he just asked me,

did I have any pension provision, did I have any old works pensions that were frozen?

I suspected that I did and he said he'd have a look into it for us

and see if there was any value left in these pensions.

What I know about pensions you could write on a very small piece of paper.

I've just relied on advice that comes from my employer.

Here was somebody saying, "I'll do all the work, I'll find out about these things and I'll help you."

It was a relief and it was very exciting as well.

A few weeks after that cold call, a financial adviser rang with news that knocked Ian for six.

He discovered that Ian's old company pensions were now worth just over £23,000.

At this news, I was really quite excited.

It was a windfall.

I would liken it, I suppose, to winning the Lottery.

It was money that I didn't know I had, money I didn't really give any thought to,

and there's somebody on the end of the phone, who I had developed a bit of a relationship with, telling me

that I had a substantial sum of money and he had found it for me. I was very, very happy.

But what do you do with £23,000 you never knew you had?

The financial adviser had a suggestion.

He recommended that Ian invest in a type of pension product called a SIPP

which stands for Self-Invested Personal Pension.

They give investors a greater choice over where their money goes, but they come with a considerable risk,

so they're not normally recommended to people who don't know a lot about trading and investments.

It seemed a good idea to invest in something that would be a growth for the future,

especially as it was money I never knew I had anyway.

Convinced that the investment was the best way to go,

Ian signed the forms to invest his £23,000 pension pot.

Over the next year, he and Karen thought little more about it

until in March of 2012 when they received a very unwelcome letter.

One day, I was at home and the post came.

I opened a letter addressed to Ian and it stated that the company that we had our pension with

was being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office

and that our funds and our pension had been put in the hands of the administrators.

It seemed that the company into which Ian had put his money

was being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office

and it soon became clear that Ian and Karen's investment was now worth next to nothing.

I was distraught. I was really, really upset.

I could not believe that this money had gone.

I had a raft of feelings, emotions. I was angry. I didn't want to believe it.

Karen called Ian at work to break the news.

My initial reaction from the phone call was shock, as you can well imagine.

I just suddenly realised, all this sales patter, I had fallen for it

and now this money that I never knew I had, I no longer had.

Karen was determined to get to the bottom of what had happened and to try and get some of the money back.

I told our financial adviser what happened and he was very blase about the situation.

He told me not to worry and everything would be OK.

But Ian and Karen kept investigating and as they looked into the investment further,

it seemed that not all of the £23,000 that Ian had started off with had gone into the same place,

so it wasn't all lost.

We noticed that once the funds had been released, they were split in two

and several thousand pounds was left in a bank account,

effectively, cash.

But then Ian got his next shock.

The bank account that the money was in was held in joint names.

One was his, but the other in the name of a firm who specialise

in managing the type of pension Ian had invested in.

I tried to find out what I could do with this money, but I couldn't do anything with the money

unless I had permission.

Instead, the company administering Ian's SIPP were taking fees from the account to do so

and though the company did suspend the fees while they investigated the situation,

they reinstated them when they found their contract to administer the doomed pension still stood.

I was amazed that they were still taking money to administer a pension that actually had no money in it.

When I asked them why they were taking the fee,

they said that they were legally entitled by the forms we'd signed and that's what they'd do.

So the remainder of Ian's unexpected windfall is being whittled down in fees

to pay for something he's been told has no value.

That wasn't the end of his troubles. When Ian contacted the FSA,

which has since become the Financial Conduct Authority, to see if any of his money could be reclaimed,

he was horrified to learn that the firm their financial adviser had told them he worked for

had no record of their investment at all. It turned out he'd no longer been working for them at the time.

As a result, he didn't come under the FSA's jurisdiction and there was nothing they could do.

The thing that I'm most angry about is that we did do our research, as far as we knew.

We're not sophisticated people financially.

We went to the FSA. The individuals at first appeared to be regulated by the FSA.

We thought we were protected.

But it turns out that we weren't.

