Jon McKnight

Direct Line's reputation on the line?

Why does Direct Line use an 0845 number for its car insurance Customer Services? And why doesn't it allow customers to e-mail it?

The Customer Services woman I've just spoken to after a seventeen-and-a-half-minute wait on hold couldn't answer either of those questions.

So I was forced to speculate myself.

Could it be, I asked her, that Direct Line makes huge profits every year from forcing customers to ring expensive 0845 numbers when it could have used an ordinary landline number that almost everyone could ring for free as part of their bundled calls packages?

Could it be that Direct Line doesn't allow customers to e-mail it because that would be free, fast, and efficient - as opposed to having them waiting ages on over-priced phone lines?

All I'd wanted to do was e-mail a PDF of a proof of no-claims bonus to Direct Line. It would have taken seconds and cost nothing.

Yet I had to wait, listening to the most mind-numbingly repetitious music on hold, for more than a quarter of an hour before I even spoke to a human being.

No, I couldn't e-mail it, she said, because they don't ue e-mail. And no need to check the date of this posting; I am writing in the 21st Century.

The woman was happy for me to fax her, had I had a machine to hand, but couldn't accept that a scanned and e-mailed PDF of a document had exactly the same status and properties as one that had been faxed.

If Direct Line is unable to answer its phones more quickly than that, why doesn't it make its customer service line a freephone number? That would mean that instead of the customer paying for Direct Line's inefficiency, the firm would pick up the tab itself with a huge phone bill.

But I suspect that the firm would simply begin answering quickly, as it should, to avoid the costs that it doesn't mind passing on to us.

If more people complained about it, she said, Direct Line might take notice.

I know readers of this column do like a challenge, so there you are!

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards!

MPs to investigate Bradford & Bingley shareholders' scandal

Bradford & Bingley shareholders who feel that no-one has considered them or listened to their complaints since the bank was nationalised in a behind-closed-doors scandal will finally get a chance to have their say, thanks to MPs.

The powerful and influential Treasury Select Committee has announced an extra hearing, in November, into the goings-on that led to Bradford & Bingley's 940,195 shareholders losing all of their money.

The new hearing, announced today, is in addition to the hearing that will see the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chairman of the Financial Services Authority summoned to appear before it to answer tough questions about the banking crisis.

As reported in this column, the committee has invited the public to submit questions to the committee about the banking crisis generally - but the announcement of the new and separate hearing suggests that the demand for answers from aggrived B&B shareholders has already been overwhelming enough to merit it.

The new hearing is into "the performance and actions of two banks that have recently been nationalised: Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley", according to an official press release from the committee.

The date has yet to be decided, but the committee will invite written evidence on the specific topic of Bradford & Bingley when it announces the date and witnesses for the hearing.  

Further written evidence, it says, will be invited at a later stage in the inquiry. Details about the submission of written evidence will be given in a subsequent press notice.

This column, the home of the Bradford & Bingley Shareholders' Campaign, urges all of Bradford & Bingley's shareholders to submit questions to the special committee hearing as soon as the date is announced... unless, of course, they're happy to have had their shareholdings peremptorily "extinguished" and wouldn't dream of tackling the perpetrators or demanding redress and compensation!

For the record, here is the committee's press notice in full:

22 October 2008: For Immediate Release

TREASURY COMMITTEE ANNOUNCES NEXT STEPS IN BANKING CRISIS INQUIRY

The Treasury Committee announced today that it will take evidence from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chairman of the Financial Services Authority at the start of its inquiry into the Banking Crisis, and also set out plans for the next steps in its inquiry.

Initial hearing

The first public evidence session will take place at 4.00 pm on Monday 3 November 2008 in the Grimond Room, Portcullis House, with the following witnesses appearing together:

The Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer
Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England
Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, Chairman of the Financial Services Authority

As previously announced (in the Committee’s press notice of 14 October, the Committee is inviting members of the public to send in questions they would like to see put to the witnesses, which can be sent to bankingcrisis@parliament.uk up to 48 hours before the start of the hearing. 

Further information about submitting questions is given in Note 2 at the end of this announcement.

Listed financial institutions during the current period of heightened instability

The Committee has decided that, during the current period of heightened instability, it would not be appropriate for the Committee to take oral evidence from listed financial institutions. The Committee does expect to take evidence from such institutions at a later stage in its inquiry.

Topics for further hearings planned for November

The Committee plans to hold three further hearings in November on the following topics:

• The performance and actions of two banks that have recently been nationalised: Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley;
• Fair value accounting and accounting standards, and their role in the current financial crisis;
• Incentive structures (including remuneration policies) within financial institutions, and their potential effects on financial stability, both at the institutional and system-wide level.

The Committee will invite written evidence on these three specific topics when it announces the dates and witnesses for these hearings.  Further written evidence will be invited at a later stage in the inquiry. Details about the submission of written evidence will be given in a subsequent press notice.

1. PRESS NOTICE ISSUED ON 14 OCTOBER 2008

For details of the Committee’s press notice issued on 14 October, see:

http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/treasury_committee/tsc0708pn74.cfm

2. GUIDANCE FOR SUBMITTING QUESTIONS RELATING TO HEARING ON 3 NOVEMBER 2008

Questions can be submitted up to 48 hours before the hearing, which will take place at 4pm on 3 November. The Committee regrets it cannot accept any other form of submission apart from email to the following address: bankingcrisis@parliament.uk

Submissions should take the form of questions rather than statements and should be no longer than 100 words.  If  you wish to remain anonymous, please state clearly at the beginning of the email. 

The Committee regrets that not all questions submitted can be guaranteed to be asked.

FURTHER INFORMATION:
Committee Membership is as follows: Rt Hon John McFall (Chairman), Nick Ainger, Mr Graham Brady, Mr Colin Breed, Jim Cousins, Mr Philip Dunne, Mr Michael Fallon (Sub-Committee Chairman), Ms Sally Keeble, Mr Andrew Love, Mr George Mudie, Mr Siôn Simon, John Thurso, Mr Mark Todd, Sir Peter Viggers.

(Press release ends)

DON'T FORGET!  This column will publish the date of the meeting as soon as it is announced, and give details of how to submit questions or written evidence. 
Keep checking this column for details and all the latest news on the Bradford & Bingley Shareholders' Campaign - and if you can mention it or even put a link to www.jonmcknight.typepad.com on appropriate forums or message boards, it can only add to our strength.

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards!

Bradford & Bingley shareholders – a chance to have your say

At last, Bradford & Bingley shareholders are about to get a chance to have their say about the needless nationalisation that robbed them of their investments.

The powerful Treasury Select Committee of the House Of Commons is inviting members of the public to submit questions about the banking crisis to be answered by the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, Bank of England chairman Mervyn King, and Financial Services Authority chairman Lord Turner.

With 940,195 Bradford & Bingley shareholders deprived of millions of pounds by the nationalisation that many consider unnecessary, the committee can expect a lot of questions!

John McFall, chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, says the public should have a chance to question those in authority, so he's inviting the public to submit questions by e-mail to bankingcrisis@parliament.uk

Questions are limited to 100 words - which isn't much, considering the number of questions shareholders are entitled to know the answers to - but at least they will be heard.

So this column urges all those shareholders who believe they were wrongly deprived of their shares to e-mail the committee at the address above.

The more people who e-mail, the more chance there is that Mr McFall, his committee, the Chancellor, the chairman of the Bank of England and the chairman of the FSA actually take notice of the shareholders' plight.

If shareholders don't bother to register their protest and question those responsible for their losses, they have only themselves to blame.

And if anyone needs inspiration for a question to ask, look at the previous posting in this column and help yourself.

Select Committees, for those unfamiliar with them, are extraordinarily powerful committees of the House Of Commons that have the power to summon even the most reluctant Ministers and officials to testify before them.

The press release says the trio in this case have been "invited" to appear before the committee, but should any of them not entirely relish the idea, they will be aware that the committee has the power to drag them there kicking and screaming if necessary.

The committees are also renowned for putting their witnesses on the spot and interrogating them, on camera, with all the enthusiasm and clinical expertise of the best QCs.

So don't miss this golden opportunity to have your say and ask the uncomfortable questions that Messrs Darling, King and Turner would rather you didn't!

Full details of the committee's press release are available on its site  and I'm reproducing it below in its entirety in the hope that fellow shareholders will be inspired to take Mr McFall up on his offer.

