• From The BBC:

    Travellers who book holidays on the internet could receive more financial protection if things go wrong, under plans in a European review.Consumers who make up their own packages of flights, hotels and car rentals on one website or partner sites could get more protection. Currently, only those who have booked specific package deals have rights to cancel or refunds if operators go bust. A review will consider help for passengers if airlines collapse. “We need tough protection that gives all consumers booking a package holiday the peace of mind they deserve, and we need a level playing field so businesses compete on equal terms,” said EU Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva. The consumers’ association Which? welcomed the review. “The Package Travel Directive was drawn up almost 20 years ago, and while useful at the time, it doesn’t go far enough to protect today’s holidaymaker,” said Rochelle Turner, of Which? Holiday. “A significant number of people book hotels from a direct link on an…

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  • From The BBC:

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    Regina Finn of Ofwat: ”Customers are reaping the benefits of what they have paid in the past”
    Average water bills in England and Wales will be reduced slightly over the next five years, regulator Ofwat has announced.It has ruled that typical bills will fall by £3 to £340 by 2015, before the impact of inflation is considered. Publishing its final decisions on what firms can charge from 2010 to 2015, Ofwat said bills would be 10% lower than the level companies had asked for. The water companies said funding greater investment would be difficult. “It is quite possible that companies will have to adjust or stop their leakage programmes,” said Pamela Taylor, the chief executive of the industry body Water UK. “They will need to make sure they can fulfil their legal obligations. They’ve got challenges ahead such as climate change, with increased drought and flooding, [and] a growing population with more homes.”
    Pro…

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  • From The BBC:

    Many more pension schemes will close in the next five years, to both new and existing members, a report has said.Just 23% of final-salary pension schemes in the private sector are still open to new joiners, the National Association of Pension Funds also said. A year ago the figure stood at 28% but since then more schemes have closed, both to new members and existing ones. The NAPF said the drop in the number of schemes that were still open was greater than in the previous two years. Increasing trendThe annual survey found that 62% of pension schemes that were still open to new joiners expected to let their current members continue to build up more pension over the next five years. But 18% expected to move both their new and existing members into defined contribution (DC) schemes.
    Even more change is in store for schemes already shut to new joiners. Of these, 31% expect they will switch all their active members to a DC scheme for the future accrual of pension. Last month, an annual sur…

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  • From The BBC:

    HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has given extra time for people to confess to dodging tax through offshore accounts.The deadline of its current disclosure campaign has been extended from Monday 30 November to Monday 4 January 2010. That is the date by which UK taxpayers who have failed to pay tax on their offshore savings or investments must indicate they will pay up. The Revenue said the decision was taken to give banks extra time to contact their customers with offshore accounts. “We know that some bank customers will not be contacted by their banks in good time for the original deadline of 30 November so in the interests of fairness we have decided to extend our deadline by a month to 4 January,” said Dave Hartnett, HMRC’s permanent secretary for tax. “The new disclosure opportunity (NDO) is voluntary but from the start of the New Year we will begin to investigate those who were eligible to use the NDO but instead buried their heads in the sand.” Paying upPayment of any unpaid tax m…

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  • From The BBC:

    A record 83,000 scam e-mails offering fake tax refunds were reported to the UK’s tax authority in September.And on one day this month, 10,000 reports about “phishing” e-mails were made to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). The messages tended to start with a claim which read: “Following a review of your fiscal activity you are due a refund of tax of £x.” But HMRC stressed that it would never inform people of a tax rebate by e-mail or on the telephone. Sucker listsJohn Harrison, head of HMRC customer contact online, said that the messages tried to extract people’s credit card and bank account details. This left them at risk of their savings being stolen and the details sold on to professional criminal gangs, in so-called “sucker lists”. The latest version of this scam originated from various different websites, which operated for 20 minutes before changing their domain name. “We only contact customers who are due a refund in writing by post. We never use e-mails, telephone calls or ex…