Ian and Karen have registered with the liquidators handling the company in which their money was invested,

but it's not clear if they'll ever see any of their money again.

I'm left feeling frustrated, humiliated, angry.

The overriding emotion is one of embarrassment.

Ian and Karen admit to not being fully aware of the risks

and financial expert Paul Lewis says this is not the kind of scheme

that ordinary investors should be persuaded to get involved in.

Karen and Ian were encouraged to put their money into a risky SIPP

and advisers will say, "High risk means high reward." No, it doesn't.

High risk means the chance of a bigger reward,

but also the chance that you will lose your money, as they did.

If you know nothing about investing, the last thing you want is a self-invested pension.

You should put it in a stakeholder pension or something like that

which is relatively safe and charges are low.

Ian and Karen wish they'd known all of that before they sank their money into a SIPP.

I didn't understand what a SIPP was and it's only recently

that I have actually understood what we've invested in.

Looking back now, I've got a whole raft of questions I should have asked, but I didn't at the time.

We contacted the financial adviser who got Ian into this mess in the first place,

but he has not answered any of our questions.

However, there was a bit of good news when we wrote to the company still taking a fee

for administering Ian's pension.

They explained that they were doing so because there's a prospect

that some money may yet be returned to creditors over the medium to long term

and during that time, they still have to produce annual reports to both Ian and the regulator,

but in view of the position faced by investors

and recognition of the lower volume of administration required,

they have now reduced their annual fee by a third

and what's left in the account, a balance of £2,080,

Ian can now transfer to another scheme without the usual fee.

But what happened to Ian and Karen is a reminder

that you need to be very wary of any investment opportunity that comes in a cold call out of the blue.

And if it's from someone offering to help you find any pension pots you may have lying around,

you can do that for free through a government service. You don't need the help of the person on the phone.

Of course, I'm angry. It was sold to me as money I never knew I had,

so, looking back, maybe that should have rung an alarm bell for me.

If somebody takes the attitude of "it's money you never knew you had",

it might make me think, "I don't know I've got it, but you want it."

If you were asked to name the biggest threat to British security today,

you might say something like international terrorism,

but categorised at the same level of risk is cyber crime,

the very real danger of criminals and rogue states targeting computer systems in the UK.

If all that sounds too much like the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster,

the sobering reality is that every day, whenever we turn on a computer,

most of us are already under attack,

whether that's from hackers after your cash or some other kind of online fraudster.

Here's what to watch out for to stay safe online.

The British economy is under attack.

The UK is now the number one target for internet gangsters

with estimates that they and their crimes are costing the economy up to £27 billion a year.

Cyber crime is a huge threat to the UK, Europe and the rest of the world.

We do know that it's big and that it's significant and it's very, very difficult to quantify.

British business earns one in every five pounds from the internet.

It's a crucial part of the economy that allows us to trade around the world,

but 93% of large companies and 76% of small ones

reported an internet security breach in the last year.

One of them was Jake Kelly's business,

subject to a single, but very costly attack in May this year.

It came after Jake ordered an expensive piece of kit from one of his regular suppliers in China.

They had been working together for years,

so Jake had no reason to think anything was wrong when he got an email about a change of address.

Most of my correspondence with China is via email and via Skype.

I received this email saying, "There's a potential virus, please use this email address from now on."

I took it as read they got a virus and used the new email address.

The email looked as if it was from his supplier, but unbeknown to Jake,

that supplier had received a very similar email too, one that looked as if it was from Jake

and it said that thanks to a virus, Jake had had to change his email address.

Neither side had cause to suspect that what they were being told was untrue.

I just carried on the communication as I normally would have done.

Over the next few days, Jake and the supplier both sent emails to each other about the order

and they both got replies that they thought were legitimate.

Little did they know they were caught in a "man in the middle" attack.

Every email was being intercepted by a fraudster who was leading Jake to believe his order was all in hand.

I'm chasing now the delivery of the machine that we've ordered

and I get a reply back saying the machine is now ready, please pay into this new account.