The full text of the Treasury Select Committee press release follows:

TREASURY COMMITTEE INVITES QUESTIONS FROM THE PUBLIC TO PUT TO THE CHANCELLOR ON THE BANKING CRISIS
Following the unprecedented financial intervention announced by the Chancellor over recent days, the Treasury Committee today announces it will undertake an urgent inquiry into the banking crisis.
John McFall, Chairman of the Committee said:
“This inquiry will take a fundamental look at the causes of the present banking crisis, the current responsibilities of the banks and the Government to the taxpayer, and the future shape of the financial and regulatory landscape.”
Given the public concern about the stability of the UK banking system and commitment of such a large sum inherent in the Chancellor’s proposals, the Committee is asking members of the public to send in questions they would like to see put to the following witnesses, who the Committee has invited to appear as soon as possible.
Witnesses:
The Rt. Hon. Alistair Darling MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer
Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England
Lord Adair Turner, Chairman, Financial Services Authority
Questions should be emailed to the following address:
bankingcrisis@parliament.uk
The date of the hearing will be announced in due course.
John McFall, Chairman of the Committee said:
“Taxpayers are naturally very concerned about the scale of this investment. The Committee hopes that by providing people with the chance to have us put their questions to those in charge, we can provide a constructive way of engaging the public on a matter of such deep concern to the whole country.”
FURTHER INFORMATION ON SUBMITTING QUESTIONS
Questions can be submitted up to 48 hours before the hearing, which will be announced at a later date. The Committee regrets it cannot accept any other form of submission apart from email to the following address:
bankingcrisis@parliament.uk
Submissions should take the form of questions rather than statements and should be no longer than 100 words.  If you wish to remain anonymous, please state clearly at the beginning of the email. 
The Committee regrets that not all questions submitted can be guaranteed to be asked.
Full written submissions of evidence for the inquiry will be solicited at a later date.

Shareholders who wish to contact committee chairman John McFall directly can e-mail him at john.mcfall@blueyonder.co.uk  

If anyone who e-mails a question to the committee wishes to see a copy of the question appear in this column, please cc or bcc your e-mail to shareholders (at) poshaddress.com and we'll publish the best.

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards!

10 questions Bradley & Bingley's boss won't answer

Bradley & Bingley boss Richard Pym is refusing point-blank to answer any questions about the reassurances he gave shareholders only two trading days before the bank was nationalised and they lost all their money.

Despite numerous requests for interviews since the shock nationalisation, Mr Pym is still refusing to explain himself to investors who bought shares in the bank after reading his assurances that the bank was "well capitalised" and "fit for purpose going forward".

He issued his statement on Thursday 25 September, and said nothing to contradict those assurances before the close of the Stock Market on Friday 26 September.

As Bradford & Bingley's 940,195 shareholders now know to their cost, the bank was nationalised without warning before the Stock Market opened again on Monday 29 September.

The series of events raises a number of questions to which Mr Pym, of all people, ought to know the answers.

And there are many shareholders who believe that, as the £750,000-a-year Chief Executive Officer of Bradford & Bingley, Mr Pym might want to say at least something to shareholders. Maybe even a sentence including the word "sorry".

But he won't say a word. 

Does he even care? We don't know, because he won't say.

As a journalist and Bradford & Bingley victim (just £3,700 in shares in my case) I approached Bradford & Bingley's press office requesting an interview and was told it was extremely unlikely he would agree.

I e-mailed a list of 10 detailed questions that shareholders want Mr Pym to answer, hoping he would at least have the manners to offer a written reply, but all I received back was the following short message from the press office: 

"Many of your questions relate to the nationalisation of B&B plc and, therefore, you should direct your questions to The Government, which is B&B's single shareholder.

"All statements made by the Company prior to nationalisation were entirely accurate."

That, as we journalists know, is called passing the buck.

However, there is a significant admission in the second sentence. If Mr Pym's assessment of B&B's trading position was correct, as he now maintains it was, that throws doubt on the need for the nationalisation to have happened either at all or at that time.

Here, for the record, are the questions that Mr Pym refuses to answer:

1 - Why have you declined to give any interviews or make any Press statements since the nationalisation?

2 - There are 940,195 Bradford & Bingley shareholders who believe the nationalisation was not necessary at the time and want to know if you share their view. What do you have to say to them?

3 - You issued statements a few days before the nationalisation in which you reportedly said Bradford & Bingley was "well capitalised" and "fit for purpose going forward". Is it correct that as the CEO of what was then a listed company, your comments were subject to regulation and therefore had to be accurate so that shareholders were not misled?

4 - Will you confirm that the statements you made were indeed accurate?

5 - As nothing happened to the detriment of Bradford & Bingley's trading position in the few trading days between you issuing those encouraging statements and the nationalisation being imposed, were you (with hindsight) wrong in your assessment of Bradford & Bingley's trading viability?

6 - If you still believe you were correct in your assessment of B&B's trading viability, do you think the nationalisation was unnecessary at that time?

7 - What do you have to say to people who read your statements, believed them, and bought shares in Bradford & Bingley on the strength of your personal reassurances, only to have their shareholdings "extinguished" by the nationalisation a few days later?

8 - If you now believe your assessments of B&B's trading viability were wrong - or, if you believe they were correct and that, consequently, the nationalisation should not have been imposed - have you considered offering your resignation as a matter of honour or in a gesture of protest?

9 - Did you lose your own personal shareholdings in Bradford & Bingley as a result of the nationalisation or were you able to sell them in the knowledge that they were about to become valueless - in which case, at what stage did you sell them, and how much did you receive for them?

10 - As the nationalisation was only rumoured after trading on the stock market had closed for the week, were you able to dispose of what were about to become valueless shares before the market closed on the Friday - and if you were aware of the nationalisation, why did you not warn other shareholders so that they, too, could sell their shares and recover something of their investment?

No-one is suggesting that Mr Pym acted improperly at any time. Indeed, the only answer his press office has given - ie that the statements he made on the Thursday were correct - support this column's and other shareholders' belief that he was telling the truth when he said the bank was still viable.

But shareholders do want to know - and deserve to hear it from the man himself - whether he believes that the nationalisation was unnecessary and that the loss of their shares and the money tied up in them was also unnecessary.

If he came out and said so, it would add immense weight to shareholders who are campaigning for full compensation for their losses.

But if Mr Pym doesn't say anything, he's effectively leaving them to drown when he could, if he chose, throw them a lifeline.

So why won't he speak? We deserve to be told.

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards!

Sign the Bradford & Bingley petition!

Bradley & Bingley shareholders have started a petition on the Number 10 website calling for full compensation for their lost shares and, gratifyingly, making many of the same points that this column has been making ever since the shock nationalisation.

The petition reads: 

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ensure investors in Bradford & Bingley receive a fair price for their shares.

Bradford & Bingley was a going concern and could have continued trading or have been bought by another company. In nationalising the company and taking the shares into Treasury ownership, the Government have effectively stolen from the shareholders of the company. Recompense is due and the Government must make a fair and reasonable payment for the shares it has compulsorily acquired.

I urge every B&B victim who has even the slightest interest in getting their money back to sign the petition now.

You can find the petition at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Bradford-Bingley/ or just click here .

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards!

John Redwood smells the B&B rat, too

Bradford & Bingley shareholders who lost a fortune when the Government unexpectedly nationalised the bank, "extinguishing" their shares (to use the official terminology), may take some comfort from the knowledge that at least one MP shares their belief that the nationalisation was ill-timed and unnecessary.

Tory John Redwood, writing before the nationalisation happened, posted a particularly prescient observation on his blog, John Redwood's Diary, that questioned why nationalisation should have been contemplated at all.

He points out that just because B&B's share price was falling, that didn't mean it had to be nationalised, and that even a bank could carry on trading despite a low share price if people were happy to leave their deposits in it, as they were with B&B.

His argument is compelling, and supports the views of B&B shareholders who have complained to this column about they way their shares were seized without notice and devalued to zero at a stroke.

This adds to the growing calls for an explanation from Gordon Brown - did he panic and nationalise unnecessarily? - and for full compensation for 940,195 B&B shareholders who were robbed by him that day.

We need an official and independent enquiry into the events leading up to the nationalisation, and I trust Mr Redwood will be among the first to use his considerable Parliamentary clout and call for one.

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards

Gordon Brown and the B&B scandal

An open letter to Gordon Brown on behalf of Bradley & Bingley shareholders

Dear Prime Minister

On behalf of the 940,195 shareholders in Bradford & Bingley who have lost £123.5 million in the nationalisation, I'd like to ask you the following questions - the answers to which may well result in almost a million votes being cast for or against you at the next General Election.

A million votes could easily decide that election and result in David Cameron settling into the rather hot seat you're sitting on now in Number 10, so I trust you will take the concerns of Bradford & Bingley shareholders seriously and provide straight answers to these straight questions.

1 - Why were Bradford & Bingley shareholders not consulted in any way about the future of the company in which they had invested their money - and why were they not allowed to exercise their democratic and legal right to call for an Extraordinary General Meeting?

2 - Richard Pym, the CEO of Bradford & Bingley, said the bank was "well capitalised" and "fit for purpose going forward" - two trading days before you stepped in to nationalise it. His comments were taken seriously by myself and other investors who put their money into B&B shares after hearing them, on the grounds that (a) he of all people ought to know, and (b) any public comments he makes are strictly regulated, so have to be true. Nothing happened to B&B's traqding position in the period between his comments being uttered and you nationalising the bank, so either Mr Pym was deliberately misleading shareholders (which I doubt), he was catastrophically wrong (which I also doubt), or you decided to nationalise it anyway even though B&B would have been able to continue trading for some time. So which of those possibilities represents the truth? If Mr Pym did mislead shareholders, will you be ordering an enquiry? And if you did nationalise B&B at a time when it was not strictly necessary, how could it be legally or morally justifiable to do so when it stripped almost a million shareholders of their hard-earned money?

