Episode 15 X-Ray

Have you been ripped off, or short-changed? We are here to fight

for your rights. We want to make sure you get the most for your

money. Exposing the rogues and confronting the conmen, we are here

to help you fight back. Meet Ozzy. He's hunting out cheap

cigarettes on sale in our corner shops. You don't know what you are

smoking, you don't know what is in them. There is no regulation against

them where is the tobacco industry are regulated. These are not. We're

with the officers clamping down on this illegal trade.

Damien Cole's a winner when it comes to rallying but his company's

leaving customer feeling like losers. I feel really annoyed that

they probably thought the same after I left the shop. Are you planning to

beat the Christmas crush on the High Street by shopping online? We'll be

telling you what to watch out for when logging on.

Now, if you're a smoker, cheap cigarettes may look tempting. But,

if you're offered a bargain, how do you know where they've come from

and, more importantly, what's in them? Rachel is on the tobacco trail

with Cardiff Trading Standards. Thank you for turning up for the

briefing today. We have an operation going ahead today in relation to

elicit cigarettes. It's early morning and Mike Davies briefs a

team of Trading Standards officers and police. They're preparing to hit

shops selling illegal tobacco. We have the sniffer dogs with us today

in Malaysia to tobacco. They look -- in relation to tobacco. They look

for concealed tobacco. The team have been tipped off. They've heard about

several shops across Cardiff that have hidden supplies. We are going

to the first shop on our list. We have had numerous complaints from

the buzz of the public and retail premises regarding the sale of

illicit tobacco. To help them in their fight today, they've got Ozzy

and Indie, specialist sniffer dogs trained to ignore legal tobacco and

seek out hidden stashes. They move fast so the shopkeeper can't hide

any illegal supplies. You have any cigarettes other than what is behind

the counter? Although the shopkeeper denies selling cheap cigarettes,

it's not long before Ozzy smells something suspicious. There is an

indication there. And within seconds he's found something. You don't have

any cigarettes apart from the ones hidden in the shelf? It's no surpise

to the officers for a very good reason. They thought there was a

product on a visit before but could not find anything. They did find

things this time. There was a selection there. But that's not all.

Next, Ozzy smells something else by the till. The stash is well hidden,

but easy to reach if you know where to look. That is a handy draw in the

top of his tail. You have your Gin Ling, you have your Marlboro, which

is imported without duty-paid. You have your Viceroy. They are possibly

smuggled cigarettes as well. A nice little draw there. Close to hand

when someone wants a pack of cigarettes straight from the tail.

-- straight from the till. The illicit white cigarettes Mike is

talking about are made abroad, specifically to be smuggled in and

sold cheaply in the UK. We have been there before and taken the dogs in

before. They indicated the same place but there was nothing in there

last time. So it feels good today? Yes. There's no time to pause. The

team need to hit the next shop before word gets around. This time,

it's sniffer dog Indie who's on the trail. Mike questions the

shopkeeper. Weekly have a problem. They are your cigarettes? Yes, they

are. You are going to sell them? Then Indie finds some more. Mike

thinks these are fakes made in backstreet factories to look like

legal cigarettes. What interests me on this occasion is all the

cigarette I have added this environment have been counterfeit.

Counterfeit of a genuine article. And fake cigarettes are not likely

to be made in the most hygienic and controlled conditions. You don't

know what you are smoking, what is in them. There is no regulation

against them whereas the tobacco industry or a related while the

people who make these illegal cigarettes are not regular good at

all. You do not know what is in them. It is all happening really

fast. One minute, we were talking about these and then there was

another indication in the corner there, and this is only the second

shop. If we move this out of the way, you

can see that there is a small cubbyhole. Again, it is easy access,

lots of cigarettes. Among them are bootlegged cigarettes, made legally

to be sold in foreign markets but then smuggled back into the UK to be

illegally resold, literally from under the counter. There is easy

access for the shopkeeper to hand the products to the consumer. They

are specifically coming in to ask for a type of cigarette or they will

ask for, I don't know whether there is secret words or anything. They

come in for Jeep cigarettes. If we had not had the dogs with us today,

we may not have found all of them. We may have found some of them but

not all of them. The dogs are invaluable. It's not the first time

this owner has been caught. Mike shows us a hidden shelf that the

dogs found on a previous raid. It is hinged at the back and then you have

a little lock there. From the top, it looks active screwed down. They

have cut the screws off to make it look like it is screwed down. It is

a game. Last time, we found nothing. This time, we did. It feels like

hide and seek. But this particular game has a very serious side when it

comes to public health. Some of the products have been analysed and

there has been a rat droppings, there has been grass, there has been

allsorts of things cut with the tobacco that has maybe been swept

off the floor. There is no regulation. They are not all like

that but some of the ones I have seen have been pretty horrible. It

is unlikely that people who are making these have any concern for

the people who smoke them? It is all about the bottom dollar. We'll have

more on that story later in the programme. Still to come tonight...