It wasn't their normal account. It was a new bank account with an address of Spain.

I was a bit suspicious, so I did ask them to re-confirm where they wanted us to send this money to.

They confirmed the Spanish bank account, so we made the payment.

But as the afternoon went on, Jake couldn't shake the sense of doubt

and he slowly realised that the Spanish bank account he had just transferred almost £40,000 into

had nothing to do with his supplier.

The ball's dropping now slowly and this situation has become real

that we've been scammed and I've just lost this huge amount of money.

Hoping he was wrong, Jake called his bank, trying to stop the payment,

but it had already left his company's account.

I felt really angry when I realised I'd been scammed for this amount of money.

A lot of it was personal pride that I hadn't checked up and seen what was happening.

His next call was to his insurance company.

I figured this was a theft,

so we should have insurance on a commercial policy to cover this loss of money.

So we asked the question to our insurance company whether we have insurance for this type of theft

and the answer that came back was no, we don't, this is a cyber crime.

Because Jake willingly transferred the money, there was nothing his bank or insurer could do.

The police told him to report the crime to Action Fraud, the UK's national fraud reporting centre,

but there wasn't sufficient evidence at that stage for police to investigate.

Right now, I've accepted the money's gone. It's been stolen.

It's gone from us and I really don't have any hope at all of reclaiming this money.

If we weren't a strong company, that could potentially bankrupt us,

so it was a real large amount of money and it hurts us, it does hurt us.

More than three-quarters of small businesses like Jake's have reported an internet security breach

in the year up to February 2013, and amidst growing concern,

the Federation of Small Businesses has carried out in-depth research

into the impact of cyber crime on its members.

Cyber crime in a business sense can be the simplest phishing email

that we all too often have come through our email boxes,

right through to individual or corporate identity theft

which can have a hugely damaging impact on the business.

It's a big issue as far as government and our members are concerned.

If you look at the figures that came out of that survey,

then it is costing the average small business around about £4,000,

which for the total number of businesses is around about 800 million.

That's not an insignificant amount of money, so cyber crime is at the top of everyone's agenda.

Keeping the UK safe in cyber space will later this year become the responsibility

of the newly formed National Cyber Crime Unit.

Many of your traditional offences that you would've seen taking place

in a traditional, normal, physical world

have a place now in the cyber world,

so things like fraud, things like identity theft, things like child exploitation.

The crimes may be common and the threat real,

but a significant proportion of online crime isn't reported.

One of the big issues we have is the reluctance of business and individuals to report these cases.

For business, I think the main concern has always been around commercial reputation -

is our money safe with them if they're the subject of cyber attack?

And many individuals who are the victims of cyber crime don't report it

because, "A", they're not sure if the police is the right agency

and "B", because they go to their internet service provider and think that's an appropriate way to report.

A new training programme will see all police officers trained in cyber crime,

but in the meantime, there's a lot we can all do to stop the crimes happening in the first place.

Please protect your computer.

If you protect it, it's very unlikely that the vast majority of hackers will get anywhere near it.

The analogy I use is, would you go out now in your car and park it in the high street

and leave the doors wide open with all your goods on view and walk away?

I would suggest you wouldn't do that.

Then why are we prepared to leave our computers wide open

and all of the very important private data we have on there

available to people who could hack into it?

But protecting yourself is about more than just getting the right software in place.

For Jake, the scam that cost him £40,000 was carefully planned

and it preyed on the trust he had with his supplier,

so guarding against cyber crime requires vigilance too.

I wish in hindsight I'd picked up the phone and spoke to somebody

and checked out to see whether these emails I was receiving were from our supplier,

not from a potential scammer.

We lost £40,000. It's a huge amount of money that will have a big impact on our business.

Still to come, a year after we first called in, what's happened to the family businesses

driven to the edge by a product sold to them by their banks?

It was the closest we came to closing the door for good because we were about to run out of money.

We're in Liverpool, here for one weekend only with our pop-up shop.

We've brought along a team of experts to give you advice...