3 -  Why did you not suspend dealing in B&B shares immediately after Mr Pym issued his comments (if you believed he was wrong)? Your failure to do so meant that shareholders like me were allowed to climb aboard, like last-minute passengers joining a doomed Titanic, when you knew all along that it was heading for an iceberg. To prevent shareholders from pouring their money into a bank that you knew was about to be nationalised would have been the decent thing to do. And whatever else people say about you, the one thing that distinguished you from most policitians was your inherent decency. But how does your reflection look in the mirror these, days, Mr Brown? 

4 - If Mr Pym was right, and B&B could have carried on trading successfully for some time, then how do you justify seizing the assets of almost a million shareholders in a move that Fidel Castro and numerous banana republic dictators would have been proud of as a strike against capitalism? Is this really the sort of behaviour we should expect from an elected politician in a democracy in the 21st Century?

5 - You have muttered something about shareholders receiving compensation "in due course", yet even the least cynical of us do not expect to see any of our money back any time soon. By nationalising the bank without warning, you diminished its value at a stroke, prompting a fire sale, so the real value of shareholders' investments will have catastrophically reduced. And that's your fault, Mr Brown.

6 - Can you confirm that if you instruct valuers to decide what compensation shareholders will receive, if any, you don't allow an army of them at a fee rate of several hundred pounds an hour to spend so long working it out that their fees effectively wipe out anything that might have been left for shareholders?

7  - Why were you so concerned to protect the interests of B&B savers yet showed no concern whatsoever about the interests of its shareholders? Don't shareholders matter?

8  - By nationalising Bradford & Bingley without warning, you have sent out a message to investors that it is no longer safe to buy shares in any company as they can lose all their money and have all their rights extinguished on a politician's whim. Do you realise what would happen to this country's economy if investors throughout the UK sold their shares wholesale in an attempt to put their money into safer forms of investments?

We need answers to all of these questions, Mr Brown. Every one of Bradford & Bingley's 940,195 shareholders will want to hear what you say - and if you ignore them, you will do so at your electoral peril.

We await your response.

Jon McKnight

Plymouth

4 October 2008

Bradford & Bingley shareholders shafted

The shocking news that Bradford & Bingley's 940,135 shareholders have had their entire investment seized and confiscated by the Government raises a number of serious but unanswered questions.

FIRST: was B&B's chief executive Richard Pym deliberately misleading shareholders or simply catastrophically wrong when he said on Thursday last week that the bank was "strongly capitalised" and that he was planning to put its problems behind it and "have a business which is fit for purpose going forward"?

That reassurance from the man who above all others should have known the truth about B&B was sufficient for people like me to buy shares in the bank.

Yet by the end of the following business day, Friday, rumours were already circulating that the bank might be nationalised.

As nothing had materially changed in B&B's circumstances in the intervening period, it is incredible that the same bank said by Mr Pym to be strongly capitalised and fit for purpose was judged only hours later to be so precarious that it needed nationalising as a pre-emptive measure.

SECOND: why weren't shareholders consulted over B&B's future? Why was there no Extraordinary General meeting or even any kind of cummunication between the company and its shareholders?

THIRD: what does Gordon Brown mean when he says, as if by way of an afterthought, that shareholders in B&B will be compensated "in due course"?

Could he be referring to the same sort of procedure that has so far seen no Northern Rock shareholders receive a penny?

FOURTH: if it takes, say, a year for the dust to settle before it can be calculated how much, if anything, shareholders might receive in compensation for having their bank stolen from them, will the Government send in a team of highly-paid accountants to spend that year running up exorbitant fees that would eat away at any money that might have come to shareholders - or will it wait for the year to be up and then send them in, at which point they could probably calculate the answer, even allowing for a long lunch-break, within a working day?

FIFTH: as there are almost a million B&B shareholders and I seem to be the only one whose voice has been heard through being quoted in stories in just about every national newspaper in the UK, are the others just going to lie down and take this without a fight?

We may have lost any power we allegedly had as shareholders, but we do represent one sixtieth of the population and a statistically significant chunk of the electorate at the next election.

We deserve to be heard.

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards!

PS: if you care about this issue and have a blog, please link to this and spread the word.

Bradford & Bingley - a million losers

The Chancellor confirmed this morning that shareholders in Bradford & Bingley were at the bottom of his priority list and probably won't get a penny.

Nobody asked him why shareholders weren't consulted about the dramatic changes to the company in which they had a stake, and the Chancellor mentioned shareholders at the end of his interview on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme almost as an afterthought.

Despite promising to release a statement before the Stock Market opened at 8am, the first news we shareholders had was after that.

The BBC reported that the FSA had suspended dealing in B&B's shares earlier in the morning, but there was no mention of that in any news report before the market opening and even a major online sharedealing services like Barclays Stockbrokers failed to say anything about it on its site.

The shareholders don't seem to have a voice, which is why I've spoken to various news organisations to at least point out that we've been shafted and we've noticed - and why ITN have just filmed an interview with me for the ITV Lunchtime News.

I said that we don't have a voice. But we do. There are almost a million of us, and countless victims of the Northern Rock nationalisation. 

If we all felt sufficiently aggrieved by the policitians' callous disregard for us, we could make a significant and possibly Government-changing difference at the next election.

Perhaps the Conservatives and Lib Dems would care to let the world know whether they would have conspired in robbing us of our investments as shareholders had they been in Gordon Brown's shoes.

I'd like to know before I cast my next vote.

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards!

Bradford & Bingley news update

Even Bradford & Bingley's most senior Press Officer doesn't know what's going on! Asked by this column to explain why shareholders weren't even consulted about the takeover, and to say what has happened to the shares that almost a million of us still hold, this is all she could say:

Afraid I can't answer all your questions as we have not been updated by the Bank of England. the reason why shareholders haven't been consulted is because the Government has taken us over and they seem to put savers and borrowers ahead of shareholders. if you'd like further information i suggest you contact either the Chancellor or the PM.

Nickie Aiken
Head of Group PR
Bradford & Bingley plc

That's the equivalent of shrugging and saying "God knows". Or in this case, Gordon.

So we shareholders still don't know whether the shares we held that were worth 20p each on Friday are now worth anything at all.

I trust readers of this column will rermember this debacle should they ever be tempted to buy shares in any company again.

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards!

Bradford & Bingley shareholders 'robbed'

The nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley is the most blatant case of legalised bank robbery this country has ever seen, with almost a million shareholders likely to lose a fortune.

The whole point of having shareholders in a democracy is that they own the company and can decide its fate between them, including sacking the board or deciding to sell to a new owner if they wish.

Yet the Treasury has apparently decided, behind closed doors, to take over ownership of Bradford & Bingley and sell off the viable bits to anyone it chooses.

There has been no consultation with the shareholders whatsoever. There is no statement on the Bradford & Bingley corporate website. And the only information worth having seems to be coming from Robert Peston at the BBC.

Surely, at the very least, B&B's board should have called an extraordinary general meeting for shareholders to decide the way forward.

It is customary in this country for owners to be consulted on what becomes of their property before it changes ownership.

Anything else is classed as theft.

If Gordon Brown had walked up to me in the street, pulled a gun, and run away with £3,700 of my money, he'd be sitting in a cell right now and the country would be facing a General Election.

Instead, my shares - and those of 940,195 other B&B investors - appear to have been confiscated.

At the close of the stock market on Friday, those shares were worth 20 pence each. What, if anything, are they worth now? Do they even still exist?

We have no idea, and even the incredibly well-informed Robert Peston doesn't offer any information what might become of them.

While it's only fair that depositors at B&B are protected, surely shareholders have rights, too?

It's true that investing in shares carries risks. We all know and understand that. But there is a monumental difference between the risk of a company going bust, rendering shares worthless, and the risk of a government stepping in and helping itself to the company without even consulting its shareholders.

That sort of thing was reputed to happen in the Soviet Union of old or in banana republics - but this is the United Kingdom in the 21st Century.

Once word gets around that the Government reserves the right to seize private companies on a whim without reference to its owners, rendering shareholders' investments valueless overnight, people are going to be afraid to buy shares at all.

And that, more than anything, could bring about the wholesale collapse of the stock market.

In the meantime, we shareholders are waiting for any kind of news from anyone about us. We might have had our company confiscated, but what about the money that was ours as recently as Friday?

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards!

Love at first flight

Anyone who read my piece about US Airways, perhaps more appropriately known as U/S Airways, might be forgiven for thinking I had something against aviation generally.

Not a bit of it.

I spent 18 months acquiring a Private Pilot's Licence at Exeter Flying Club, have wingwalked six times with AeroSuperBatics, the UK's world-famous flying circus, and produced a six-part TV series for Discovery RealTime called Martin Shaw: Aviators, in which the star of Judge John Deed and The Professionals met his aviation heroes and went for a once-in-a-lifetime flight in a Spitfire.

In short, I love aviation. But not the sort of aviation that U/S Airways and its scheduled airline competitors indulge in.

