Episode 4 X-Ray

programme: The retired steelworker who fears he's lost his life savings

in a wine investment scheme. Tempted by a holiday for under a

tenner: Well, watch out for the little extras on your bill.

And why have BT kept Chris waiting nearly six months for a phone line

Llanelli with a packed programme for you. First tonight, have you ever

thought of investing your cash in something a bit different? One

pensioner from Tredegar poured his life-savings into a wine investment

scheme, with disastrous consequences. It could seem like a

dream come true, the perfect solution to an economic crisis Or it

could lead to financial ruin. In just a few months, these vines in

the Vale of Glamorgan will be dripping with grapes ready to be

pressed into Welsh wine. And about 500 miles south of here, in the

French region of Bordeaux, vineyards established hundreds of years ago

are being cultivated to grow some of the finest varieties in the world.

Of course, it's possible to find Bordeaux wines for less than �10 a

bottle in the supermarket, but for the connoisseur, the right bottle of

Bordeaux can cost thousands, or even tens of thousands of pounds. For

investors, there's potential to make a lot of money buying wine "en

primeur" for the uninitiated that means it's still in the barrel.

Buying wine at this stage, storing it and selling it years later, could

lead to a handsome profit. But the real challenge is spotting the

difference between a safe investment, and a big risk, because

if it goes wrong you could lose everything. Mervyn Jones is 81 years

old. For almost 30 years he worked at the Ebbw Vale steel works until

poor health forced him to retire. worked in the cold mill making rolls

that went for making cars. I used to go all round the works to where

there was vacancy or someone on holiday to cover them. Having been

careful with money all his life, Mervyn wanted to plan for the future

so he could leave a nest egg for his daughter Kath and his three other

children. The answer seemed to come in a telephone call he received from

a salesman in 2009. He first contacted me about investing in wine

and he seemed to be very knowledgeable about it. He even knew

which side of the river certain grapes were being grown. Did you

know much about wine yourself? just the very basics, I know you

have red grapes for red wine. was the person on the phone like

then? They used to ask you did you suffer with ill health or anything

else, what was the matter with you. I think this is one of the things,

that you get taken in by how friendly they were. The salesman

promised Mervyn a guaranteed return on his investment - at a much better

rate than he'd get from the bank. The company phoning Mervyn was

called Premier Bordeaux Wines. They are also known as The Premier

Bordeaux Wine Company. Both are trading names of a business called

Alpha Invest Worldwide. The company confirmed Mervyn's offer in writing,

but he wanted to check if they were legitimate. I went to the bank and

asked them if they could check to see if they were a registered

company in this country and checked it out and they said they were a

registered company. Mervyn decided to test the water with a modest

investment. In the beginning, it was between �2,000-�3,000 for a case of

wine. Premier Bordeaux Wines told Mervyn that the wine he bought would

be stored here, at one of a handful of bonded wine warehouses licensed

by the government to store alcohol before tax is paid. The warehouse is

completely legitimate, and stores fine wines and spirits for clients

from all over the world at this secret location in the south east of

England. In the early days, things appeared to be going well and it

seemed like Mervyn would get regular payments. You did get some money

back? Yes, I got money back.How much was that? I think it was

somewhere in the region of about �260 but I'm not sure. I thought I

was on the road to having a decent investment. The company repeatedly

rang Mervyn with new investments to consider, and over three years all

of his savings ended up in their hands. How much in total did you

invest? In total around �38,000.So is it possible for ordinary

investors to make money out of wine? Jim Budd is a wine writer and runs a

blog for people who invest in wine to share their experiences. What

advice would you give to people who'd like to invest in wine?

Firstly, it should never be all of your portfolio, it should be a small

part of your portfolio of savings or investments. You need to get advice

from legitimate companies, contact a number of legitimate companies, see

what they advise, How do you know if it's a legitimate company?

For me the really big alarm is if you get cold called. Anybody who

cold calls you about and investment, my advice is to put the phone down.

Mervyn had felt confident that Premier Bordeaux Wines were

legitimate, but that all changed a few months ago when he tried to cash

in his investment. I was really ill at that time and I wanted to put it

right so my children could have the money and share it between them.