Make it clear that if they don't give you a refund within 14 working days, you'll pursue it through the courts.

..so we could try and get your problems resolved.

What did you make of the advice? Brilliant. Thank you very much.

This year, for the first time, we were also out on the streets,

so we could give you advice while you shopped.

Think about the information you're giving away.

You are often sharing information that criminals need to steal your identity.

Gloria, don't you love the workshops that we've got? I've just done one on pensions. We had a great time.

You've got a pension? I do. 5% from the company, 5% from me.

Was that your idea or theirs? It was their fantastic idea.

You wouldn't have thought to do it yourself? I would. I'm very financially savvy now!

Liverpool has been a great place to pioneer that because the people here are so wonderful.

John came to visit us after getting a letter about his pension that he didn't understand.

I'm confused with the small print, the long words. I'm not that well up on that type of thing.

This is what you call a final salary pension scheme.

What it says in this letter here is that now the transfer value of what you've got in your pension

is just under £18,000.

John wants to know if it's worth withdrawing the money now as a lump sum or should he wait.

Because this is a final salary scheme, it's probably not worth you taking any money out here.

Reading on in the letter, it says if you try and cash it in, you'll have less than £9,000,

whereas if you stay in this scheme, when you turn 65,

this pension will start paying you an income for the rest of your life.

James does the sums to work out exactly how much more John will end up with

by leaving the money where it is.

Probably you will get about £900 a year out of this paid from next year when you're 65 until you die.

They're going to keep on paying.

If you take this money now, it's nice to have it in the bank as it is...

Financially, it probably won't make sense over the long run unless you died in the next ten years or so.

What's the chance of me getting bumped off by these people? It's in their interest to get you bumped off!

I'd say don't take your money out of this. Keep it in there.

That's smashing. Good luck with it.

There can't be many of us who haven't at some point dreamed of living a luxury lifestyle

where our money works hard while we sit back and enjoy ourselves.

Coming up next are a couple who were told they really could live the high life.

All they had to do was invest in an exciting new market that came with almost guaranteed returns,

but the truth was a far cry from the slick and elaborate sales pitch

and the investments that cost them more than £65,000 are now worth little more than fresh air.

The City of London, one of the biggest financial centres in the world.

Billions of pounds change hands here every day.

Fortunes are made and lost in a heartbeat. Money never sleeps.

But away from the well-known markets in stocks and shares,

London's traders also buy and sell commodities, ranging from precious metals to coffee beans.

It was one of those alternative investments that Gareth Sleight

and his fiancee Andrea Watson found themselves being talked into.

In the process of setting up their own business,

they were looking for opportunities to make their money grow

and one that promised a return of more than 60% sounded the perfect way to do it.

Gareth and Andrea were approached last August by a firm of brokers called Diffraction Limited,

trading as Diffraction Investments,

who told them about an exciting new market in carbon credits, something most of us would never have heard of,

let alone totally understand.

But the pitch was all very convincing and the couple decided to invest more than £2,500.

Initially, we put in a small amount,

just to test the water, which is what she suggested I did.

Gareth and Andrea were told the investment in Andrea's name would mature in just four months

which was perfect timing as they were looking to raise money towards setting up their own business.

But that first £2,500 wasn't enough for Diffraction.

The company's wealth manager started to befriend the couple and to offer them more investment opportunities.

She'd be ringing me regularly to say, "Hi, how are you doing?"

We decided to come down and meet them...

Before we actually... Before we did any further investments

because first of all, we wanted to see that it was a reputable company,

that they were normal and reputable people

and just to get some more information, see the offices and where they worked.

And they weren't disappointed.

First, the couple were whisked to a meeting at Diffraction's luxurious offices in the heart of the city

in a building full of other brokers, investment firms and traders.

The offices looked the part and the team from Diffraction could also talk the talk.

They did give us a very good, comprehensive pack which looked very professional, I have to say.

We were already thinking, "This is good. This will tie in with our business investment."

The courtship continued as the couple were wined and dined at an exclusive London restaurant.