Flying doesn't have to be like that. Having to arrive several hours before check-in. Shuffling shoeless through security. Trying to find a spare seat in the departure lounge. Crammed into sardine seating. Joining endless queues at Customs. More shuffling through security. Then staring intently at the carousel for ages in the hope that your luggage might just have made it to your destination, too.

There is a better way.

Imagine being able to fly where you want, when you want, with the aircraft waiting for you when you arrive instead of you arriving and waiting for it.

A pilot who calls you by your name. Flight crew who know what you like to eat. Comfortable seating with room to open your laptop lid - or plenty of room to take your PA along to do the typing for you!

And no need to make the trek to Heathrow or Gatwick, as the aircraft comes to whichever airport is nearest and most convenient for you.

It's like having your own private jet without having the expense and headaches of owning one. And once you've tried it, you'll never want to fly by a conventional airline again.

Of all the private jet charter companies I've come across, the one that impresses me most is Day Aviation.

Owned by Captain Paul Day, an airline pilot who has spent his entire life in aviation, Day Aviation is one of those niche operations that most of us have never heard of but which is well known and respected by the people who use it again and again.

Captain Day, as befits the founder of a private air charter operation whose clients expect the utmost discretion, doesn't talk about the people who fly with Day Aviation.

Those clients - who include Royalty, Government Ministers, celebrities, Premiership football teams, senior executives of banks, and self-made millionaires - prefer it that way.

If they suddenly need to get from The Ritz to Monte Carlo in time for dinner with a starlet at The Hermitage, they know that Day Aviation will be able to procure them a luxury aircraft, assemble a crew, and have them ambling through Casino Square in plenty of time and without a well-coiffed hair out of place.

And unlike most airline travel, they can stop on the way and pick up a friend or a business contact.

Could you imagine asking a British Airways pilot if he'd mind just stopping off in Surbiton because Bunny's just decided she can make the party after all? 

But private jet hire can do that. Booking a round-the-world business trip for 200 people can be a logistical and financial nightmare - especially if the passengers aren't all starting from the same place - but an air charter business of the calibre of Day Aviation can arrange individual connections for each passenger, whether that's by a light aircraft from a private airfield a mile from their home or a helicopter flip from their back garden, if large enough.

Perhaps surprisingly, it's not as expensive as many of us might think. That's because flights can be shorter and more direct, the aircraft can be chosen for the number of passengers it will take, avoiding the wastage of empty seats, and a lot of the waiting time and travelling to airports isn't necessary.

That's why a growing number of people who work in finance or run their own companies use Day Aviation. They want to fly on their terms, to their timetable, and to the standards of comfort to which they've become accustomed.

Others, of course, just want to celebrate an occasion with a bit of glamour. Turning up at a wedding in a Ferrari will raise the odd envious eyebrow, but arriving in a helicopter is rather more impressive  if you want to make a hat-clutching, skirt-billowing, "who-on-Earth's-that" sort of entrance.

And quite a few of Day Aviation's clients do. Not just for private events, but for business meetings. Land on your prospective client's lawn for a meeting, and he'll remember the day for a long time to come. Offer to take him up for a quick flip, and he'll remember it for a lifetime!

Jon McKnight

Ouch, Doctor, that hurts!

Elderly patients and people on low incomes are being ripped off in a new telephone scandal that's using Britain's GPs as unwitting accomplices. 

Callers to local GPs' surgeries are finding that the old landline number has been replaced with a "lo-call" 0844 number that means many patients have to pay for the call for the first time. 

Millions of patients have bundled call packages that allow them to ring any landline for free - except for non-geographic numbers like 0870, 0845 and, in this case, 0844. 

This means that ringing the old surgery landline would cost them nothing, but ringing the new 0844 number will cost them extra. 

I discoverered this when I rang my GP and found the landline number dead. I tried from a different phone, and looked the number up again. Still dead. 

I looked it up online at BT.com, but the landline number was still the same. Worried that something might have happened to the surgery, I drove several miles to it only to find everything fine and a receptionist who couldn't understand why I was bothered that the number had been changed to an 0844. 

I pointed out that patients would now have to pay when they might not have had to previously, but she was unmoved. 

The Practice Manager intervened and tried to convince me that the surgery was doing patients a favour by having a number that was cheaper to ring than before. 

She was either unaware or didn't care that the huge number of patients with bundled calls were now having to pay for the first time. 

She claimed that the system was forced upon the surgery by the Government which had decreed that new call management systems had to be in place and that they could only be used with an 0844 number. 

The first condition might well be true, but it is preposterous to claim that a call management system can only be used with an 0844 number attached. 

It can, of course, be used with any telephone number you like, but the chances are that some provider somewhere is profiting from locking surgeries into a costly "lo call" number on false pretences. 

I asked why the surgery hadn't told me about the change of number. The Practice Manager told me that it would have cost too much to inform the surgery's 1,800 patients. 

Really? At the very least, she should have written to everyone to warn them. No-one cares if a supermarket changes its number, but a GP's surgery is in a position of far greater responsibility to its users. 

I protested that the old landline number didn't even have a message on it telling patients to ring the new number, but the manager told me it had had one for six months and it again couldn't afford to keep the line going. 

Had I visited the surgery more regularly, she said, I would have known about the change long ago. But as the GP does an excellent job and I'm fortunately healthy as a result, that's not much of an argument. 

I pointed out that I'd looked up the number on bt.com, the most authoritative online directory enquiries service, and there was no mention of the new number. 

The manager said she'd protested to BT but been told it would take a year before it could be changed. 

I may not be a techie, but I do know that websites can be updated in a matter of seconds. 

Was the manager trying to pull the wool over my eyes, or were BT pulling the wool over hers? 

"What else could I have done?" she asked. 

Well, how about not changing the number to an 0844 rip-off number in the first place; writing to every patient, even the healthy ones who reduce the surgery's workload by not bothering them unnecessarily; questioning the authorities if, indeed, the new number was imposed on the surgery, so that patients don't lose out; and going to the Press to raise the issue on behalf of patients if, as she claimed, it was imposed from above and the surgery genuinely had no choice. 

"You're the only person who has complained," she told me. 

Perhaps, but that might well be because other equally healthy patients haven't yet discovered what the surgery has done because they haven't needed to ring it, and because the little old ladies on fixed incomes aren't yet aware that the call they make to their GP will be costing them for the first time and will suddenly appear on their phone bill. 

This is a disgrace, and flies in the face of the growing campaign against such rip-off lines - a campaign that Which?, the consumer magazine, highlighted only last week in a story on the BBC News website at news.bbc.co.uk

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards!

Cigarette vending ban should go further

Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo's plans to outlaw cigarette vending machines and ban the display of cigarettes in shops are encouraging... so far as they go.  

But why stop at banning packets of 10 on the grounds that children would be less likely to afford a packet of 20? Why not make it illegal to sell cigarettes in any quantity less than 100? 

This would result in an intentionally bulky packet that smokers, particularly children, could not slip conveniently into a pocket. 

Smart people in suits would no longer be able to carry cigarettes in their pockets because the packets simply wouldn't fit, women with chic little handbags wouldn't have room for the giant packets, and children would have no way of hiding them in school or at home. 

There would be nothing to stop people splitting the packets once they'd bought them, but the convenience that smokers rely upon would vanish at a stroke. 

Or she could just ban cigarettes altogether. 

A shopkeeper was moaning on the news on BBC Radio Four today that having to duck under the counter or go into a back room to fetch cigarettes would leave him vulnerable to attack or shoplifting from "scallywags". 

Of course, even shopkeepers who profit from selling products to people in the full knowledge that those products will tuns them into addicts, have severe effects on their health, and, in many cases, kill them, deserve the full protection of the law from assailants and shoplifters. 

But those same shopkeepers don't have to sell cigarettes at all. Problem solved. 

Jon McKnight

Author of Sort The Bastards!

US Airways or U/S Airways?

As a consumer campaigner and journalist, I dearly wanted to put this complaint about US Airways to the airline itself before sharing its shortcomings with the travelling world.

But anyone who's tried to contact US Airways with a complaint will share my frustration at not being able to talk to a human being and being lost, instead, in a maze of obstacles that the cynical among us might think the airline created to prevent us getting redress.

It's a pity, really, because US Airways only launched its service from London Heathrow to Philadelphia a matter of days ago on 29 March and was clearly proud of it, if the press release was anything to judge by.

I was looking forward to my flight, particularly as the press release boasted that US Airways would be using its "flagship international aircraft, the Airbus A330" on the new route.

Flagship it may be, but everything wasn't all right on the flight.

I knew I shouldn’t have accepted Seat 13. It certainly wasn’t lucky. First, it was so close to the seat in front that I couldn’t even open my laptop’s lid, never mind tilt it to the angle I needed to see the screen.

“I’m sorry,” said the stewardess, “but there aren’t any spare seats.”

I protested that it’s a perfectly reasonable requirement to be able to use a laptop on a flight, and that no-one had warned, either verbally or in its advertising, that it wouldn’t be possible.

If I’d known I’d be stuck on a flight for eight hours without being able to write my column, I wouldn’t have flown US Airways.

