Episode 6 X-Ray

programme - The Cardiff alarm company charging thousands for its

security guard service. But does it really exist?

How one couple's battle with their jeweller took the shine off their

big day. And are supermarket promotions always the special offers

Hello, and welcome to the programme. This week we're enjoying the

stunning views on the seafront here in Swansea.

Yes, it's a great place to get away from it all. But whether you live a

big town like this, or a village in the country there's one problem

which can affect us all. If you're worried about being

burgled, protecting your home with an alarm may seem like money well

spent but only if the service you paid for actually works. Rachel's

been finding out more. We all want to feel safe in our own

home, but sadly you never know if or when an uninvited visitor might come

calling. Across England and Wales, a home is burgled every two minutes

and the destruction the thieves leave behind can be devastating. So

it's no surprise that lots of us consider investing in an alarm

system to make us feel that bit more secure in our homes. But some alarm

companies seem to play on that fear. These customers all paid a fortune

for systems they say were mis-sold by a firm called Preferred Security

UK Ltd who claim to be based on the top floor of this building in

Cardiff. Annette Taylor from Newport was called out of the blue last

autumn. I had a telephone call offering an

alarm system free of charge and it would be installed for �99 instead

The very next day, a representative from Preferred Security paid Annette

a visit, but the system he was offering would cost a lot more than

the �99 she'd been quoted over the phone. The price had rocketed to

�3,000 for the alarm, servicing and five years monitoring, to be done by

a separate company. When Annette said that was too much, they dropped

the price to �900, plus �100 a month for a year.

We would be monitored with a monitoring company and there would

be a Manguard service so that if the alarm went off and they could not

get a response from either ourselves or our key holders, then the

Manguard would come. A Manguard conjures up all kinds of

images. So what exactly did Preferred Security mean? Well their

website doesn't clearly explain the Manguard's duties. What they do say

is he'll arrive quickly, day or night and even carry out first aid.

Sounds great! So this is the system then, which obviously looks quite

flash, but has it done the job? No, it hasn't. It's gone off several

times. We've had no response. So you actually had a false alarm,

but nobody came? No, no Manguard. We've got no proof

of this Manguard. No one seems to know what company it is or where

they're based, so as far as we can see we haven't got Manguard cover?

Retired priest, Keith Beardmore, also lives in Newport. Preferred

Security rang him in September, again pushing free alarm

installation. But the salesmen then persuaded Keith to hand over almost

�3,000. Keith already had an alarm, but was

impressed by the Manguarding service and the salesman's claims that

systems were linked to the police. So he signed up, but when his alarm

went off whilst he was on holiday, the monitoring centre didn't even

have his contact details! We were amazed to find out Preferred

Security hadn't told them the names of our key holders. And the

monitoring company said, "Well what do you expect us to do?" So we said

surely the Manguard could have come out then? And they said, "What is a

Manguard?" Over in Bridgend Donald Cole also fell for the salesman's

patter when he got a call from Preferred Security.

He paid �2,000 for his system in March. But when Donald's alarm did

go off, no Manguard arrived. He also says he wasn't told about the hefty

charges for automatic calls from his alarm to the monitoring company,

sometimes several times a day. It was only about 23p a time, but

there was quite a lot of them. They mount up.

None of these Preferred Security customers has ever seen a Manguard.

They all say they weren't told about those expensive automatic calls to

the monitoring company and for two of them that monitoring centre

didn't have their key holders' details. No wonder they're unhappy.

Even more disturbingly, we've been contacted by the family of a

91-year-old woman with dementia. They say she handed over �1500 last

month to a Preferred Security salesman, with another �1500 due in

instalments. The woman couldn't remember signing up. Luckily, the

engineer wasn't happy to go along with the installation. Preferred

Security makes lots of grand claims, including that they're one of the

few companies in Britain offering both police and Manguard response.

Now, some alarm companies do have the right approval to get a police

response to your home but Preferred Security isn't one of them, so

shouldn't be making that claim. In fact, last summer South Wales Police

issued a warning that Preferred Security were not endorsed by them

and appeared to be using aggressive tactics to sell their alarms. But

what about that Manguard service? To find out whether it really exists,

we're going to test the alarms of some disgruntled customers.

This is the little alarm button that I press. First, Donald Cole in

Bridgend. We've told his key holders to ignore any phone calls from the

monitoring centre. Because if no-one answers, Preferred Security should

send out a Manguard. They've stopped ringing so I'm

expecting any minute to see someone arrive.

Unlike most alarms, this one only goes off inside the house. So

neighbours are unlikely to call the police. We're on our own.