When Melissa got a brand new Samsung phone, she didn't expect this to

happen. We're lucky. We could have been burned or even died. Well,

there are just 22 days to go until Christmas and if you're planning buy

presents online, you're not alone. Today is Cyber Monday, the busiest

day of the year. But do the people here in Abergavenny know where to

get the best deals? Well, it's time to put them to the test in X-Ray's

Cracking Christmas Quiz. Question One, how can you find the lowest

price when buying presents? Do you look around? Do you do

research? I do look around. What about online? No. I like to look at

what I am buying, check the quality. Are you getting the best deal?

Probably not. I look online but then look in the shops as well. Some

interesting answers there. So where do you go to get the best bargains?

Marketing Expert Henry Enos should know. So do you get better deals

online or on the high street? On the high street, you can get the odd

bargain, but when you search online you get multiple choices and

multiple price ranges. Well, Henry, you have given us three top tips for

getting the best deal online. Top tip number one, talk us through this

one. Tip number one is let others do the work for you. Now, in this case

there are two things to do. One is crowdsourcing. Either online on

social media, get your friends together, or in the house and

provide your shopping list. Get an army of retailers looking for the

best discounts, they're working harder for you. And an electronic

way of doing this is via price comparison websites such as Kelkoo.

You enter the details of the items you are looking for and it'll give

you multiple choices of that product at different price ranges, plus the

retailer supplying them. So it cuts down the work and it cuts down the

stress. OK. Let's move on to tip number two. Tip number two. Look out

for discounts. A quick search on google will provide you with

discount sites that will give you voucher codes. So if you've done a

search already and you've found the item you want, at the point of

purchase, enter the discount code and get further money off. A win-win

situation, I like that. Tip number three. Three, be smart with your

smartphone. What this means is that, on a smartphone, you can actually

download an app that will scan a bar code. So you could be in the shop,

looking around, scan the item and it will take you to the sites that

provide that item specifically. Another way is called showrooming.

Well, we call it showrooming, and that's being in the store so you can

physically inspect the products and gain your confidence, but at that

time, again using your iPhone, go to the price comparison sites and see

if anywhere else in the town has those items available. Therefore,

supporting the local retailers. Fantastic advice for grabbing those

bargains. Thank you very much. Later in the programme, we will find out

if shoppers here know how to stay safe online.

Now, Get Connected has been hailed as a Welsh success story. A

home-grown company with 68 shops across the UK. But are they speeding

to success at the expense of their customers?

Rally driving is a passion for Get Connected boss Damien Cole. He

competes in rallies across the UK and he's pretty good at it. But some

of his customers don't think he's quite so good at his day job. Last

month, Tracey Coombe told us she'd taken out a mobile contract with Get

Connected for her teenage son, Tom. But, when her first bill arrived,

she discovered she'd been set up as a business customer. And that wasn't

the only nasty surprise. It was showing ?43. My agreement with ?32,

with no other add-on costs us all. I was so annoyed and I had this. What

have they done? Not good. And Tracey's not alone. Since that

broadcast, we've heard from more unhappy Get Connected customers. So,

in honour of company boss and daredevil driver Damian Cole, I've

decided to set off on my own rally of Wales. My first stop is

Abergavenny, where Rose Edwards took out a phone contract at her local

Get Connected shop. I signed it and asked if I could have a photocopy.

They told me that they had run out of paper and they would send a copy

in the paper shortly. Rose agreed to pay ?35 a month but ended up being

charged almost double. And she was set up as a business customer until

May next year. When I was in the shop and looked over the contract,

it did not mention anything about it being a business contract or my

being a business owner. So that's Tracey in Blackwood and Rose in

Abergavenny. Both were signed up to expensive business contracts, even

though neither of them actually own a business. Surely just a

coincidence. Next stop on my Get Connected Tour is 100 miles away in

Haverfordwest, where mum Aimee Bristow signed a deal with Get

Connected for daughter Holly. They weren't given a copy of the contract

either. They said the prince wasn't working but it would follow in the

post. -- the printer. But it was a business contract and there was

another shocking revelation when they went back to complain.

When I signed up there was one sheet for me to sign. When I went back

there was two sheets with more information. I haven't ask for the

information on this sheet. I feel annoyed they probably filled this

in, after I had left the shop. So that is three different customers

all signed up to business contracts and not given paperwork. I think we

are starting to make a connection. Which brings us to Aimee, she got a

phone contract at the Porthcawl branch of the people friendly phone

shop, and you guessed it she too was signed up as a business customer.

