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Three relents to ease hardship for victim of the downturn

A READER CALLED Breda from the southeast contacted us last week with a story that is depressingly familiar. After working for years in the financial sector, she fell victim to the downturn and lost her job in 2008.

After applying for some short-term contracts, she decided to open a dog grooming business and paid handsomely for her qualifications. Then in 2011, when the doors opened, she took out a business phone deal with Three Mobile which cost her €80 a month. After a very unpredictable year in business and after becoming pregnant, she had to “reluctantly close the doors” in January, she says.

She had built up a loyal clientele of regulars “but it wasn’t enough to provide a regular wage” and there were often weeks when she might take home €20 once her rent and other business overheads were covered. Eventually, her accountant advised her to close as she was running at an operating loss.

She was told last week, after five weeks with no money, that she is only entitled to €120 per week in social welfare payments as she lives with her boyfriend who is on a Back to Education Allowance and they cannot draw down more than €350, or something like that, between them each week, she continues.

She is now trying to cancel her contract with her mobile phone operator and making no headway. She has an iPhone which she has offered to give back but, when she did, she was told that she would have to pay €650 to cover the time left on her contract. She has not been able to drive her car in weeks as she cannot afford petrol and is very upset Three won’t at least discuss restructuring her contract with them.

We contacted Three to see if it could help her out. It said it was “reviewing its financial hardship policy, to help support customers effectively in such special circumstances” and said it would contact her to work out “an amenable resolution in this interim period before this policy is updated”.

Paying the price for 'discount' rewards with BMI

PETE WALSH USED to travel quite a bit for work and as a result is a member of several airline frequent flyer programmes which he uses whenever he flies. Recently he was booking a trip to London with two others.

“We wanted to fly into Gatwick and out of Heathrow so I was shopping around for the best fares,” he writes. He says Aer Lingus offered the best value for the Dublin to London route while the cheapest fare for the return journey was with BMI. He decided to buy separate tickets instead of a round trip.

He checked the BMI website and was quoted two fares, an economy fare of £55, a total of £165 for the three passengers and an economy flex fare of £244, a total of £732. “I thought the £55 fare was good value so I decided to book it. I then logged on to my BMI Diamond Club to make the booking so that I could collect the points as I normally do. When I logged on I found a screen offering me a discount token for 30 per cent of my next BMI flight as a “reward” for being a valuable customer,” he writes.

He went back to the booking screen and pasted the promotional discount code into the appropriate box and searched for the flight again but was “shocked to discover the cheaper economy fare had now vanished and the only option I was being offered was for the more expensive economy flex fare of £244 albeit with a 30 per cent discount. I immediately logged out and searched for the flights again but without using the discount code and was once again offered the cheaper £55 economy fare, which I then booked.”

Then he phoned BMI and was given an email address and told to email a complaint. “This I did but my email was bounced and I was told to resubmit it via another link, so I did this and I then received an email asking me to forward the details, etc, to a particular person. I did this but I then got a reply saying that ‘as it was a Diamond Club issue’, they couldn’t deal with it but would forward it on to the relevant department. Later in the day I got a response from the Diamond Club which pointed me to the TCs of the offer which said that the 30 per cent discount only applied to the more expensive economy flex fare.”

He could understand that, but it didn’t explain why he was no longer being offered the option to buy the cheaper fare. “They then wrote back to me and told me it was to do with ‘filtering’, saying that when you use the discount code it only shows fares which are subject to it and filters out the rest (which I thought was strange and misleading).”

He pointed out that there should be a warning to tell consumers that by availing of the “discount” promotion you are forfeiting the option to avail of the lowest available fare. “I’m furious because I’ve bought lots of tickets with them in the past and I’ve always done it through my Diamond Club account so it’s possible that I may have paid over the odds for my flights if I’ve used one of their ‘discount rewards’.”

We don't do 'bridging finance', NIB tells loyal customer

PRICEWATCH WAS contacted recently by a reader who had a story which, again reflects the where we are today. She has been with National Irish Bank (NIB) for 20 years, has never had an unauthorised overdraft, defaulted on a loan, run up a massive credit card debt or behaved in any kind of financially reckless fashion. All her wages go directly into this account every month and have done since the early 1990s. She is, in short, a very good customer.

She has decided to take voluntary redundancy and leave a job she has had for more than 25 years and in two weeks time she will be getting a large lump sum which, again, will be lodged with NIB.

She went into her branch in the west of Ireland last week and asked if she could have a temporary €3,000 overdraft to pay for some education related bills that had fallen due. The branch staff member, seemed to think it would be no problem as the sum requested was small, she had always kept her account in good standing and had a letter of guarantee from her current employer stating that her redundancy would be deposited in her NIB account within weeks.

Despite being a loyal customer, NIB, in its infinite wisdom and/or absolute paranoia, insisted she jump through all sorts of hoops during the loan application process. She had to bring in utility bills, proof of identity, proof of address - that kind of thing. She did all that was asked of her and when the application process was complete, she was told that all decision-making powers had been taken away from local branches and her application would have to go for approval to a loan committee in Dublin.

This, remember was for a €3000 very, very short term overdraft for a long-standing and solid customer.

The loan committee refused the application on the grounds that "it doesn't do bridging finance". She will get by and in weeks she will have her lump some and a new job so she is not too put out. It is, however, she says "a slap in the face".

We contacted NIB to find out more. A spokesman insisted that the bank treats all customer requests for credit services "fairly and equally". He said branches "work closely with our credit department and we conduct a detailed credit assessment process for any credit application - including bridging finance." He said each application "is evaluated on its individual merits and the bank considers the customer's entire financial position - including any existing borrowings, credit history, track record and their ability to repay."