The stewardess then remembered a seat, 10 rows back and with a splendid view of the back of the toilets. There was plenty of legroom there, admittedly, and there was no problem about using a laptop, either. But it meant leaving my wife 10 rows away and out of sight, when we had booked adjoining seats and wanted to enjoy the flight together.

Before I decamped to the laptop-friendly seat, my wife had another disappointment. The in-flight entertainment system on her seat and mine was malfunctioning and didn’t respond to the remote control. Unless she’d wanted to listen to Spyra Gyra in Spanish for the rest of the flight, it was useless.

The stewardess said she’d restart both of our systems. Ages passed, then eventually both screens went blank and restarted. After what seemed an eternity, my wife’s screen burst into life with, er, Spyra Gyra in Spanish.

“I’m sorry,” said the stewardess when we pointed this out. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Then the meals came around. My wife had booked the vegetarian option, and that’s what she got. I hadn’t ordered the vegetarian option, as I don’t like vegetables, but I was given the vegetarian meal, too.

There wasn’t a single item I could eat. I called the stewardess, pointed out that an error had been made, and asked if I could have a chicken meal like most of my fellow passengers were eating.

“I’m sorry,” said the stewardess, “but you’re down on our list as both wanting the vegetarian option.”

I showed her my booking confirmation e-mail and she agreed it showed that my wife only had ordered the vegetarian option. She said she’d talk to the Purser and see if there were any chicken meals left.

She never returned. Everyone else around me finished their meals, stretched their legs, and waited for the stewardesses to clear their trays.

“Finished?” asked a different stewardess when she came by. I told her I hadn’t even started, as it was the wrong meal and her colleague had been trying to source another one all that time ago.

“I’m sorry,” said the stewardess, “but I think she probably forgot. She’s had all those teas and coffees to serve.”

She asked if I’d like the snack element of the meal instead, “to keep me going”.

She found one and I did manage to eat a bread roll about twice the size of my nose, and a crunchy biscuit that was gorgeous. But I remained the hungriest passenger on the aircraft.

Having been the producer of a TV series about aviation for Discovery Real-Time last year, as well as a journalist who campaigns against poor service and has a consumer self-help manual coming out soon, I confess to being deeply disappointed with my first experience of flying with US Airways.

They don’t warn people that their seats are too close together for them to be able to use their laptops unless they’re the lucky few with a view of the loo; they don’t ensure their in-flight entertainment equipment is working when a passenger is faced with an eight-hour flight without it; and the booking system for their meals leaves something to be desired (ie a meal, in my case).

When I was studying for my Private Pilot’s Licence, things that were not working were described as U/S, an abbreviation for unserviceable.

So which airline was I flying with - US Airways or U/S Airways? Fellow travellers might understand my confusion.

In other circumstances, I’d simply never fly with them again. But, unfortunately for me, I’m booked on the return flight from Philadelphia to London with them.

I’m not looking forward to it. I want to spend those eight hours writing, too, and I’d like my wife to be able to enjoy the same in-flight entertainment that everyone around her was able to. And call me demanding if you wish, but I’d really like to be able to have a meal on board like everyone else.

So that's the complaint. But US Airways doesn't know about it yet due to the minefield of obstacles preventing an aggrieved customer putting a complaint to a real person who could do something about it.

The airline's website doesn't list a phone number for Customer Services, just a fax number and an e-mail option.

I tried ringing Reservations and was eventually, most reluctantly, given an unpublicised number (866-523-5333) for Customer Services. But having held on the line for 22 minutes the first time and 12 minutes the second, it was clear they didn't want to take my call or hear about the problems they'd caused me.

The tedious wait for an answer was punctuated with messages urging people to e-mail Customer Services instead through the website.

But when I tried to do that, as an Englishman holidaying in Miami, the web e-mail form wouldn't allow me to put my UK address into it without chopping vital bits off. Had I been American, no problem, but I'd like to think US Airways cares about its foreign passengers, too.

The media centre in Arizona might have been a good bet if I'd been able to e-mail them. But they don't publicise an e-mail address either, which is pretty unusual in public relations these days. Wonder why?

And all this happened on the airline's flagship international aircraft. If that's the case, what on Earth must it be like on the others?

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Dishonest advertising claim of the year

When a product's recommended by 97% of the readers of a magazine as influential as Marie Claire, we could all be forgiven for rushing out and buying that product, safe in the knowledge that those readers are sophisticated, switched on, and almost unanimous in their endorsement.

But before we choose Pantene Pro-V for precisely that reason, let's take a closer look at that claim.

In a much-aired TV advertisement it says, in large letters on the screen, that 97% of Marie Claire readers would recommend the product to a friend.

In smaller letters at the bottom of the screen (fancy that!) it says that the claim is based on a survey of 304 Marie Claire readers.

In other words, the product isn't recommended by 97% of Marie Claire's readers but by 97% of only 304 of them - ie, a mere 294 readers.

And how many readers does the magazine have?

332,705, according to the latest official returns from the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

Which means that the percentage of Marie Claire readers who actually recommended Pantene Pro-V to their friends was not 97% but a rather less impressive 0.08 of a percent... or less than one reader in every 1,132.

Whatever Pantene might do, the advertising claim simply won't wash.

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

F1 Advertisers Roll Of Shame - 07.10.07

Extraordinary scenes in the Chinese Grand Prix - but no thanks whatever to ITV and its ad-break planners that we were actually able to see them.

That, as usual, was left to pure chance.

Lewis Hamilton, tyres balding by the yard, suddenly slipped in the pit lane and ended up in the gravel trap, wheels spinning hopelessly as none of the marshalls could or would push him free.

Hearts around the motor racing world missed a beat as Lewis Hamilton's chances of winning the world championship in this race ticked away until he realised it was all over and climbed out of his stricken car.

But all of that could have happened in an ad break - and we would have missed the lot.

ITV, having no proven powers of clairvoyancy, had no more idea that was going to happen to Lewis Hamilton than the driver himself did, so we could have been watching commercial messages from Norwich Union Direct and The Sunday Telegraph instead of witnessing, live, his shocking exit from the Grand Prix - possibly the decisive moment in the world championship that could hand it to Raikkonen or Alonso.

We didn't miss it - but we could have done. And ITV, presumably, wouldn't have cared... just so long as it filled its coffers with the revenue from the ads. After all, that's much more important than letting viewers see the live race action they tuned in to see, isn't it?

Now we'll have to wait until the Brazilian Grand Prix in a fortnight to see who'll be the World Champion - but will there be a decisive moment in that race, and how do ITV know when it might be?

They won't, of course, so we could see the Formula One World Championship decided in an ad break with viewers who tuned in to watch a live race having to see that decisive moment in flashback!

This time we missed Ralf Schumacher's collision and spin in ad-break three, so it's no good convincing ourselves that these things don't happen.

As regular readers know, this is the only site on the web that gives a full listing of all the advertisers who thought we'd be more interested in hearing about their services and products than in the Formula One Grand Prix itself.

Every race, this site lists the offending advertisers, the amount of the live race they've deprived us of, plus the total race time we've been robbed of so far this season.

So far this season, ITV has robbed us of more than two entire races worth of live coverage (details here) - and there's still one race to go this season.

Here is a list of this race's advertisers who thought we'd prefer to watch advertisements for their products and services rather than enjoying the race we'd tuned in to watch.

THE F1 ADVERTISERS ROLL OF SHAME

Bridgestone
Santander / Abbey
Vodafone / Lewis Hamilton
San Miguel
Lexus Hybrid Drive
Bulmers Original Born For Ice
The Sunday Telegraph
BT - bt.com/business
Norwich Union Direct
X-box 360
Mercedes-Benz C-Class
Rendition
Norwich Union Direct (second offence)
Orange
MPH - mphshow.co.uk
Ladbrokes
NatWest
T-Mobile Top-Up Friday
Peugeot 308 - Inspired by nature.
Direct Line
Allure Homme Sport from Chanel
Fosters Super Chilled
Guinness
BetFair www.betfair.com
World from Mastercard
BMI
Norwich Union (third offence)

Here is the cumulative total of the losses suffered by viewers as a direct result of ITV's insensitivity in showing ads during the live race itself.

RACE TIME MISSED

Australia 06 mins 56 secs
Malaysia 14 mins 31 secs
Bahrain 14 mins 22 secs
Spain 14 mins 24 secs
Monaco 14 mins 15 secs
Canada 17 mins 15 secs
USA 14 mins 20 secs
France 14 mins 29 secs
Britain 14 mins 29 secs
European 14 mins 20 secs
Hungary 14 mins 20 secs
Turkey 14 mins 23 secs
Italy 14 mins 28 secs
Belgium 14 mins 27 secs
Japan 11 mins 20 secs
China 14 mins 21 secs

TOTAL TIME LOST THIS SEASON: 3 hours 51 mins 40 secs

But who cares?

If you really do care about this loss of enjoyment, please sign the online petition at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/spoilsports/

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

A toast to eBay's blind eye!

People flogging alcohol in direct contravention of eBay's rules must be tempted to drink a toast to the online auction site's apparent willingness to turn a blind eye to their activities.

eBay says, very clearly, that alcohol must not be sold through its site because it's a prohibited item.