Then Aimee discovered the Get Connected salesman had gone one step

further They put I owned my own mobile hair dressing business. I

don't even drive my own car, and I have never studied hair dressing in

my life. So why are Get Connected signing some non-business customers

up to business contracts? Time to speak to an expert.

Journalist Graham Neil thinks there is one obvious reason why some

mobile phone companies might want to sell business contracts to

non-business customers. The main reason why an independent

retailers would want to sell a business contract is they can make

more money off it. Their suppliers can offer them preferential rates so

if they sell more of the contracts they will make more money for it.

This doesn't happen all the time, otherwise, the only thing we would

be sold would be business contracts. So when this happens and some

retailer sell them to consumers, the consumer can suffer. On with Miss

Tour of Wales then and the final leg of my journey takes me back to

Abergavenny and to Get Connected's head office.

We have spoken to the Trading Standards team here in Monmouthshire

and they tell us they have been receiving complaints about Get

Connected for the last few years. In September, the company signed an

agreement not to mislead customers. If their staff are caught doing

that, the company could face a fine and a criminal investigation.

And that would be bad news for gebg gebg -- Get Connected boss Damien

Cole. He may have cause to celebrate but some of his customers aren't

toasting his success. It is a big company, you don't expect them to do

something like that, basically they made up a complete load of lies

about me, that wasn't true at all. Well, some very unhappy customers

there. So, what has Get Connected boss Damien Cole got to say? Well,

he denies his staff deliberately misled customers in order to make

more money. He says business contracts can be sold to

non-business customers, but the company he sells phones for Orange

seems to disagree. They have suggested retraining for Get

Connected staff. Mr Cole says the number of

complaints against his company have dropped since he started working

with Trading Standards. And as for the customers in our film, well, he

says they all signed paperwork stating they were self-employed.

They were told that VAT would be added to their monthly payments.

However, they have told us that they would were never told this. And what

about that missing paperwork? Well, Damien Cole says it is very strange,

as contracts must have been printed out in the store, for the customers

to sign them. But just in case they are running a

bit low on their paper supplies, we have decided to deliver a little

gift to Get Connected. Hello there. I have a special

delivery for you from BBC Wales X-Ray.

So, hopefully now they will have plenty of paper to print out those

mobile phone contracts on. Today we are talking about Christmas

shopping on line. Earlier we found out about to get the best deals but

how much do the people of Abergavenny know when it comes to

consumer rights? It is time to carry on with our Christmas quiz.

Before you got your details into this what would you look for, how

would you check that to check it is safe to put your details? I wouldn't

know. The little padlock there, at the top. Good. Well done. Anything

else? No. Telephone number. What would you do with a telephone

number. Ring it. Good idea. It looks official. What makes it look

official. Looks professional, tidy. Some people not sure, so taking a

look at the website we have mocked up here, how could you tell that a

site is secure? There are a few things you can look at that tells

you the website is safe and secure, the first thing is the actual

website address up here, the URL. Make sure it starts with https. The

S is the important thing, it will tell you the website is secure. The

other thing is to look fourth a padlock on the website which tells

you your payment will be taken securely. And the last thing is to

look out for a registered UK address, and a telephone number,

which tells you that the site is registered in the UK, and the land

linum Berra ther than a mobile number. How does that give you more

security? In terms of being able to contact the owners if something goes

wrong with somebody you have bought. Worth knowing, thank you very much.

Whatever you buy this Christmas you will hope it is safe, but I have

been to meet one viewer who discovered her new mobile was

anything but. Keeping in touch has changed over

the years. Last year, almost 1.75 billion

mobile phones were bought across the world.

And 94% of adults in the UK now own a mobile phone. That is nearly all

of us. Melissa Ellis from Newport struggles

to get about so her mobile phone is her lifeline. If I go into my car, I

have to have my phone on me all the time, anywhere, I need my phone in

case. At night I need it, I wake up through the night. I could be ill

through the night, so I need my phone,s close to me. In July

something happened that left her in a state of shock, and without her

much-needed mobile. We are very lucky, we could have burned or even

died. Melissa had bought a brand-new

Samsung S4 phone in June. She chose it because it was easy to use with

her disability. A few weeks later she put it on to

charge overnight, in the kitchen as normal. I put my phone on charge

about 12.00. Woke up in pain, so I thought, I'll go and get my phone

and go on a game, and take some painkillers. But when she touched

it, Melissa's phone was burning in the socket.

I couldn't believe it. I dropped it. I all I was thinking was if that had

been a bit longer, God knows what would have happened. Melissa has a

small burn on her fingers and her brand-new phone was ruined.