OK, it's been half an hour and still no-one's arrive, so I'll turn it

off. Really annoyed actually, I was expecting someone to come around and

inspect the place. Next stop - Annette's home in

Newport for a second test. Right, there we are. That's the

alarm set. Along comes Mr Burglar to let himself in. It's just before

twenty to two? He's in, isn't he. Let's see how long our Manguard

takes to come and save the day. Do you think he'll be handsome?

Here's hoping! Our fake burglar is making himself

at home. Annette says she was told a Manguard would arrive within five

minutes. Enough time for our helpful housebreaker to knock up a little

snack. I don't know of many burglars who'll

do that for you, but if he had been a real burglar, we'd still be

waiting for a Manguard. After ten minutes the alarm stops ringing, so

we set it off again and then wait?and wait. I spy with my little

eye something beginning with B. Birds? No. So it's actually been

over half an hour, we're still waiting, how do you feel? How secure

do you feel? I don't feel secure at all. Half an

hour and the Manguard should be here in five minutes, it's not good. The

system is not what they sold us. Two alarm tests, two no-shows, and

these Preferred Security customers want their money back. Time to see

what the company has to say, so we head to their registered office.

So this address in Cardiff is the last known place that Preferred

Security UK Ltd operated from but the people say they haven't seen

them for over a week, so it would appear that they've moved on.

But we're not giving up that easily. Our investigation leads us across

the Severn Bridge, to the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare. We've

spoken to a Preferred Security customer who's been told in the last

few days that they've moved here. It's not on any official paperwork,

but let's see if we can find them. And we discover that a number of

people who've been connected to the company have just rented an office

here. It appears they're in the process of setting up a new alarm

company. Doubtless they're going to be looking for new customers but the

question is, what does all this mean for the people who've already paid

thousands of pounds for an alarm from Preferred Security UK Ltd?

Some very unhappy customers there. Now we've been trying to get to the

bottom of all this. Rachel's here to tell us more. Hi Rachel. So what do

we know? Well it's a very tangled mess as you

saw in the report Preferred Security UK Ltd, the company our viewers

bought their alarms from, are being very cagey about where they're

actually operating from these days. Remember, the company has also

changed ownership and management in the past few months. Quite some

going for a firm that's only just over a year old. We've also

discovered that one of the original people involved in the company

already had a dubious track record in the alarm industry. This is also

someone who is a fraudster who uses multiple identities and has been

jailed for his part in stealing large sums of money from vulnerable

elderly people. X-Ray would like to name him, but at the moment we can't

do that at we have managed to speak to the current management on the

phone. They insist that this man hasn't had anything to do with

Preferred Security UK Ltd for some time. But his name keeps cropping up

in our investigation and we're yet to be convinced about that.

OK, and what about have the company had to say about their Manguarding

service, which our viewers say doesn't work?

Well, they insist it does exist and they deny mis-selling alarms. They

say the reason no Manguard turned up when we did the test at Annette's

house was that she'd cancelled her contract by then, which is news to

her! But that doesn't explain why they didn't turn up for our test at

Donald's house or all the other times our viewers alarms went off,

between October and May. They do admit there have been problems and

say they switched to a new Manguarding company last November.

Now we've spoken to the company they used before that date and they told

us they only ever attended one job and stopped providing the service

because they never got paid. Preferred Security denies this.

Remember they also say there'll be a police response in an emergency too

even though the police told us they're not on their approved list.

Their explanation for that is, you've guessed it, the Manguard

could call the police. If, of course, they ever turn up. Now,

Preferred Security have finally agreed to give Annette, Keith and

Donald their money back and we'll be checking to make sure that they do.

Rachel, thanks very much. Don't forget, if you've got story

you'd like us to look into, do get for two years so why can't Philip's

sat nav find it? And the couple who say their jeweller ruined their

engagement ring. One of the many costs for families

is the food costs. Are the deals all I do love a good bargain in the

supermarket, you see something on offer and you quickly grab it while

you can. Everybody likes a bargain don't they? My sister is one for

stocking up on like multi deals and extra value deals and things like

that, definitely. Sometimes sugar is dear one week and cheap the next, so

when it's cheap I buy more. But what if you went back to the same

supermarket the following week and it was still on offer, and the week

after that, and the week after that? You might start to wonder whether

that sale price was such a special offer after all? Last year, the

Office of Fair Trading gave our supermarkets a good talking to. It

said we were getting confused in the aisles because supermarkets weren't

always making their deals fair and meaningful. And it stressed that

consumers needed to be able to trust that a promotion really was a

special, time-limited bargain. The supermarket giants agreed that

things weren't always so clear for customers. And so, more than six

months ago they signed up to a new set of voluntary principles approved

by the OFT. All the major players apart from Asda said they'd play

ball. One of those principles clearly states that supermarkets

shouldn't sell a product at a lower, discounted rate for longer than

they've already sold it as its higher, original price. The

principles came into effect last November, so we decided to check out

the three biggest supermarket chains to see how they're running their

promotions these days. Now obviously the big supermarkets stock tens of

thousands of products every day, so we chose just 60 that you might find

in your average shopping basket. We then asked independent price checker

mysupermarket.com to monitor the price of each product between first

February and the 30th April at Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda. From