Yet bottles of Champagne, for instance, are frequently listed on eBay with apparent impunity.

The sellers know they mustn't do it, so they pretend that it's actually the bottle the Champagne's in that makes it valuable and the fact it happens to contain alcohol is merely coincidental.

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink... and eBay says no more.

Here's an extract from eBay's rules:

eBay does not permit the sale of alcoholic beverages, except for certain sales of collectable containers. Further, non-UK members may not conduct alcohol sales with any eBay member residing in the United Kingdom.

Breaches of this policy may result in a range of actions, including:
Listing cancellation
Limits on account privileges
Account suspension
Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings
Loss of PowerSeller status

Why does eBay have this policy?

eBay wants to ensure its sellers and buyers comply with their legal obligations. Since the sale of certain alcoholic products is prohibited by law, regulated, or may cause harm to eBay or its members, sellers may not list the specified alcoholic products on eBay.

Look, then, at an item being listed at time of writing - item number 16016424161.

It's described, somewhat semi-literately, thus:

3 litre bottle Moet Et Chandon Jereboam Champagne full. This auction is for a Jereboam bottle of Moet Et Chandon. Its 3 litres and is the equivalent of 4 regular bottles of Moet. It has been stored correctly in my cellar for the past 18 months so should be in A1 condition. To not breach eBay rules the value is in the collectable bottle, not its contents as I cannot list alcohol on eBay.

This is nonsense. The seller knows it, prospective buyers know it and eBay knows it. Or at least, eBay should know it, because I've reported it to them as a prohibited item.

But that was more than 48 hours ago. And the item's still there, gathering bids.

Are the bidders offering so much money for an empty bottle? Unlikely, because display bottles (sealed but empty bottles of Champagne) do not fetch anything like the money being offered for this item.

Could it be that they're bidding so much because the bottle is, as admitted by the vendor, full of Champagne?

And if, as the vendor says, the value is "in the collectable bottle, not its contents", why does he tell us that it's been stored correctly in his cellar for 18 months. If the alcohol inside was so unimportant and not a factor in the sale, its condition would be irrelevant.

So what became of the report I made to eBay through the proper channel?

Not a lot, it seems. The automated replies reporters receive includes the following get-out clause: "Please be aware that, as it's important that eBay maintains member privacy, we can't share details of the action we take."

So that's all right then...

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

O2... oh dear!

With the millions being spent on promoting the new Samsung G600 camera phone, and the millions O2 spend on creating and maintaining their public image as one of the best mobile phone companies to do business with, readers might find the following a trifle extraordinary, to say the least.

All my wife and I wanted to do was to upgrade our old mobiles to the Samsung G600 with its five megapixel camera.

The O2 shop gave us hope. You should be able to get the G600 for free, the man said. The hope proved to be a false one. He came back and said the tariffs we were on meant we'd have to pay £129.99 each for the phones.

He suggested trying O2 customer service over the phone as they might be able to offer a better deal.

It sounded easy. Just dial the number, speak to customer services, and ask if they could do a free upgrade.

Not so. The first time I rang, I waited for six minutes while the recorded message reminded me, frequently, how important my call was to them.

Eventually, I heard another ringing tone and my call connected. Only no-one spoke to me. I could hear background noises of people chattering away at the call centre, but no-one seemed to be able to hear me.
Or perhaps they didn't wish to.

Frustrated, I rang off and went through the entire process again. Four minutes this time - and exactly the same thing happened.

After two more attempts, I finally found myself speaking to someone.

She assured me that we didn't qualify for a free upgrade to a G600, even though we'd both been loyal long-time O2 customers for years and hadn't upgraded or asked for any other benefits for years.

As everyone knows that phone companies have retentions departments whose sole purpose is to offer customers better deals to prevent them leaving and taking their business to a direct competitor, I asked her if she would put me through.

She, however, was having none of it. She told me, unequivocally, that O2 did not have a retentions department.

I protested that O2 did, but she was adamant.

I told her that I knew the retentions department existed and that I wanted to be put through.

Nevertheless, she insisted the department was a figment of my imagination.

Patience wearing thinner, I asked to speak to her manager, as I didn't believe what she was telling me about the alleged non-existence of the retentions department.

This seemed to do the trick. Without missing a beat, she informed me that she was going to put me through to the retentions department after all.

Anyone with an ethic to subscribe to would have found that a difficult leap to make - from repeated and absolute denials that a department even exists, to an offer to put you through to it moments later.

But not her. First she told me the line was busy. Then, as she tried to put me through, I hung on for 13 minutes before the line went dead and I was cut off again.

Undaunted, I rang again and, perhaps fortunately, was answered by one of her colleagues who didn't try to deny the existence of the retentions department but put me right through to it.

The chap I spoke to couldn't explain why she should have lied to me so brazenly and repeatedly. He agreed that the retentions department did exist - after all, he worked for it - and he was a lot more helpful. But he checked the system and confirmed that we did not qualify for a free upgrade to a G600 but would have to pay almost £260 between us.

I thought that was a little parsimonious, bearing in mind our loyalty and the minimal demands we had made on the service over the years. But he wouldn't budge.

I asked to speak to his manager.

She was similarly pleasant, but again wouldn't give an inch on the matter of the upgrade.

That was fair enough, as it's a commercial decision for O2 whether it wants to reward trouble-free and loyal customers or not.

Beyond asking nicely, I couldn't argue with her decision.

But then she astonished me.

Blissfully unaware that I was an investigative journalist and author of the forthcoming self-help consumer manual Sort The Bastards! - a guide to dealing with the fobbers-off of this world, and others who try to do us down at every turn - the manager mistoook me for a mere O2 customer... and treated me accordingly.

That, presumably, is why she switched tactics and tried to put me off wanting the phone in the first place.

I listened, amazed, as the manager of the retentions department at one of the UK's most reputable mobile phone companies used childlike psychology to try to convince me that the Samsung G600 wasn't all it was cracked up to be in the multi-million-pound advertising campaign being run by Samsung and endorsed by O2.

The picture quality isn't that good, she told me. The reviews were bad, she said. In fact, she suggested, I'd be better off buying a digital camera if I wanted to take pictures. The sound quality on voice calls wasn't up to much, either, she claimed. And so she went on.

I began to feel sorry for Samsung. They create what appears to be one of the best-looking, best-equipped camera phones on the market and spend a fortune promoting it, only for one of the senior people in O2 to badmouth it in a futile attempt to kill a potential customer's dream of owning one.

As I don't believe in rushing into print without giving companies a fair chance to comment, I approached O2's press office to ask if they'd care to offer a quote for the end of this posting on my blog.

The nice woman in the press office seemed (as I would have expected) astonished that a customer had been treated in such a way. She e-mailed back the next day saying she'd arranged for someone in customer services to contact me that day "to remedy the situation" – whatever that meant.

He didn't call.

Back to the press office, where the woman was embarrassed that the man hadn't kept his promise to ring.

Shortly afterwards, he did.

But whatever "remedy" the press office had had in mind, it certainly hadn't been mentioned to him.

He spent some time telling me what I already knew (ie that O2 didn't usually give free G600 upgrades to people on our tariff) but went on to hint that he didn't entirely believe me anyway.

Despite the messages warning customers that incoming calls to O2 are recorded "for security and training purposes" he said that none of the conversations I'd had with any of his colleaues had been taped, so there was no evidence.

He seemed pleased about that.

I wasn't. I'd rather been hoping that O2 would have been able to play back the tapes and find out what it's like being on the other end of the phone when you're just a customer. But it wasn't to be.

He looked at the computer records and, to my astonishment, told me that the first woman I'd spoken to – the one who had lied about the non-existence of the retentions department – had noted that my call to her had been abusive.

As someone who has never been abusive to anyone on a phone in my life, and was also conscious that the call was supposedly being recorded, I couldn't believe she would have made such a defamatory entry on the call log. Mr Remedy didn't seem to realise the gravity of what his colleague had done.

I explained that as I had not shouted, threatened, sworn or called her or O2 names, my call could not possibly have been classed as abusive.

Yes, I was assertive. I was persistent. And I challenged the veracity of what she was saying when she lied about the non-existence of the retentions department. But that is not abuse.

The fact that she probably didn't like someone standing up to her and refusing to be fobbed off by
someone lying on behalf of the company wasn't abuse, either. But that's what she called it on the log.

What a shame the recording couldn't be found, as it would have revealed that I was polite but firm while she was determined to fob me off by telling barefaced lies.

So that's customer service in the 21st Century, O2 style.

How many other customers have been treated in this way?

What have Samsung done to deserve this?

And can anyone out there recommend another phone company that treats its customers with even a little more respect than that?

And what was O2's comment on all this? After ignoring my communications for more than a week, the woman in the press office finally came back tonight to say she didn't wish to comment, but she indicated that she had to believe what she'd been told by her colleagues in customer services.

I wonder if her faith in them will be shared by people thinking of buying a phone from O2?

Just spotted a web page from O2 that contains the following boast: "Our strategy is to turn our customers into fans by giving them an experience that cannot be matched elsewhere."