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  • From The BBC:

    Online pricing practices are to be investigated by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).Price comparison websites which claim to give the best deals will be examined in one study focusing on prices. It will also look at activities such as “drip pricing”, where charges and extras are added during the purchase. Another study will look at customised pricing, where prices are individually tailored using information collected about a consumer’s internet use. Which? magazine welcomed the investigation, claiming that some companies are misleading consumers in a way that would never be tolerated outside of the web. “With some of the extras that are added while you’re buying online, it’s like someone accompanying you on your weekly shopping and adding products into your basket without your knowledge”, Which? technology editor Matthew Bath told BBC News. “We think consumers should be aware of the final price from the beginning”. Under scrutinyThe pricing practices going under the microscope include:…

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  • From The BBC:

    The High Court has approved the government’s plan for limited payments to those who lost money in the Equitable Life pension company.Last year, the Parliamentary Ombudsman called for a full compensation scheme for over one million Equitable members. The government’s rejection of that idea was challenged in a judicial review. But campaigners who launched the action say the court’s ruling means the government’s scheme will now have to cover more people than first planned. Lost savingsThe judicial review was brought by the Equitable Members Action Group (Emag).
    It challenged the refusal of the government to accept all the findings and recommendations of the Ombudsman’s report into the role of government departments in the Equitable Life collapse, published last year. The Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, found ten examples of maladministration which she said had contributed to the devastating losses suffered by pension savers with the Equitable after the society was forced to close in 2000. Instea…

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  • From The BBC:

    The value of assets held by local authority pension funds in England and Wales fell by £24bn, or 19%, in the 2008-2009 financial year.The figures have been published by the department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). The actuarial firm Watson Wyatt said the drop was roughly equivalent to all the money the councils took in council tax that year. The drop reflects the effect of plunging share prices at the time. Watson Wyatt said that when the local authority schemes were formally revalued next year, they were likely to show a bigger deficit than before. “Private sector employers know only too well that volatility in the pension fund can eat into the revenues generated by their core business and local authorities are learning the same lesson,” said John Ball of Watson Wyatt. However, he said the news was not as bad as it seemed. “March was the worst time to take a snapshot of pension schemes’ assets and strong stock market performance since then means some of the money…

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  • From The BBC:

    Lloyds Banking Group has agreed to sell its Halifax estate agency business to LSL Property Services for £1, and said 460 jobs would go.The loss-making business has 218 offices, 93 of which are franchise operations. There are 121 Halifax banking counters located in estate agents, which will close down in early 2010. Branches will be rebranded as one of LSL’s existing brands: Your Move, Reeds Rains or Intercounty. Lloyds said that 1,050 employees would be transferred to LSL after the sale and 360 of the 460 jobs due to go will be full-time positions. ‘No longer integral’It said that compulsory redundancies would be a last resort. The jobs will go among staff operating the banking counters within estate agents. Lloyds said that the vast majority of the branches had a Halifax or Lloyds TSB branch within one mile of them. Lloyds said that the decision followed a strategic review, “which concluded that an estate agency operation is no longer integral to its business model”….

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  • From The BBC:

    The government has appointed two troubleshooters to lead a review of student loans problems, which have left tens of thousands waiting for funds.Higher Education Minister David Lammy told MPs he was sorry students and their families had been worried and frustrated by poor customer service. Two independent experts have been appointed to head an internal review into the problems in loan applications. The Tories say it is a shambles causing “enormous distress to many students”. They tabled a debate in the Commons on the issue, after delays in the processing of loan applications left tens of thousands of students without their full loans and grants at the start of the university term. ‘Gone wrong’The independent experts are former London South Bank University vice-chancellor Sir Deian Hopkin and Bernadette Kenny of HM Revenue and Customs. Mr Lammy said the loans problems had “had a profoundly regrettable effect on individual students and their families”. The body responsible for organising…

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