when Mervyn asked for his money back, the salesman wanted more cash

from him. They kept fobbing me off that they couldn't pay for this

reason or another reason and maybe if I put more money out I could get

extra money back in, say, about two or three months' time. Eventually

the company stopped taking Mervyn's calls, and now seems to have

disappeared with all his money. We tried to contact the people behind

Premier Bordeaux Wines to see what they had to say about Mervyn's

experiences, but the letters were all returned to sender. Mervyn's not

the only one who's lost out. The wine warehouse is also owed money,

and the manager here says they've been inundated with calls from other

customers who'd falsely been told by Premier Bordeaux Wine that they had

investments stored here. We were receiving a great deal of phone

calls and email enquiries to ourselves asking where their wine

was. The company no longer had any stock with us and there was not an

account or ever even an instruction to open and account for these

clients that were calling us. Mervyn ever have any wine stored

here? Unfortunately there was never an account opened for him and so we

weren't able to confirm any wine holdings for him at all. I don't

hold much hope out of ever getting any money back from them at all. It

was devastating to think that you've lost everything and you wasn't going

to get anything back whatsoever. Mervyn wants now is justice.

like to see them prosecuted and put out of business because what they've

done to me they could do to lots of other people. I wanted to leave an

investment for my children and at the moment I've got nothing now to

leave them. Now, we're not the only ones trying

to get answers from this company. Because in February, Trading

Standards officers in London, working with the police, raided

properties linked to the scheme Mervyn invested in. They arrested

one person on suspicion of criminal offences under the Fraud Act and

consumer protection laws. Trading Standards say they're investigating

several businesses, including The Premier Bordeaux Wine Company Ltd,

The Premier Bordeaux Wine Company, Alpha Securities, also known as

Alpha Invest Worldwide, Classic Bordeaux Vintners and Vintage Wine

Investors. We'll obviously keep you posted on what happens, and if you

think you may have been affected then let us know. You can give us a

call or you can e-mail us. If you are on twitter, you can send us a

tweet. Still to come: Kathleen was hoping

to have moved home by now, but the company that promised her a quick

sale left her high and dry. And why has one BT customer been

waiting six months for a phone line? First, fancy a holiday for under a

tenner? Sounds like a bargain, doesn't it? These deals are all over

the national newspapers, but it pays to read the small print, as Lucy's

The great British summer holiday. The weather might not be perfect,

but scenes like this hold a special place in our childhood memories.

Fast forward to the present day and with the recession hitting our

pockets, more and more of us are choosing the UK for our summer

holidays. But holidaying in Britain's not always cheap. Renting

a caravan can cost more than a trip abroad. So if you see an advert for

a bargain it's tempting to snap it up! And there are plenty to be had

in our tabloid newspapers. This is what I'm talking about - holidays

from just �9! Surely that's too good to be true? So what do you think

about that kind of headline? It's misleading really because

straightaway you think, "Holiday, �9", basically. I expect �9 if it

says �9. So if it ended up being more, how would you feel about that?

Ripped off. You think you're getting a holiday for �9. And do you think

you can get a holiday for �9? much doubt it. Earlier this year,

the same Daily Mirror advert caught the attention of Linda Chappelle

from Pontypool. I saw that they were advertising holidays from �9, so I

said to my husband this might be an opportunity for us to have a small

break away. And a holiday was exactly what nurse Linda and husband

Gerald needed. I'd gone part time since November when my health then I

had to reduce my hours. We knew we couldn't afford then, I'd say a

proper holiday, like we normally have. In April, Linda logged onto

The Mirror website and spotted a four-day break at a caravan park in

Tenby. But when she went to pay she had a nasty surprise. A minimum

booking of four people meant Linda and Gerald's �9 holiday actually

cost them �36. And the price rises didn't end there. When Linda later

got back in touch with The Mirror, she was told she'd have to pay

another �104 in compulsory fees. So instead of �9 each, the total cost

of the holiday was �140. I would have to pay that a fortnight before

the holiday so subsequently I've had to cancel the holiday because it

would have come up as �140 and that's something that we just

couldn't afford. The Mirror does offer holidays for

�9 per person, but limited availability means you've got to be

really quick to book one. When we checked in early May nearly half of

the holiday parks didn't have any �9 dates left. And Linda's not alone in

feeling misled by a newspaper holiday bargain. Just up the road in

Cwmbran, Linda's daughter Amy ended up paying a lot more than she wanted

for a trip to Cornwall booked with we wanted it on a budget. You see

�9.50 holidays and we thought, brilliant. Family of four �38. So we

booked it. So what happened when you went to pay? We just went online and

paid for it and it was all done and they sent us a booking confirmation

code. But once again, the cost of the holiday wasn't all it seemed. To

Amy's surprise, the price of the family's �38 "bargain break"

rocketed to �143. I was so upset. I was really panicked at first

thinking, how am I going to pay for it? Just in complete shock that they

had sent a letter three weeks before our due date to say that we had to

pay charges that I wasn't aware of. I just thought I had to pay for the

holiday. Alfie, especially, was really excited. He's five, he knew

we were going. He's had his bags packed ready to go for about a month

now so to tell him that we weren't going because we couldn't afford it,

I just couldn't do it. It would have broken his heart bless him so we

felt like we just had to pay for it. Just like Linda, Amy was being

charged a host of additional fees. And to her surprise these included

extras most of us would expect to be included in the price, like:

entertainment, bed linen, and even the swimming pool. I was so upset. I

just thought it was included in the price. The swimming pool was on the

site I just thought that would be paid for, I was just so angry they'd

put these extra charges on without us knowing anything about it.