I remember him saying, "Would you like to pick the red wine?"

I looked at the prices and I thought, "Oh, my God, this is really expensive!"

He went, "Don't pick the cheap one."

Well, it was very difficult to find a cheap one, to be fair.

We talked about our personal lives. We didn't talk much about carbon credits.

So what exactly are carbon credits?

They were created as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

High-polluting companies are officially allocated a certain number of credits,

allowing them to emit a particular amount of carbon dioxide.

Clean companies who don't use all their credits can make money by selling them to dirtier companies

who would otherwise face big fines for polluting the environment.

But what Gareth and Andrea weren't told is that carbon credits aren't really suitable

for everyday investors like them.

Justin Urquhart Stewart is a financial commentator with experience of market trading and investments.

The carbon credit market was designed,

so that companies can buy the right to emit all those toxic fumes.

Effectively, they're paying for it.

Now, by buying these elements, they can then effectively be traded if they so wish,

so it created a secondary market, but this is all about institutions, large institutions, oil companies,

which need to make sure they are protecting themselves with these carbon credits.

They all traded amongst themselves and some big institutions.

It is very definitely not for the retail market.

That didn't stop Diffraction convincing Gareth and Andrea that the carbon market was the key

to their financial future.

The way that they built it up was basically...

"By this time next year, you probably will have X amount of pounds

"and you'll be able to reinvest because there'll be that opportunity again.

"In five years' time, you could be, you could be... Millionaires. Millionaires."

The couple had spent the whole day in London being seduced by Diffraction's slick and persuasive sell.

And it worked. Gareth and Andrea agreed to invest another £50,000 in carbon credits

and transferred the money into Diffraction's account.

They had now handed over £52,500.

But Diffraction wanted more.

Three months later, Gareth and Andrea were persuaded to invest a further £13,000,

but just before Christmas, they received a text message from a member of the team at Diffraction,

asking them to transfer the money into a different bank account than the one normally used.

I had a weird sense to not do it and I should have gone with my instincts. Yeah.

But because we were busy, I sent the money to that bank account.

Gareth and Andrea have heard nothing of that £13,000 again.

The new bank account they'd been asked to pay it into

belonged to an entirely different company called Oswald Bradshaw.

But why they were asked to send it there and what happened to it afterwards remains a mystery.

All that is certain is that it's bought them nothing and, unfortunately, things only got worse

as it soon became clear that the rest of their investment, all £52,500 of it,

wasn't all they thought it was either.

Diffraction Limited told them they'd stopped trading in carbon credits

and had transferred the couple's investments to yet another company.

But this third business said they were no longer in the carbon industry either,

leaving Andrea and Gareth stuck with carbon credits they can't sell.

They might as well have bought fresh air

and sadly, financial commentator Justin Urquhart Stewart can only agree.

What is the likelihood of us actually seeing a return from any of the carbon credits?

You've still got the credits and they're sitting there with this custodian holding them there,

but until you can find someone to trade them and assuming they can be traded,

they are just paper and worth no more than that.

Frame it, stick it on the kitchen wall and remind yourself, "Never again."

When we contacted Diffraction, they disagreed that the carbon credits had been mis-sold,

but said they only sold this type of investment for a short time.

They told us issues in the carbon credit market were not apparent at the time of these investments

and although they did believe the couple could sell the credits at a profit, this was not guaranteed

and they did not promise specific returns. They stress their terms made it clear that there were risks,

pointing to a clause that states investors may lose the whole amount paid

and that a call was made to Andrea to check she understood that,

but they cannot comment on that final investment made to Oswald Bradshaw as they have no link with the company

and the consultant who sold it has now left the business.

We spoke to Oswald Bradshaw who insisted they did purchase carbon credits for the couple

and they sent them a certificate to prove it, but Gareth and Andrea say they never received it.

The company also told us that while they no longer offer the facility to buy carbon credits,

Gareth and Andrea's credits are still live and safe.