Priceless!

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

F1 Advertisers Roll Of Shame - 30.09.07

Thanks to divine intervention rather than any restraint by ITV or its advertisers, we Formula One fans didn't miss as much of the race action as usual during this year's Japanese Grand Prix.

That's only because the first 19 laps, including the start of the race, were an organised procession behind the Safety Car in surely the most appalling conditions most drivers will ever have experienced, with torrential rain, mist, and ever-present clouds of spray.

This gave ITV the chance to screen several ad breaks in a row, knowing that - just for once - there wouldn't be much live race action for us to miss.

Nevertheless, we still missed 11 minutes and 20 seconds of the race.

At least we couldn't complain that this race lacked incident! There was an accident in the first lap after the Safety Car came in; Mark Webber was sick inside his helmet; Sato's car caught fire as he left the pits, only for the driving rain to put it out; Alonso crashed out; Vettel took himself and Webber out just as they appeared to be in line for a podium; and Lewis Hamilton survived to win despite being whacked into a spin by Kubica.

The total live race coverage we've lost so far this season is three hours, 37 minutes and 19 seconds - a scandal that ought to be as important to race fans as anything that's gone on in the McLaren spygate episode (more details here).

As regular readers know, this is the only site on the web that gives a full listing of all the advertisers who thought we'd be more interested in hearing about their services and products than in the Formula One Grand Prix itself.

Every race, this site lists the offending advertisers, the amount of the live race they've deprived us of, plus the total race time we've been robbed of so far this season.

So far this season, ITV has robbed us of more than two entire races worth of live coverage (details here) - and there are still two races to go this season.

Here is a list of this race's advertisers who thought we'd prefer to watch advertisements for their products and services rather than enjoying the race we'd tuned in to watch.

THE F1 ADVERTISERS ROLL OF SHAME

Carlsberg
Mercedes-Benz C-Class
The Heartbreak Kid
Honda
Vodafone - Make The Most Of Now
Citroen C4
BT Total Broadband
Saab 9-3
Lynx
OO7 Spycard Collection
Danone Actimel
Lynx (second offence)
Norwich Union
Lexus Hybrid Drive
Lloyds TSB
Peugeot 308 - Inspired By Nature
Carlsberg (second offence)
Orange Speakeasy
Norwich Union (second offence)

Here is the cumulative total of the losses suffered by viewers as a direct result of ITV's insensitivity in showing ads during the live race itself.

RACE TIME MISSED

Australia 06 mins 56 secs
Malaysia 14 mins 31 secs
Bahrain 14 mins 22 secs
Spain 14 mins 24 secs
Monaco 14 mins 15 secs
Canada 17 mins 15 secs
USA 14 mins 20 secs
France 14 mins 29 secs
Britain 14 mins 29 secs
European 14 mins 20 secs
Hungary 14 mins 20 secs
Turkey 14 mins 23 secs
Italy 14 mins 28 secs
Belgium 14 mins 27 secs
Japan 11 mins 20 secs

TOTAL TIME LOST THIS SEASON: 3 hours 37 mins 19 secs

But who cares?

If you really do care about this loss of enjoyment, please sign the online petition at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/spoilsports/

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Nationwide wastrels called to account

The Nationwide Building Society prides itself on having the interests of its members at heart - but how much does it care about the planet those members live on?

Not a lot, judging by the way the society has handled its merger with the Portman Building Society.

Portman members have all received windfall payouts of at least £160 this week after voting for the merger, so they're naturally pleased about that.

But Nationwide members were not quite so thrilled to find Northern Rock-like queues outside their branches as crowds of Portman members all tried to close their accounts and bank their windfall cheques.

Having spent almost an hour in a queue myself, I was astonished to learn of the procedure Nationwide has adopted for closing Portman accounts or transferring the balance to Nationwide accounts.

It ought to have been simple to close my Portman account and either withdraw the funds or transfer them into my existing Nationwide account.

But no. The cashier assured me, apologetically, that the only way to close the redundant Portman account was to set up a new Nationwide account first, transfer the funds into it, then close it again.

I watched, incredulous, as the cashier produced a new Nationwide passbook identical to the one I already had, filled in my details, ran it through the printer to show that the balance from the Portman had been transferred into it, then closed the new Nationwide account, using a rubber stamp to print Cancelled on every page.

The new Nationwide account, and its passbook, had enjoyed a life cycle of approximately one minute!

With 1.2 million Portman members in the same circumstances, and each passbook having 12 pages plus the cover, all needing printing and rubber-stamping, that's an awful lot of trees sacrificed entirely unnecessarily.

Companies try so hard to impress us with their green credentials and efforts to reduce their carbon footprints, yet Nationwide has just begun the fastest, least defensible example of corporate squandering of our environmental resources in recent history.

What will Friends Of The Earth say?

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Remember... you saw it here first.

Very little help... at Tesco

I could have been dreaming, of course, but I'm pretty sure I was wide awake when I walked into Tesco at Roborough in Plymouth at one o'clock in the morning recently.

The doubts only persist because, having finished my shopping, I found that the only three checkouts open were unattended but marked as Self Service.

A nearby supervisor explained that I had to scan all the items myself, put them on the conveyor belt, then pack them.

Astonished, I asked if I would receive a discount, as the price of the items already included the cost of staffing yet I was being forced to work as a checkout operator myself.

No chance, apparently.

Having spent 29 years in the workplace trying to avoid working as a checkout operator, I was given a crash course by the supervisor who was helpful (but not helpful enough to sit there and scan my items herself).

Some items wouldn't be scanned, whatever I did; the machine barked orders at me, telling me to do it faster or slower; and it was constantly scolding me to take particular items off the conveyor belt.

One item didn't scan but made it to the other end of the conveyor belt before the machine deigned to notice. But we couldn't be sure which item it was that we hadn't paid for.

I called the supervisor again and she said that if I thought she was going to go through my many bags of shopping to find out which item had slipped through, I had another think coming.

I protested that I did wish to pay for everything, but the machine wouldn't let me - and I didn't want to be stopped at the door and detained for trying to leave with goods I hadn't paid for.

She told me not to worry, as it was more trouble than it was worth to go back through all the transactions to find the item.

But I did leave with one more thing - a feeling of resentment that a store as immensely profitable as Tesco could get away with forcing customers to become checkout operators themselves and suffer the embarrassment of being remonstrated with by a machine that had such an inflexible and domineering attitude.

If Tesco expect us to do the job ourselves, they should include a heavy discount on the goods to reflect the fact that they're not having to pay a human to do the job we customers expect them to do.

Unless they're cynically exploiting us and simply don't care about their customers at that time of the morning...

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Vue to the rescue for Silverstone

F1 fans who object to being robbed of a quarter of an hour of live action by ITV and its insensitive advertisers at every Formula One race now have an alternative... at least for this weekend's British Grand Prix.

Vue Cinemas are screening the entire race, live and without interruption, on Sunday at 30 cinemas around the UK.

It will be on the big screen, in HD, with fantastic sound - and not an advert to spoil things.

To add to the sense of occasion, rather than detract from it as ITV manages to do, Vue's screenings will include a live commentary by Jonathan Palmer and an exclusive 10-minute pre-race interview with Murray Walker and Lewis Hamilton.

While we will have to pay for our tickets, of course, this will be the first time this season that we've been able to see an entire race from start to finish.

As readers of this site will know, ITV has so far robbed us of the equivalent of more than an entire F1 race - and as we're only halfway through the season, we'll be losing the equivalent of a second race, too.

Perhaps no-one other than me has been sad enough to sit down with a stopwatch and time all the ad breaks in ITV's coverage before, but that might explain the revelation, brought to you exclusively here, that we have lost more than an entire race worth of live action so far with that likely to double by the end of the season.

You can read about that here and see previous postings about the ITV F1 Ads Campaign here.

Tickets for the event on Sunday 8th July are available from www.myvue.com or by calling 08712 240 240 or directly from participating cinemas.

Only 7,000 seats are available at £15 each. All Vue ticket holders receive a free official race program which normally costs £10 plus a soft drink and popcorn, the press release says.

Can't go myself, of course, as I shall be sitting here with my stopwatch recording ITV's crimes against sports coverage so that we will all have reliable statistics for the entire season.

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Number's up for Mayor's dodgy plate

I'm not expecting an invitation to tea at the Mayor's Parlour in Warrington any time soon.

Why? Because I was the first person to reveal that the registration mark on the Mayor's official limousine was illegal.

Private Eye had run a piece in its Rotten Boroughs column that included a picture of the official car parked on double yellow lines.

It was following up an original story that had caused quite an outcry in the Warrington Guardian - but no-one noticed that the letters and numerals on the registration mark were mis-spaced and therefore illegal under the strict regulations that govern the display of registration marks on vehicles.

Both Private Eye and the Warrington Guardian checked with the DVLA, who confirmed my claim that the registration mark was illegally displayed as EDI instead of ED 1.

Does that matter? Well, yes, not least because it is impossible to acquire a mis-spaced number plate legally.

To obtain a number plate, you have to take documents and ID to an approved registration mark supplier who will use official templates to produce a plate that complies with the very strict regulations on spacing and the representation of letters as well as the correct typefaces.

You can't just walk into Halfords and ask them to turn ED 1 into EDI, for instance. So how did the Mayor's officials get hold of the plates, then?

I think we should be told.

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

British Gas rip-off

British Gas are ripping off landlords by charging them twice for safety inspections of properties they let out to tenants.

If you have an annual maintenance contract for a central heating boiler, such as the HomeCare 200 package, British Gas will send an engineer out once a year to look at the boiler and give it what they describe as "a yearly Safety and Maintenance Inspection".

If the property only has the one appliance, ie the boiler, I would have expected British Gas to be able, as part of that inspection, to issue the Landlord's Gas Safety Certificate that private landlords have to obtain by law.

But no.

British Gas have just told me that although they inspected the boiler in December, and it was fine, they will have to send out another engineer to check it again before they can issue the certificate.

This will cost £24 extra.

I rang British Gas to ask why the certificate wasn't issued as a matter of course following each annual safety inspection, and they tried to convince me at first that only a specifically-qualified type of engineer would be authorised to do a Landlord's Gas Safety Certificate inspection.

I pointed out that as there was only one appliance in the house, and it had already been declared safe by another British Gas engineer trained to carry out safety inspections, even a professor of gas safety inspections wouldn't be able to add anything to the original finding that the appliance was safe.

I pressed them to explain, specifically, what the difference was between the annual safety inspection carried out as part of the maintenance contract, and the safety inspection that would result in a Landlord's Gas Safety Certificate.

Not surprisingly, British Gas changed tack and claimed that it cost them £24 to produce the certificate and post it to the local authority.

Not having been born yesterday, I don't believe this.

British Gas should include a Landlord's Gas Safety Certificate as part of the annual safety inspection, at no extra charge, if a landlord requests it.

But until they do, I would suggest that other landlords tempted to use British Gas for safety inspections think long and hard about it.

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Taking a dim view of window tinters

Police concerned about the dangers of drivers not being able to see through windscreens so heavily tinted that they're illegal are up against the likes of Kevin Wing, owner of the Tinted Windows Company in Watford, who admits tinting to illegal levels but attempts to cleanse his conscience (if any) by choosing to think that the drivers might be using their cars for advertising or show appearances rather than for driving on the highway.

In a report on the BBC News website Mr Wing attempts, in the great tradition popularised by Pontius Pilate, to wash his hands of any responsibility for the consequences of what he is doing.

The website asked for a comment. Here it is:

Who does Kevin Wing, owner of the Tinted Windows Company in Watford, think he's kidding?

His claim that many of his customers are using cars in adverts or shows so it's all right to tint their windows beyond the legal limit is typical of a dealer who's happy to take the money and hang the consequences.

What if his customers run over and kill children because they couldn't see through their windscreens, thanks to his illegal-level tinting?

He says that he can't tell whether people intend to use the illegal-level tinting for a show purpose or not.

In which case, don't tint to illegal levels, Mr Wing. Or get customers to sign a disclaimer stating that they only intend to use their vehicles in shows or adverts and will not drive them on the highway.

Which begs the question: how do those customers get their vehicle away from his premises after he's tinted them to illegal levels?

If they drive, then he knows they were lying to him about their intentions, and therefore he ought to ring the police immediately to alert them. Or doesn't he care?

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Are consumer competitions just a fix?

Suspicions about consumer competitions being fixed have been circulating for at least the 25 years that I've been entering them.

Those suspicions were usually held by people who had never won a competition.

I knew that competitions weren't fixed, because I won 18 substantial prizes - including a £15,700 car - in just 18 months. And no-one, but no-one, would have fixed a competition to make me the winner.

But that was in the Eighties, and things were different then.

In those days, the majority of competitions required entrants to buy a product then write a slogan on the lines of "I love So-and-so because..." in 10 words or fewer.

That meant that anyone who could string a few words together had a sporting chance of winning a prize as a result of their wit or ingenuity.

It was fun, and even in my rather modest case, it resulted in my winning the Audi, a £900 hi-fi, a microwave, a video recorder, £600, a £1,500 motorised satellite dish, and other prizes totalling £23,000.

Compers, as those who enter competitions regularly are known, had to work hard for their prizes.

I once bought 96 tins of cat food for a cat I didn't have in what proved to be a vain attempt to win a trip around the world. And, perhaps fortunately, I didn't win the Tampax competition with my slogan that it helped me have the time of my life despite the time of the month.

Equally, the competition organisers had to make a bit of effort, too.

They had to open and check sometimes hundreds of thousands of entries, whittle them down to a shortlist, then appoint a panel of judges, including at least one independent person, to evaluate the slogans and choose a winner.

It worked, and it was fair. I know, because I entered hundreds of competitions but still won far more than I might have expected to had it merely been for the law of averages.

Sadly, marketing methods have changed, and the companies who used to run slogan competitions have almost all turned to the prize draw as a no-effort substitute.

Instead of sifting through all those entries, finding judges, and looking through all those slogans for the most apt and original one, now all they have to do is select one of their many mailbags, fish out one entry at random, and contact the winner.

Easy-peasy, but with the exception of the winner, everyone else is a loser. Including the promoter.

That's because dreaming up a slogan often meant days of thinking about the product being promoted. Whether we won or lost, we were drumming into our minds the supposed benefits of Brand X, and such thoughts may still be subconsciously influencing us on our trips to the supermarket.

Contrast this with the draw, which usually requires no more effort than writing our name and address on an entry form and popping it in a box or, increasingly, filling out an online form and pressing Send.

We may not even notice what the product is, and certainly don't think positive things about it for days on end. So although the promoters have made it an easy promotion to administer, it is infinitely less effective in terms of brand awareness and customer loyalty.

From a comper's point of view, draws are dispiriting. No skill is involved, so it doesn't matter whether we're clever or not. There's nothing we can do to increase our chances of winning, unlike the slogan competitions of old.

There are still a few slogan competitions about, but they are a comparative rarity, as anyone who follows the monthly listing on the excellent compers' website dotcomper.co.uk will know.

Meanwhile, I can no longer defend the integrity of competition promoters as I used to do.

Anyone who has been reading the papers for the past few months or saw tonight's superb edition of Panorama (BBC1) will be aware of just how badly - and how often - we consumers appear to be being shafted by television programmes running premium-rate phone-ins.

There is a simple solution to this: don't phone them. Ever.

If no-one rang them, the competitions would come off the air quicker than you could say "Icstis". And the programme-makers would have to go back to the old-fashioned method of making programmes that we wanted to watch but which didn't cost us a penny extra.

Some programmes might well come off the air if we no longer phoned in, but would that really be such a loss?

If the programme-makers' intentions are really to entertain us rather than milk us, why don't they make their phone-in competitions freephone?

True, they wouldn't make any money from callers, but they might get so many more viewers and participants that they could charge more for advertising spots due to the higher ratings.

As a TV producer myself, it is shaming that some in the industry have stooped so low and shown such utter contempt for the viewers, without whom there would be no programmes to produce.

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Don't just complain: Frame and shame

Far too many shop assistants, tradesmen and others are useless at their jobs, but there's not a lot we can do to register our frustration other than tutting and taking our business elsewhere. Not that they will care.

But now there is a way to make our visit more memorable: the Certificate Of Incompetence.

Conceived and designed by Jon McKnight - author of the soon-to-be-published consumer self-help manual Sort The Bastards! - the Certificate Of Incompetence is an official-looking certificate that we can present to the useless person to commemorate our experience.

Available here for the first time as a free download, we can print it out (parchment-like paper looks best), keep a few in stock, and produce it with a flourish next time we're served or fobbed off by someone who clearly doesn't know their job.

All we have to do is ask the person's name (it's usually on a badge alongside the preposterous claim that they're here to help us), write it on to the certificate, then sign it and present it to them as if it were some kind of honour.

They're unlikely to want to hang it on their wall or put it in pride of place on the counter, but it will make them - and their managers - think about the quality of service they must have given us to merit such an award.

We could also post it in a board-backed envelope to the company's head office instead, as its arrival will not go unnoticed and the company should want to know why its employees are failing us so badly.

A word of warning: we should only award a Certificate Of Incompetence where we're confident that it won't provoke a violent reaction or a breach of the peace, and we should be sure that the person truly did demonstrate incompetence on that particular occasion, as it could be defamatory to accuse someone of incompetence if that were not the case.

So we should use it judiciously - and if in doubt, we shouldn't use it.

But we will be striking a blow for consumers and complainers everywhere each time we present a Certificate Of Incompetence and it leads to an improvement in service.

Download it now for free!

LEGAL NOTICE: This downloadable file is offered on the strict condition that this site and author Jon McKnight will accept no legal responsibility for any events associated with the issuing of any Certificate Of Incompetence. If you download the file, you do so at your own risk. If you have any doubts about issuing it, you may wish to take legal advice first.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD Download Incompetence.pdf (41.7K)

The file is a PDF and will open on any computer using Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is designed to print on A4 paper or card.

For more pages on complaining, visit Complaining

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!