the products we looked at we found three examples where Tesco seems to

have broken the code, four from Sainsbury's and three from Asda,

although remember Asda didn't actually sign up to follow the

rules. And seeing as we're talking about prices going up and then down

again, we thought we'd ask Cardiff University's cheerleading squad, the

Snakecharmers, to help explain what we're talking about. First up,

Sainsbury's. Their price for Robinsons apple and blackcurrant

squash was constantly going up and down. Over the three months it

changed price five different times. During March and April that included

�1.40 for 14 days, after which it was on promotion for �1 for 28 days

- twice as long, and definitely not in the spirit of those rules.

Secondly, Tesco. Of the three examples we found, let's see what

happened to the price of an eight-pack of Pepsi cans. Over the

three months we monitored it, this product was sold at three different

prices. And how did they break the code? Well, it was sold at its

'full' price of �3.99 for just 16 days, but the 'special offer' of

�1.99 lasted more than twice as long - 33 days! And finally, Asda. They

sold Heinz reduced salt and sugar ketchup at �1.80 for a whopping 64

days. They described it as 'rolled back' from its full price of �2.14,

but it hadn't been at that price since last year. And even then for

just 46 days! But the big question is - why should we care about all

this? Surely sales that last a long time are great for consumers, aren't

they? James Foord is from mysupermarket.com. In my view it's

misleading because the sale price becomes the real price, so actually

customers aren't getting an offer at all they are getting the product at

its normal price. But the trouble is the consumer has no way of knowing

what they are getting is a genuinely good deal unless they are prepared

to put in the leg work and crunch the numbers and all the other things

that none of us have time to do. do you think consumers feel about

the apparent need for these principles? There's probably a hint

of sadness and frustration, because there's no smoke without fire and I

think the fact the OFT have introduced such principles means

clearly there are areas where retailers clearly need to change the

way they market and show these promotions. On the other hand I

think consumers will be quite glad because at least it means there's a

good chance that things will get more transparent for them. These

principles had been in place for more than two months before we

started our research, so what did the supermarkets have to say about

the apparent breaches we discovered? Both Sainsbury's and Tesco have held

their hands up to the examples we found and apologised. They say it

has taken a while to train up staff but they are committed to sticking

to the principles. And Asda told us they're dedicated to clear and

accurate pricing and welcomed the OFT's work but didn't sign up to the

principles because they believed they'd actually encourage yo-yo

pricing. For now, James thinks promotions should be taken with a

pinch of salt. Don't take everything for granted. When you see that big

red poster telling you this is the best offer of the year, don't

necessarily grab it. Now if you've ever splashed out on

an engagement ring, you'll know how special...and expensive it can be!

But one Bridgend couple's battle with their jeweller has really taken

the shine off their big day. Rachel's got the story.

Wearing an engagement ring is a symbol, it will always remind you of

the day that you said yes to the man you married. So you want to make

sure it's the right ring, especially if your hubby is spending the best

part of �3,000. Back in 2009, Gareth Holt and his now wife Rachel bought

her engagement ring from Ernest Jones in Swansea. It cost a whopping

�2,950. She tried it on and loved it immediately. It was definitely,

"Yes, this is the one for me, this is the one I want." And Gareth's

proposal to Rachel had gone perfectly too. I think she was

expecting me to propose on her birthday but I actually did it the

evening before as we were just on the banks of the Thames. With the

big day looming, next on the list was the wedding ring. Because the

engagement ring is quite a strange shape, they actually had to make the

wedding ring a specific shape that's like cut out to fit the engagement

ring so that they sat nicely together. So Gareth used a custom

design company to make his wife's wedding ring to make sure they

fitted together perfectly - just like Gareth and Rachel. Aah! They

just complemented each other. To see Rachel smiling, that's something

that's going to stick with me forever. And in the summer of 2011

they got married. I do love a happy ending. But just a few months later

things got a little rocky for the couple, when they discovered a small

splinter in the gold of Rachel's engagement ring. Because we bought

it through Ernest Jones, and it was under warranty we took it back to

Swansea. They confirmed it was a defect with the ring and it was no

damage that we'd caused in any way and agreed to repair it for free.