found almost all the holiday parks listed on The Sun website charged

for facilities you might expect to come as standard. But The Sun

describes these as "optional". If you pay these charges, you're still

getting a holiday for a pretty decent price, but are headlines like

this really giving readers the full story? I think it should be much

clearer for people to show them exactly what they're going to have

to pay. Not to be put in a position I've been put in, or someone else

could have been put in, where you have to cancel something you were so

looking forward to. Well, not surprisingly, both The Sun and The

Mirror say the terms and conditions of their offers are made clear to

readers when they book, and they say they're sorry if Linda and Amy don't

feel that was the case. They add that the deals are hugely popular,

and that most readers seem very happy with them.

Now if you're ill, your phone can be a lifeline. Literally! And you'd

expect a big company like BT to understand that, so why has one

North Wales customer been waiting nearly six months to get connected?

When you move house, one of the first things you do is hook yourself

up to the essentials like the gas, the water and the electricity. But

for Chris Kingmartin from Nefyn, problems with one utility service in

particular mean he's getting to spend very little time settling into

his new home and instead is round his best mate's most of the time.

The only time I don't come to Des's is when the wife's off or if my

son's off college or my daughter's off work. Then I can stay there but

otherwise I am here most of the time. And there's good reason why

good mates Chris and Des are spending more time together than

they ever imagined. That's because the final essential service in

Chris's house still hasn't been installed, his phone line. Chris and

his wife Tracey moved house six months ago. But with ME and high

blood pressure, Chris has to stay close to a landline, particularly

because here on the Llyn Peninsula, mobile phone signal can be

intermittent. Sometimes with my illness, I tend to trip and fall

over. I'm on quite a bit of medication for blood pressure, I

have got ME, and I need a landline in case anything goes wrong. My wife

is at work six days a week. We need a landline line. So just as he's

done for the last 20 years, Chris put his trust in BT, the company

that promises, "We'll Get You Connected". And being organised,

they telephoned BT one month before moving house to make sure a landline

could be installed at the new place. BT said, "Right, we can do it two

days after you move in", and that was fine. We could live two days

without the landline. Everything seemed fine at that time. In order

to get their crucial landline set up from day one, they paid a �132

upfront connection fee. But as you've probably guessed, things

didn't run smoothly. Chris and his wife moved into their new house in

January but the phone line remained dead. My wife was explaining that

I've got a medical condition where we need a landline, so they were

fully aware of this and yep, it wouldn't be a problem. But nothing

was happening so Chris began to chase BT. I was starting to panic.

You could write a soap opera over it. People wouldn't believe what we

have had to do just to get a landline in the property. In March,

the company sent an engineer round who Chris says diagnosed a fault on

the line, but he soon left, unable to fix the problem. We were getting

sent to different call centres all over the world, getting different

excuses, different promises that never happened. Finally, last month

he was told that an engineer would come round to excavate his driveway

to reconnect the landline, but that didn't quite go to plan either.

last thing we got told, we need planning permission to dig a

six-foot gully across my own driveway. Why do you need planning

permission off the council? It's not council property! It doesn't make

sense, and twice I got told that. Come on, BT! But what's made Chris

really livid is that despite all the problems, BT has still taken an

average of �40 a month from the couple's bank account to pay for the

landline, broadband and television package. Oh, and that's on top of

that �132 connection fee they were charged six months ago. Now that

really takes the biscuit! I am so angry with them, it's beyond belief.

They've took my life off me for so long and charged me for the

privilege of it as well. And whilst Des doesn't mind having Chris as a

house guest, he's seen the toll it's taken on his friend. There's been

days when Chris has come here and you can clearly see the strain has

been too much for him to take. can't use my own house. There's

something wrong somewhere when you have a house that you want to live

in and you can't live in it because such a small thing has gone wrong.

Well, finally there's some good news for Chris. After we contacted BT,

their engineers have been round to his house and he now has a working

phone line. The company have also apologised for what they called the

"unacceptable delay" which they blame on a fault in an underground

cable and say he'll get a full refund!