It was horrifying, the metal on the USB part was all burned. To get a

scorch mark, think you would have been a fire, definitely.

Fire crews across Wales tackle household blazes on a regular basis.

Every year, 8,000 people are injured by electrical fires in the UK.

Thankfully mobile phone fires are a very small number of these, but they

do happen. Richard Hassett is from South Wales

Fire and Rescue There is potential that a mobile phone charger is as

dangerous as any other electrical appliance. So what is your advice to

charge your phone safely? I think in order to charge them safely, and to

ensure that we are safe at all times, you should only charge them

when you are there, we shouldn't really charge them overnight.

Fridges and freezer, yes, they are designed for it, but mobile phones

really aren't designed for that. When you charge it, don't leave it

on a bed or a pillow, put it on a surface that is solid, so that it

won't catch fire, because as you are charging, they can generate heat,

and if it a bed or pillow, it could be enough heat for that to catch

fire. If you aring you an electrical dapt for you should ensure it isn't

overloaded. That is advice that Melissa is

certainly going to heed in the future.

Just don't charge a phone at night. You know, it could happen to anyone.

Anybody. Well, Samsung say they have employed

strict quality control and safety standards, they have taken Melissa's

phone back to conduct a thorough investigation and find out what has

happened. In the meantime they have given her a brand-new phone and

hopefully this time it is a safe one.

Now let us get back to the clampdown on illegal cigarette sales.

The trade in fake and smuggled cigarettes is booming. But some

shopkeepers are determined to hide it from the authorities.

Cardiff Trading Standards are targeting shops they have been told

have secret stashes, for illegal under-the-counter sales.

They have seized thousands of cigarettes already this morning.

In this shop Ozzie locates another stash in seconds. In a gap in the

wall, behind a mirror in the shop toilet.

The dog indicated there was something inside. What they found

was a glorified bathroom cabinet, they ripped that off the wall and

there are a lot of cigarettes behind. Looking at these, these kind

of cigarettes could start as cheaply as ?2.50 a packet. If you compare to

legitimate cigarettes, you are talking up to ?8 a packet. You can

see where the temptation lies. The stash has a street value of ?500.

Trading Standards officer Rachel Brown shows us how. Ten minutes ago

this was the on the wall Yes, now we have got it off the wall, we have

worked out how it work, the panel at the back slides up, which allowed

them to access the hole behind in the wall. So this was the slit in

the wall. Yes. As we head for another shop, I asked

Trading Standards officer Mike Davies who he thinks is behind the

smuggling You are looking at organised crime groups bringing in

the goods through cross borders and smuggling it in, as they may have

used to have done, previously with drug smuggling. Now they are turning

their sights on tobacco, because there seems to be less penalties

possibly. In the next shop, nothing is found.

The owner supports the operation to stamp out the illegal trade. I think

it is wrong, I think it is taking trade out of people like us, who

have been here for a long time. They are dotted round everywhere. Each

one is taking a lot of chunks. It having a big effect. It shows there

are decent retailers who are trying to sell the genuine product and up

against it, with these other shops that are selling the counterfeit

stuff, which is a shame, it is decent shop owners like that that we

want. By the time the team get to the next shop they begin to suspect

that word is getting round about the operation, no cigarettes are found

but Mike is very suspicious. The dog indicate ed a smell down here, a

scent. So we have found a concealed area but there is nothing in there.

So it may be given an indication it has been moved in the last 30

minutes. The team investigates further. And more empty hiding

places are found. There is another nice concealed --

concealment behind a wall. But the toilet, which is a mirror which

magnets on to hold it in place, but unfortunately, there is no

cigarettes in there. Makes you wonder where they have gone. Right.

Nine shops across the capital are searched. Four are selling illegal

goods. The team estimate they seized more than 26,000 cigarettes and to

be coax with a street value of round ?4,000.

All the indication are this is a growing problem, with teams across

Wales reporting similar finds. At the moment, I think we are doing

a good job and there are many of us out there, across South Wales, doing

the same jobs, we have to make, we have to continue doing what we are

doing in order to make that impact, if we are tenacious enough to

continue, then we will continue to make an impact. It is an ongoing

struggle and fight. At the end of the day you still need to do it, in

order to make that impact, whether it be a large or small, it is

disruption. It has been been a long day but it

has been a successful one. Hitting small shops will disrupt the trade,

but the team here knows it won't be stopped until there is concerted

action to tackle the tobacco gangs. Well, that is it for this week.

Next week, we reveal more companies using the promise of a free boiler

to part you from your cash. I paid money for something that I

haven't had. I was promised something, and I haven't had it.

Remember we are here to help you, give us a call. Or you can put the

details in an e-mail. We are back next week, see you then. Goodbye.