took two months, but finally Ernest Jones called to say the ring was

ready to collect. But straightaway, the couple spotted a problem.

had changed the claw setting on it completely so her wedding ring and

engagement ring no longer sat together there was a gap between the

two. Rachel was devastated, I was upset. And they never asked your

permission at any time. Never at any time did Ernest Jones contact us to

tell us what they were doing. was then asked to leave both her

engagement ring and her wedding ring at the Swansea store, so the company

could investigate further. How did you feel about the idea of

handing over your wedding band given what had happened to your engagement

ring? Given what had happened to the engagement ring, a mixture of fear

and dread really. Over the coming weeks the couple tried in vain to

agree a solution with Ernest Jones. We were fobbed off between several

different call centre staff, supposed managers, manager's

managers, all came up with different stories. They couldn't return it to

its original shape because the collar was discontinued. It was

impossible for them to hand-make a collar to fit the ring. At one stage

they actually suggested to us that they change the wedding ring as well

to suit what they had done to the engagement ring. To suit them and

what they had done? To suit them and their mistake! Ernest Jones made one

final offer to the couple and suggested finding a new engagement

ring for Rachel that would fit her wedding ring. It's like taking your

car in for repair and saying we can't do anything with it do you

want something else instead? That was the ring she'd chosen, that was

the ring she had expected to have for the rest of her life, and for

them to turn around and just offerto just change it for something else

because it suits us, unbelievable. What a nightmare! But things are

finally looking up for Gareth and Rachel. The engagement ring has now

been repaired by a different jeweller - the one which made their

wedding rings - and it's looking as good as new. Ernest Jones have

apologised - they're going to pay for those repairs and they're going

to refund the full cost of the engagement ring - almost �3,000!

What a great result! Now, when it comes to driving, I'll

admit, I'm not the best at finding my way from A to B. But relying on

new technology may not always work either, as Rhod's been finding out.

I like to think I have a pretty good sense of direction. But whenever I

head out on a journey, I still like to have a map for that extra back

up. But big paper ones can be a bit tricky to drive with. I like to put

a postcode into a nifty bit of kit and get going. These days, millions

of people rely on one these - a sat nav - but they're not foolproof.

We've all seen the news stories about sat navs taking drivers down

the wrong path. And that's why updating your machine is crucial.

Philip Bell from Anglesey relies on his sat nav for his voluntary work.

In the past he's downloaded new maps and was due for another update.

got an email from TomTom saying that I could upgrade my maps, and they

were 100% reliable, accurate. staying up to date doesn't come

cheap. A new TomTom costs from around �120. The company brings out

an updated map every three months. You can sign up to a year's supply

for �74.95. Or do what Philip did and buy a single map for �39.95.

Philip downloaded his new map of the UK and Ireland onto his device, but

when he drove along the three-mile Porthmadog bypass on the A487, which

opened back in 2011, he couldn't work out why it was missing from his

TomTom. Here we are on this lovely millions of pounds' worth of bypass

and I'm in the middle of a field. I can see the little arrow pointing me

in this green area, it's showing the river which we are about to cross

but it's not showing the bypass or the road. As you can see, it's just

absolutely nowhere. As soon as Philip spotted the missing roads he

got in touch with TomTom. He says he was told to check his serial number

to make sure he had downloaded the latest map. They confirmed he had,

so Philip assumed the maps weren't accurate. So I asked for my money

back and so they said you can't have you money back because you have now

used the map. So I'm thinking to myself, yes, of course I have used

the map, but unless I used it how would I know if you haven't updated

it. Philip was offered a voucher worth �40 but that didn't solve his

map problems. TomTom suggested that he go online where he could report

errors or missing roads to them. thinking to myself, why have I just

paid nearly �40 for me to tell them the road changes? After a phone

conversation and sending five emails to TomTom, Philip was no closer to

finding out why major roads were missing from his map. So what's

going on? When we asked TomTom to investigate, they told us the new

bypass is on the map that Philip bought and his problems are down to

the way he downloaded it. According to TomTom, in the past Philip bought

maps for Western Europe, but this time he chose a UK and Ireland map.

And that makes a difference. If he'd bought the same map, the new one

would have automatically replaced the old one. But because it covered

a different region, Philip needed to change his settings, to tell his sat

nav to use the latest version. But what's driven Philip round the bend

is that he feels TomTom could have solved this weeks ago when he first

told them about his missing roads. Luckily for Philip, X-Ray has

steered him in the right direction with a map he can rely on.

Well, hopefully now Philip can get back on the road with confidence.

Yes, and that's it for this week, and for this series. But we'll still

be hard at work over the summer, investigating your consumer