hovis i saw that interview and knew i had heard the name but not sure
where i knew it from . Now i know , too much of a coincidence to be more than one person with that name ,as its not a common name .
good luck to the lady and for all those that are going to benefit from this .

She was in the daily mail a few weeks ago with the same story. I thought then it must be our Ros.

It is indeed Ros

Hi,

Let's hope she gets a good result.

Isn't it nice to put a face to a name, we've all read about her great work on here, now we know what she looks like!!

Deb

Sorry but I must disagree. The payment by direct debit benifits the company by increasing their cash flow,they get interest on overpayments and there is little or no overheads on them. Also it reduces bad debts. Given all this why shouldn't they offer a discount to people who agree to sign up. Look at is as a discount rather than a penalty then there is logic to the approach.

If it's a discount then knock £5 off the direct debit payers bill and leave those who choose to pay by cash etc without the discount.

Good on Ros! Why should BT make even more profit from us than they already do! I refused to pay direct debit, as my bills vary from month to month, and have been charged the £5 every quater (Or is it £4.50), by paying cash on arrival of my bill. I remember quering this when I was put through to the Indian Call Centre,- Really unfair!

Belly!

The case was dismissed after district judge Michael Ellery decided the telecoms giant had no case to answer. John Petit, of BT, said: "It was a very clear judgement. The charge is fair... the charge is vindicated."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/7319545.stm

details here

N T L or should i say virgin media charges £5 a month to customers who dont pay by direct debit £60 a year extra. This makes the B T sound good value.

This is in danger of going way off topic for a holiday and travel site but there is one thing that is relevant - reading the small print!!

At the time BT introduced the £4.50 charge I was annoyed but then I read the rest of the leaflet (which appears to have made me somewhat unique). When they introduced the charge they cut the line rental by about the same amount so the overall amount I was paying was virtually the same. The whole scheme was just a VAT fiddle. If they take £4.50 off you for line rental they have to give a lump of it to the Treasury as VAT, if they show the amount on the invoice as a Financial Services charge they can keep all of it because Financial Service charges are zero rated for VAT. So they are pocketing about an extra £1 a year from each account - multiply that by the number of affected accounts and you see why they did it. The same scam is worked by some of the supermarkets if you pay by card, the bottom of the receipt often says that around 2.5% has suddenly become a service charge (so they have effectively given you an unexplained discount on the goods).

no its not of topic as i work for bt and the more they get the more they can pay me which in turn means i can go on more holidays!

It is not really off topic.
I am not sure what this goverment have done but by allowing this as no case to answer rather than BT justify the 'charges' the floodgates are well and truly open.
How long before we get onto the TOs websites and book our cheap holidays only to find that the payments themselves are handled by Thomas Choice Thomson Credit ltd and there will be an admin charge of £10 per person per payment upwards for collecting the money.
Not so far fetched as I recently bought tickets from the venue ticket office website for my kids to see a show and the tickets were £18 yet the "admin" charge was £4 per ticket. p&p extra.

How long before we get onto the TOs websites and book our cheap holidays only to find that the payments themselves are handled by Thomas Choice Thomson Credit ltd and there will be an admin charge of £10 per person per payment upwards for collecting the money.
Not so far fetched as I recently bought tickets from the venue ticket office website for my kids to see a show and the tickets were £18 yet the "admin" charge was £4 per ticket. p&p extra.

I'd say this will never happen. The Travel market is the UK is so competitive, there is very little you can't buy elsewhere. If Thomas Cook started doing this, the backlash would be so severe another Tour Op would just offer their holidays without such charges and cream off the business.

You tend to find such infuriating charges come from those monopolising such services - i.e. the ticket office you mentioned, or BT.

You do of course get infuriating charges in travel (i.e. look at Ryanair!) but only when you don't get a choice of suppliers.

Credit Card Surcharges may annoy you as there are very few other industries that charge them, btu the simple truth is that consumers have cut Travel Companies margins to the bone, they quite simply cannot swallow the 2% charge they get charged.

I'm confused by the comment "I am not sure what this goverment have done" - the ruling was made by a District Judge at Walsall County Court not by the government. It is true that the floodgates may have been opened to the other utilities that may have been waiting to see how BT got on but an experienced lawyer like Ros Fernihough should have realised that there was a risk of that if she lost.

What I meant was:
In the good ol' days you saw an item displayed with a price, bought the item or service paid the chap and left.
A lot of (legal) effort was put into making UK shopping transparent.

Somewhere along the line this government have changed some rules, as mentioned previously probably to do with tax fiddles, such that just by hiving off the till to a subsidiary company which only exists on paper, the chap can now legally charge more for providing the same service.

So you see your item at X buy it from the chap who gives you an imaginary invoice and points you at the till he is standing at, which is now owned by a subsidiary wholly owned virtual company who now want you to pay X plus Y admin fee for settling the account. And they can now do this legally. It is not the courts that make the laws they just uphold them.

Apart from that, as I see it, due to TO takeovers there is less competition this year which will enable all the companies to jump onboard. These make believe exchequer companies are only virtual, they exist on paper or as entities in an accounting system and the travel companies functions are already divided. You make your booking and any payment enquiries are dealt with by accounts, who have to pass you back if you have any other matters. It would be very simple for them to take the lead of the supermarkets and reduce the bill by the correct percentage so that they can add it back on as an admin fee, or it would be just as simple to get greedy as BT have and add a random amount on.

BTW this is NOT the cc fee adjustment, but that is used as an excuse by some to justify the charge.

Why do you keep saying this government? You don't write for the Daily Mail do you? And who says laws have changed? Technology has changed and business has kept up with it but there's nothing new in that. As I said before, BT weren't charging me any more for the same service, they just found a way of making more profit out of the same money. And whilst I don't totally approve of them doing that by getting creative with their tax returns it's certainly better than exporting their jobs. And as I also said before, this thread is going way off topic for a travel forum.

The charges added by TOs and airlines are different and would justify a new thread to compare who is being honest and who isn't.

Who is simply passing on the percentage charged by the Credit Card companies and who is marking it up? And who is adding on a percentage for Debit Cards when the issuing company is only taking a flat fee?

The law hasn't changed - as is the way with so many things of a financial nature, BT has just found a way of exploiting a loophole on the law to their financial advantage and the judge has ruled that it is within the law. There's now a chance that the law WILL be changed in order to close of this loophole. Just as it changed to make airfare pricing more transparent.

My employer's pension scheme has recently hit on a way of changing the contribution system for it and which will have the effect of reducing their NI bill and the NI contributions of staff with no net loss to the pension fund. The law on comapny pension schemes hasn't changed - they and many other occupational pension schemes have found a perfectly legal way of saving money. Can't imagine that the Treasury will be pleased and no doubt some civil servant is already beavering away at finding a way of closing up that little loophole so that the Governemtn doesn't suffer a loss of revenue from reduced NI contributions.

SM

SMa wrote:

My employer's pension scheme has recently hit on a way of changing the contribution system for it and which will have the effect of reducing their NI bill and the NI contributions of staff with no net loss to the pension fund. The law on comapny pension schemes hasn't changed - they and many other occupational pension schemes have found a perfectly legal way of saving money. Can't imagine that the Treasury will be pleased and no doubt some civil servant is already beavering away at finding a way of closing up that little loophole so that the Governemtn doesn't suffer a loss of revenue from reduced NI contributions.

My employer - 148,000 employees - has been using this system for about two years now.



Mark