We also put questions to the company that now holds the carbon credits

Gareth and Andrea bought through Diffraction, but they didn't reply.

To cap it all, Diffraction now focus on another high-stakes commodity - diamonds,

and they couldn't resist offering the couple yet another investment of a lifetime.

Even after all this, she sent me an email to my private email,

asking me about whether I wanted to buy a pink diamond

and, obviously, said, "What a lovely gift it would be for Andrea on your wedding day!"

They shouldn't be allowed to trade certainly in this type of environment and get away with it.

It's completely unacceptable.

We've put together a free booklet of tips and advice to help safeguard your hard-earned cash.

You can download it from our website.

Or for a hard copy, send a stamped, self-addressed A5 envelope

to the address we'll give you at the end of the programme.

You'll also find on the website lots more information on the topics

that we tackle with plenty of tips on how to save money

and avoid being caught out.

Last year, we highlighted the really dreadful situation

that countless small businesses had ended up in because of their bank.

They found themselves saddled with costs of tens of thousands of pounds

and some faced going under thanks to something they never really wanted, but had been talked into buying.

This is a tale about the banks, accusations of mis-selling

and tens of thousands of businesses pushed to the brink

by a financial product that many of them should never have been sold in the first place.

These products have been sold to small traders, farmers,

people who are not used to dealing with sophisticated financial products.

In many cases, they didn't even want these products, they didn't ask for them,

but were told by the bank, "You have to have it to get the loan."

Small businesses taking out loans were offered products known as interest rate swaps,

intended to protect them from a rise in interest rates, much like a fixed rate mortgage,

so when interest rates went up, the amount these businesses paid would be capped,

but borrowers say they were not told that when rates dropped, repayment amounts would increase greatly.

That's exactly what happened to the Lilley family,

owners of Darby's Glass and DIY Store in Marske-by-the-Sea in Cleveland.

In our last series, they told us how when they took out a business loan of £450,000

from HSBC in 2007, the bank also sold them an interest rate swap off the back of it.

But a product they thought would protect them

has instead ended up having a devastating effect on the family business.

I always had the attitude that if you went to the bank, you went for help and you'd get the best advice.

That seems to be something that's gone by the by.

We've paid HSBC £50,000 towards this base rate swap so far.

We've laid off staff. We've had to put back growth of the business.

To be honest, I'm pretty tired.

I have to work all the time. Most weeks, I work seven days a week and I just feel very bitter.

That one's quite nice with the white border round it.

As interest rates have come down since they took out the loan six years ago,

their repayments have gone up by hundreds of pounds a month and since we filmed with them last year,

things continued to get worse.

We've struggled on. I've had to find money from my own finances.

We've struggled with staffing levels and stock levels have fallen.

The effect is we don't always sleep at night because we're worrying about how we'll survive the next day.

It's a day-to-day existence.

If it wasn't for the internet side which is mainly down to my daughter,

the business would have folded.

The big banks have agreed to review the sale of around 40,000 interest rate swap products like Darby's.

Another of those badly affected we visited last year was the long-established electrical store

run by Paul Adcock and his family in Watton in Norfolk.

This is my great-grandfather, Ernest Adcock.

Four generations on, we've survived two world wars, depressions, booms, busts.

The company now is on its knees because the bank that supported us for all those years

thought it wise that we have this horrendous product.

Paul had also been left fighting to save his business

due to an interest rate swap product sold to him by Barclays,

one that has left him paying a huge £4,500 per month on top of the existing loan repayments.

One year on and the doors are still open, but it's no longer the busy shop it used to be.

The cash starvation that we had because of these extra interest payments

had really made it more and more difficult to trade.

Our levels of stock really were depleted

because of the cash flow problems.

We hadn't been able to keep up to date with payments to suppliers,

so the major suppliers had not traded with us.

And low stock levels mean empty shelves, something no retailer ever wants to experience.

People who weren't aware of the situation assumed we were having a closing-down sale,

but we assured people we weren't intending to close down, but in this situation, we had no choice.