Good result there! Now, we all know, the housing market is tough right

now, and if you need to sell quickly, it's even tougher. That's

why a number of companies have sprung up offering cut-price deals

to buy your home. But do they always live up to their promises? Rachel's

been investigating. They may only be bricks and mortar,

but our homes are our pride and joy. But what happens when for whatever

reason, say, financial problems, divorce, your house becomes a

burden? In the current property market, it's very easy to find

yourself locked in with no buyers and no way out. Divorce. We're

amicable, but there's only so long you can live in the same house with

somebody without feeling the need to move on. This bungalow has been home

for Kathleen Farrell and her husband for 12 years. They moved to the

village of Dihewyd, nine miles from Lampeter, in search of their dream

of a home in the country. Peace and quiet. My son had had health

problems, and we just wanted to give him a chance to have an opportunity

to go out and play and not worry whether he was going to come home

safe. So it really lived up to all the dreams? Yes, yes. It was our

dream home. But things changed and Kathleen's marriage failed. Four

years ago, they took the tough decision to put the house on the

market. Sadly, they have had no offers and they've had to share the

house as best they can. You're living in a house but you're not

together, you're not living as a couple. You're living totally

separate lives. Last November, growing ever more desperate,

Kathleen started searching the internet, looking at firms that

promise to buy your home quickly. When you need to sell your home

fast, you need to call Gateway Homes. The first to call her back

were Gateway Homes from Leeds. It claims to be one of the UK's leading

house-buying companies. We'll guarantee an offer within 24 hours

and buy your home for a cash lump sum. They had told us that they had

cases that had turned around in three weeks. We were told there was

no stress, less hassle. Gateway makes its money buying up homes at a

knock-down price at best, three quarters of the market value. It

then sells them on at a profit. The house had been for sale at �230,000.

Gateway offered just over �157,000. They promised a quick sale on

condition the couple took it off the market first. You were obviously

prepared to take a hit on the house, just to move on. Yes. We'd done our

homework, looked at the price and we could just about do it. With no

solicitor's fees, no survey fees... Gateway covers the cost of a

solicitor and a surveyor, although actually getting the survey took two

months. We were given a date in December and a time for someone to

come out and survey the property. We waited in all day and nobody came.

We didn't get a surveyor until the end of January in the end.

February, Kathleen says Gateway were telling her and her husband that

contracts were being drawn up and the sale was imminent. Reassured,

they each made offers on separate houses. Then, at the end of March,

the sale of Kathleen's home hit a massive stumbling block, one that

put an end to her hopes of a fresh start. Out of the blue, I got a

phone call from a gentleman who was a group manager and he stated that

they had over-valued the property and basically, they said the deal

wouldn't be going ahead. He said to me that he thought it was probably

only worth �150,000 altogether, and knowing they only pay about 70%, I

just said, "Forget it!" The deal collapsed, leaving Kathleen and her

husband still chained to their home, but now �2,000 out of pocket. That's

how much they estimate they've run up in legal costs for the homes they

had been trying to buy. Both deals also fell through. I've had to keep

moving removal dates three times, and then to be told it's not going

through, that everything's been a total waste of time. Our property

has been off the market for the last four and a half, five months, which

we could have missed out on a potential sale because of these

people. Kathleen is far from the only person to have problems with

Gateway Homes. The company is based in Yorkshire where lots of customers

have complained to Trading Standards about last-minute price drops,

concerns echoed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors

in Wales. This is known as gazundering whereby the purchaser

comes back at the last minute to reduce his offer, the opposite of

gazumping. These quick-sale companies offer a facility for

individuals who, as long as they're aware of the risks and the

implications, then they're providing a service. But the concern is, are

the public fully aware of what they're entering into? I don't think

they are. The Office of Fair Trading is so concerned it's launched an

investigation into the way that firms like Gateway Homes operate and

some of the claims they make. There is a big difference between the bold

promises in Gateway's TV advert and its website and the small print in

their contracts, something Kathleen discovered too late. Not only does

it give them a full year to actually get round to buying someone's home,

but the contract also locks the customer in for that 12 months and

they're liable for Gateway's costs if they try to walk away. And,

regardless of what price Gateway first offered Kathleen, the whole

deal was subject to them being happy with THEIR final valuation. It's

money we can't afford to lose. We not only lost out on the house

purchase, we've also lost money as well. And to me, that's not fair.

These people just seem to be getting rich quick on other people's misery.

Well, unfortunately, Gateway aren't budging on this. They say they're

perfectly entitled to pull out of a sale if they're unhappy with the

valuation and that they advised Kathleen not to incur any legal

expenses. They do admit, though, that her case should have been

handled more quickly. They say they've disciplined one member of

staff and put new procedures in place to stop it happening again.

Well, that's all for this week! Don't forget, if there's anything

you'd like us to investigate, get in touch. Call us on 03703 334 334 or

email [email protected]. Next week: How safe are we online? The tell-tale