Businesses like Paul's were pinning their hopes on an investigation by the Financial Services Authority

and in January this year, the FSA found that interest rate swap products had been mis-sold

in over 90% of cases it reviewed as part of an initial study.

The banking industry has set aside billions of pounds to compensate small business owners affected,

but Business Secretary Vince Cable has criticised Britain's biggest lenders for stalling on paying out.

We're now in the process whereby they're negotiating with the companies

about the redress they will actually get, case by case.

The worry of many of the companies that are now seeking redress is that the redress is not automatic,

as it was in the case of Payment Protection Insurance, PPI.

They're having to negotiate one by one with the banks.

If they're dissatisfied with the outcome, they don't have any comeback.

But for Paul's business, it's good news. It's been officially recognised that he was a victim

of mis-selling by his bank Barclays.

When we got the letter in the middle of June, it was a great relief, but it was also a sense of vindication

that all we had been saying and complaining about had been recognised by the bank.

It was the wrong product

and at long last now, there was some relief in sight in forms of redress.

With Barclays accepting responsibility for the mis-selling of the product,

Paul is hoping that he'll soon be compensated and his business can recover, but he remains cautious.

We're not popping the champagne corks just yet because we don't know when it will arrive

and there are additional costs to consider as well,

so we are hopeful that it won't be ever so much longer.

When we contacted Barclays, the bank told us it continues to work with Paul

to support his company through challenging market conditions,

stressing it's in the interest of both Barclays and its customers

to complete the review as soon as possible and it's progressing as fast as it can.

The Lilleys in Cleveland are also hoping their troubles will soon be at an end.

In June, they were told by the Financial Ombudsman that the product they had been sold by HSBC

had been unsuitable and the bank should put right the effect it's had on their business.

We're waiting for a response by HSBC to see what our final settlement will be,

then we'll know exactly where we are financially.

We want an outcome which shows that we haven't made any loss,

the personal circumstances for us alter that we are then comfortable again.

We want to get the situation solved,

so that we can get the shop back on track.

HSBC told us it would be inappropriate to comment on matters which are confidential,

but assured us the bank is doing everything it can

to complete its past business review as quickly as possible,

prioritising cases where customers are experiencing financial difficulties.

Now, it remains uncertain exactly when and by how much

both Darby's and Adcocks will be compensated by their banks.

However, both family businesses will never be able to get back the years lost worrying about the impact

of being mis-sold a product.

The whole experience has left me feeling quite bitter towards the bank and the way we've been treated.

The bank haven't been forthcoming with what is our money and not the bank's

and they've still not given us it back yet.

The personal effect has been very stressful, needless to say,

and as we're a family business, it affects all of the family

because all of our livelihoods depend upon it

and I'm sure this was the closest we came to closing the door for the last time

as we were about to run out of money.

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

Confused over your bills? Trying to wade through never-ending small print?

When they sit you down to sign up for things, they don't give you time to read through all the small print.

Unsure what to do when you discover you've lost out and that so-called great deal has cost you money?

I was horrified. I haven't got that sort of money to waste like that.

You might have a cautionary tale

and might want to share the mistake you made with us, so others don't do the same.

I feel that people have got to know about this business.

You can write to us at this address.

Or send us an email to:

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

As we hear all too often at Rip-Off Britain,

money can be so easy to lose, but very hard to get back

and that can apply whether you're dealing with companies

that are respectable household names or ones not so familiar.

And who knows, maybe one or two that aren't that respectable either!

You have to be constantly alert to the possibility that someone might be trying to trick you out of your money

or promising something they can't deliver.

That can be especially true online where you can't always be sure

exactly who you're dealing with or where they are.

But the key advice is to make sure you don't accidentally give out any personal details

or any clues that someone could use to get hold of your money

and if you're signing up for anything in person,

make sure, particularly if there are big sums involved, that you take independent advice.

That's where we have to leave it for today, but we'll be back with more of your stories,

so until the next time, from all of us, bye-bye. Bye. Bye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd