It’s normally the length of time that countries give before judging new leaders but Asda have set themselves up to have the piss hauled out of them by their customers by extending the length of time that customers have to return clothing to a whopping 100 days.

It’s a poke in the eye to Marks and Spencer, who recently reined in their own returns period from 90 days to 35. Asda have said they will allow customers to return any item from their George clothing line up to 100 days after purchase, regardless of how many times it had been washed or worn.

The supermarket recently trialled the 100-day period on their school uniform range, with £900 worth of returns and refunds against a total of £9 million worth of uniforms sold.

Fiona Lambert, brand director at George, took a deep breath and blah-blah-di-blahed: “Even though officially it’s the end of the recession, the attitudes we have developed towards being less wasteful are here to stay. Although we all want to make do and mend, the reality is that the busy mum just doesn’t have time. The George 100-day quality guarantee now means that our customers should be just as happy with a George garment after washing and wearing as the day they bought it.”

Carla from Corrie - her knicker factory returns policy is unknown

What do you lot reckon to all that then? Are you already peacock-proud of the fact that you dress from head to toe in George clobber or would you rather set fire to your own arms than be seen in such tat?

Maybe you previously dismissed the range as a poor man’s Primark but will now head in the direction of your nearest Asda and deck yourself out in George finery?

Or perhaps the name George makes you make about that horrible old bastard of the same name who is trying to steal Peter Barlow’s son on Coronation Street and therefore puts you right off wearing anything with that name on the label?

Yes, let’s talk about Corrie instead. That Carla, eh fellas? Hard boiled egg through a hosepipe we reckons.

A price comparison site user, yesterday.

Dealing with price comparison websites is like crawling through a minefield covered with broken glass with a squirrel in your trousers and a Mynah bird squawking obscenities in your earhole. Or so they say.

It can be a living nightmare with no way of knowing how comparisons are made, who is paying for enhanced listings and the frustration of that finding the price you are quoted isn’t always the price you pay. Which is why it would be a good idea for an official watchdog to appear that would police the oeuvre and sort out the cowboys from the good guys (if indeed there are any).

The good news is that a proposed code of conduct for price comparison sites has been under discussion for the past few months. The bad news is that discussions have collapsed and what was going to be a voluntary watchdog will now not be created.

Sean Gardner, former managing director of the Moneyexpert website and head of the Comparison Consortium until its demise, says: ‘Trying to bring many of these people together felt like herding a group of angry cats. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that many consumers will continue to be misled. It is immensely frustrating.’

If you do buy any financial product through a price comparison, sit down in a well-lit room, turn the TV off and unplug the phone and make sure you’re wide awake. Then read all of the small print. All of it – otherwise you could quite easily find yourself signing up for a product that could be useless in the future, eg; insurance that is null and void because you skimmed over some of the details at the application stage.

Would you even use a price comparison site given the shady reputation that they’ve picked up over the years? Or do you treat them as a guide to where the best bargains are before dealing directly with the company in question? Tell us. In the little box.

A customer actively knowing more about their rights, yesterday

Do you know your rights? Apparently you do. You may not think you do, whilst you’re sat there, dribbling at your flickering monitor in your stained undercrackers, listlessly flicking dead insects from your hair whilst dreaming of a day when you’ll be allowed to eat Angel Delight dry from the packet wearing nothing more than a dirty grin in a bus-stop… but you are more aware of your rights than ever before.

That’s according to studies by some staggeringly dull people at the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). They’re saying that internet shoppers are more aware of what is just and more online retailers are complying with consumer protection laws than ever before.

In essence, retailers are upping their game because they’re aware that they’re being watched by a horde of e-smartarses.

The OFT carried out a survey of online shoppers and a study of online shops in a follow up to research from 2007 (remember 2007? What a year that was! It was International Heliophysical Year as well as being the year Anna Nicole Smith randomly shuffled off her mortal honkers) which showed that a lot of consumers were completely ignorant of their rights and many sites thought it would be fine to take advantage of it.

The report said, without anything moist to counterbalance the dryness: “Overall assumed compliance and information provision by online businesses has improved with more sites now providing full geographical addresses, and fewer sites imposing restrictions on cancellations,” it said.

Assumed compliance? What does that mean? Apparently, it’s the term used in these studies when sites they examine appear to operate in line with the law.

“A greater proportion of sites reviewed in 2009 appeared to comply on all aspects for which they were assessed,” said its report of its ’sweep’ of retail websites. “While the web sweep covered larger businesses, it is possible that assumed compliance of smaller sites, not included in the review, also improved due to the larger sites setting a higher standard.”

Isn’t that thrilling news? They go on to give woolly figures about how we’re all better equipped when it comes to calling out foul play on retailers who think it’s alright to mess us about. I’d tell you the stats but, to be quite honest, you’d probably try killing yourselves (again) if I typed it all out.

The report also claims that less of you are using price comparison websites. They reckon that’s because we’re more likely to keep going back to familiar sites, rather than concluding that price comparison shopping was on the wane. Whether they’ve looked into the fact that price comparison sites make the most irritating adverts on TV is not clear. I know for a fact that there’s a secret army of people being gathered in an underground lair ready to find the people responsible for the Go Compare commercial, ready to flog them like canines in the street.

So what does all this statistical shit mean? Effectively, it suggests that we’re all a lot more confident when buying crap online… but you chumps probably knew that anyway. Sorry for wasting your time.

[Register]

Rejoice drivers! The Mirror is reporting that, at last, there is hope for motorists who get their car clamped by rogue firms.

Apparently, you can now take your case to an independent tribunal which will have powers to act if you’re clamped on private land. These tribunals will cover England and Wales and Northern Ireland and are being established under an amendment to the Crime and Security Bill, currently going through Parliament.

Basically, you’ll be able to threaten these mercenaries and challenge their clamping fee for things like their failure to comply with a code of practice setting out how much time must pass before a car can be immobilised.

Clampers will now have to make sure that any signs warning you of a potential clamping meet minimum standards of visibility. Hopefully, this means you’ll actually be able to see them and they won’t try pulling (yet another) fast one on motorists.

There will also be a ceiling on the release fee. Unfortunately, it’s looking like it’ll be above the £70 maximum charged by local authorities. That said, anyone who tries stinging you for more will have to pay the excess. If you can convince a tribunal that your car has been unfairly clamped, then you’ll be able to claim compensation for the costs incurred – including things like your hiring of a hire car while you argued it out with clamping pricks.

Home Office Minister Alan Campbell said: “The government is committed to preventing abuses by unscrupulous wheel clamping firms and their employees. The introduction of an independent appeals process will for the first time provide independent recourse for motorists who feel aggrieved by unfair practices of rogue clamping businesses.”

Relax girls, he's married!

Happy New Year crimefighters! Let’s start 2010 with a clean slate and a fresh outlook… and kick off with an attack on Ryanair!

The attack comes from the chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading who has pulled the gloves off his tongue and given Sky Marshall O’Leary six-nowt around the chops for the airline’s credit and debit card booking charges.

Ryanair recently closed the gate on customers using Electron cards without incurring a charge while booking their flights, switching the free option to MasterCard pre-pay, which barely anyone uses or has even heard of. Gah!

Now John Fingleton of the OFT has called Ryanair’s tactics ‘puerile’ and ‘childish’ in a brilliant no-holds-barred attack during an interview with The Independent.

Fingelton said: “Ryanair has this funny game where they have found some very low frequency payment mechanism and say: ‘You can pay with that.’ It’s almost like taunting consumers and pointing out: “Oh well, we know this is completely outside the spirit of the law, but we think it’s within the narrow letter of the law”. On some level it’s quite puerile, it’s almost childish.’

The OFT head honcho added that the practice by Ryanair and others of automatically adding insurance to flights for customers to opt out of was a legal ‘grey area’.

You’d expect a response from the shameless airline and Ryanair’s head of communications duly roll-up roll-upped: “Ryanair is not for the overpaid John Fingletons on this world but for the everyday Joe Bloggs who opt for Ryanair’s guaranteed lowest fares because we give them the opportunity to fly across 26 European countries for free, £5 and £10.”

Problem is, they almost need a degree in computer science in order to pull it off.

Now this is a little scary. TorrentFreak is tonight reporting that lawyers in the UK have been granted court orders which “force ISPs to hand over the details of individuals who they say have been monitored sharing hardcore pornography”. According to the site, up to 30,000 individuals – as many as 25,000 BT and 5,000 customers of other ISPs – will be receiving “shock letters demanding big payments” during the coming weeks.

Last week at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, a firm called ACS:Law made applications for orders that force ISPs to hand over the names and addresses of subscribers that are claimed to have infringed their client’s rights. TorrentFreak states the orders related to around 30,000 IP addresses in relation to nearly 300 movie titles.

These aren’t the first such orders to be published – there’s plenty more reading on the topic at TorrentFreak and the website BeingThreatened (which provides advice to innocent parties receiving letters from ACS:Law).

Some charges, yesterday

Breaking news from the Supreme Court of all things that are good, right and justiceful is that the banks have WON their appeal in the test case relating to unauthorised overdraft charges.

Diana Ross Lord Phillips is the Supreme Court judge who has handed down the ruling that could shut the door on a flood of refunds to millions of customers of bibblions of pounds. Yes, bibblions.

The ruling means that the Office Of Fair Trading will now not be granted immediate power to scrutinise the fairness of overdraft fees. Had the banks lost, the OFT’s subsequent report would almost certainly have lead to a deluge of refunds. But in his ruling, Lord Phillips said that bank customers agreed to pay overdraft charges as part of the price of having a current account, so they fell outside the scope of the appropriate regulations.

But all is not necessarily lost for campaigners – Lord Phillips said that the OFT could still try to scrutinise bank charges under other regulations. The OFT have previously said that, in the event of a defeat, they would seek to instigate a full competition commission enquiry in a bid to lower overdraft fees.

Which? chief executive, Peter Vicary-Smith, said:

“This is a bitter blow for the millions of people who have been patiently waiting to get their bank charges back. Not only does it give banks licence to charge what they like for unauthorised overdrafts, but it could have ramifications for other areas of personal finance. The banks now have no excuse for introducing other fee charges.

“The banks have done everything possible to frustrate the OFT throughout this process. The OFT and the Government should now explore other avenues it can pursue to get a fair deal for consumers.”

Lord Peter Mandelson - as clumsy with hot leek and potato soup, as he is at tackling file sharing

We’ve been hearing for weeks about the Government’s plans to disconnect internet users who indulge in a spot of illegal file-sharing, which according to some have more gaping holes than a hen night in Hull. Perhaps they’re not quite phrasing it like that. Two of the biggest concerns are that if the Digital Economy Bill is introduced as it stands, users would be cut off from their ISPs and potentially criminalised without trial, and there’s no way to discern whether a user has had their wi-fi hijacked by a third party – a relatively straight forward procedure.

Lord Mandelson, the Government minster who inspired the Barry Manilow’s 1975 classic, is hellbent on pushing the plans through despite reasonably critical opposition. And of course the music industry, which have been rattling on for such legislation for years without taking a moment to consider that a combination of its own actions (and inaction) has created its own demise, is delighted with the news. Says the body that represents the interests of record labels, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI):

“It is good news for fans of British music that Government is now introducing legislation to tackle illegal downloading. The creative sector in the UK needs new measures implemented urgently that address this problem for now and the future if the UK is to lead Europe in giving consumers innovative and high quality digital entertainment.”

The campaign against the plans becoming law is growing quickly; even some service providers have sworn to fight them. We recently told you of the Open Rights Group’s attempt to send a message to Mandelson, and now an online petition has been created on Downing Street’s official website, which already has nearly over 8,000 signatures and features other heavyweight voices of reason such as Stephen Fry. It’s worth a look and a signature, if you’d rather the Government stopped pissing about with draconian mandates, as if the internet dates back to the 18th century, and put some serious vision and thought into the digital future of the country.

So how many customers had their contract information sold off by a rogue T-Mobile employee to cold callers? According to the company, “hundreds of thousands” – T-Mobiles believes the details were traded for 15 months before they became aware of what was happening. But while the ICO prepares its case against the employee suspected of selling the data, there’s still no word about who paid big sums of money for the information.

We asked for your experiences of receiving cold calls from mobile companies seemingly uninvolved in your T-Mobile contract. Here’s what Bitterwallet reader John had to say:

“I’ve been getting pestered by these two outfits for the last three years between November and February, depending on when [these businesses] think my contract is up:

Free Upgrades (I think): 01132031377

New Logic Communications: 08450020012

Neither took any heed of my repeatedly asking them not to call so I just hang up on them now. When I challenged T-mobile about stopping the calls they blamed a third party, which was not possible as all my upgrades have been direct or their own stores.

Answering the calls from New Logic with “Hello New Logic Communications. I’m not interested in a Vodafone contract. Thank You.” was excellent fun. “How do you know who we are?”, “You’ve not heard my sales pitch yet?” and “F*ck off you tw*t” were some of my favourite replies from them.”

Obviously neither John nor ourselves are accusing either company of paying for private data, but since we’re what we laughingly refer to as a consumer blog, we’re keen to investigate any claims of cold calling. Let’s take Free Upgrades, for example. Companies House has no records of a company with that name, but the WHOIS information for freeupgrades.co.uk is publicly available, and together with the phone number places the business on a trading estate in Leeds.

The story takes an interesting turn when you look at their website. Free Upgrades is a single page with contact information for three service providers – no offers of upgrades, not even contact details for themselves. This hasn’t always been the case, however – Google cached the previous version of the page which shows it to have been an operational business with information and contact details. When did Google capture this page? Last Wednesday. For whatever reason, Free Upgrades have taken their website offline in the past seven days:

A Google Search for Free Upgrade’s number reveals dozens and dozens of complaints on WhoCallsMe.com, which provides forums to allow consumers to comment on cold calling. Some of the many comments on the site include:

T-Mobile said that they are a company called Free Upgrade. It is strange indeed that they are calling mostly T-mobile customers with contracts that are due to end. How did they get that info and do they stop when you sign up.

I am yet another T-Mobile customer with a soon to be renewed contract and received a call from this number. At first I didn’t listen carefully and assumed it was T-mobile calling… Eventually it dawned that this was not the case and when I queried this with him he became much less chatty and very pushy, the only way to stop him was to hang up. I phoned T-mobile customer services to ask whether they had authorised this call, they denied all knowledge and said they did not pass on any customer details.

Have just entered into the remaining days of my contract with T-Mobile and started getting these calls.

This number is calling me about once a day at the moment. I’m a t-mobile customer just coming up to contract renual.

Had numerous calls from these on my t-mobile contact number, which were silent when i answered, then i mainly rejectd them over 2-3 weeks. When i finally answered and got to speak to someone they knew i was due an upgrade passing theirselves off as t-mobile, surely illegal as they are not but a third party in Leeds?

I dont accept their calls, but they’re driving me nuts. I’ve noticed there seems to be a common denominator here, T-Mobile and the fact several people say their contracts are “soon up for renewal”.

If you read through every complaint in that thread, the majority of posters independently identify themselves as a T-Mobile customer approaching their date for contract renewal. The thread was started just over a year ago. The cached version of the Free Upgrades site provides a company number for Mistral Telecom Ltd, the parent company to Free Upgrades. Here’s another thread about a different number used by Mistral for cold calling, and again the commonality throughout is T-Mobile. It includes this comment:

I have just rung to gain info as to where they have obtained my number, to which they stated it was provided by T-Mobile. Strange because I work for T-Mobile (Senior Management Level) and we do not share any info with external companies, especially a competitor…

Another website that lists cold caller complaints also shows entries about another phone number belonging to Mistral Telecom, and when you search for that number in whocallsme.com, you won’t be surprised at what you discover.

Now, again we’ll point out that we are simply investigating a claim of cold calling presented to us by a T-Mobile customer, during which we’ve discovered claims by several dozen individual consumers that they received cold calls from a series of phone numbers operated by Free Upgrades and Mistral Telecom. Those making the claims over the past 13 months independently state they are current T-Mobile customers – no other service provider is ever mentioned – and many are reaching the end of their contract. All of this suggests some sort of business connection between T-Mobile and Mistral, since the latter may be considered to show a preference for customers of the former, yet many consumers have contacted T-Mobile to be categorically told they do not share customer information. We also note a trading website operated by Free Upgrades has been taken down within the past seven days.

Anything else to add? Oh yes, a small aside. Julia Forte lives in North Carolina and is the owner of whocallsme.com. Earlier this year, Mistral threatened to file a defamation action in the UK against Forte’s ISP – it’s a practise described by clpblog.org as “libel tourism” – the practice of bringing libel claims against US defendants in foreign courts, where the First Amendment and other provisions of US law that protect free speech (and in this case, Forte’s right to run the website) are not recognised.

According to the site, the service provider almost buckled until they were offered a pro bono defense against the action, at which point they challenged Mistral to enforce the action in the US. All seems to have gone quiet since then.

A bank manager, yesterday

It’s been a long time coming, but the drawn-out bank charges debacle could finally come to an end next Wednesday (November 25th). That’s the date that’s been set for the Supreme Court decision as to whether the OFT has the right to assess whether or not bank charges are fair.

The decision is expected to find in the OFT’s favour and lead to an investigation that should take… ooh, all of five fucking minutes to ascertain that no, they’re  not fair. Not in the eyes of the law anyway.

Assuming that the arrogance of the banks won’t stretch to taking the fight to the European courts, the decision should open the floodgates and see millions, billions and possibly even a whole gazillion pounds returned to customers from financial institutions who didn’t bother to check with the lawyers before they escalated bank charges into a major revenue stream for themselves.

It is believed that 1.1 million customers have claims that have been put on hold during the two-year court case, and there’ll be many more who’ll be looking to get back what is lawfully theirs over the coming months, should the banks call it quits after the Supreme Court’s inevitable judgement.

It’s grim news for customers of CDiscount.co.uk. As we revealed yesterday, the online store has gone into administration with debts of €8.2 million. The company was launched as a separate concern to European parent company CDiscount SA, which owns 50 per cent of the Ireland-based business and is owed €4.6 million.

What does this mean for customers? Bitterwallet spoke to a member of staff at CDiscount.co.uk this morning, who confirmed the company was in administration, and that orders could not be accepted and nor could any existing credit be spent. Also, CDiscount confirmed that any orders made before the company went into administration last week cannot not be fulfilled for the time being, adding that the company hopes to learn more from the administrators in the next day.

It’s not all bad news. If you spent over £100 on a single item and paid by credit card, then Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 makes your credit card company as liable for your loss as the retailer. If this applies to you, then phone up your credit card company and tell them you wish to make a claim under the terms of the Act – they should send you a claim form. Remember – they are as liable to you as CDiscount.co.uk, so don’t be fobbed off; it has been known by companies to deny liability in the past.

A shopper - yesterday

There’s nothing more irritating than seeing the initial excitement of a newly bought product failing on you as soon as you get it home. Shopping is generally a hellish experience, filled with dithery old women suddenly stopping in front of you whilst you’re bobbing and weaving your way around the high street. The promise of doing it all over again for something that should’ve worked properly in the first place is enough to make you self-harm.

Well, now, the prospect of doing it all again could be filled with the dread of being sent packing with a product that still doesn’t work and no refund offered.

Naturally, it’s all the fault of New European rules.

Now, we can swap crappy goods if we act “within a reasonable time”. However, under this proposed law, we’ll only be entitled to a repair or replacement if their purchase was knackered.

The law currently says that we can return items for a refund within “a reasonable time”, which is about as much use as trousers made of chicken teeth. The Law Commission of England and Wales have proposed that instead of the “reasonable time” fluff, we should be given 30 days. They also reckon that shoppers should be entitled to a refund if a product still did not work after one repair or replacement, instead of messing about and going to and from the retailer.

What we’re faced with currently, under the dreaded New European Rules, a minor glitch in, say, a MP3 player, might see us fobbed off with a discount, leaving us with rubbish that doesn’t work and a shop we don’t want to go to anymore.

It is worth pointing out though… this law is only a ‘proposed one’, so any Mail readers out there who are thinking of throwing their arms up in disgust and recalling the invented news stories of bananas that are ‘too bendy’ should hold their breath a while.

[BBC]

Lies and intimidation are hardly the proper way to go about business, but that hasn’t stopped T-Mobile trying to prevent customers complaining about increases in call charges. Bitterwallet has proof that consumers were deliberately misinformed by T-Mobile staff concerning their right to independent arbitration by the Ofcom-approved adjudicators, CISAS.

T-Mobile recently increased the cost of international roaming for all customers, and have maintained from the beginning that roaming is an “additional service” and as such excluded from the clauses allowing a customer to cancel their agreement without penalty. We proved that the charges are an inclusive part of a customer’s agreement, and earlier this week Ofcom confirmed to Bitterwallet that “if the increased roaming charges are genuinely of material detriment to a consumer then under General Condition 9.3, T-Mobile should inform the Consumer of the ability to terminate the contract without penalty.”

From your comments and emails we hadn’t seen any evidence of this occurring, so we suggested how you could move your complaint forward. In situations where customers cannot resolve their complaint with T-Mobile, service providers are required to inform customers of their option to independent resolution through CISAS, an Ofcom-approved arbitration process. Except that wasn’t quite what was happening.

Customer correspondence sent by T-Mobile has been passed on to Bitterwallet, confirming attempts by T-Mobile to coerce the customer into not complaining to CISAS by:

• stating that other customers had already contacted CISAS about the increases in roaming charges, and that CISAS ruled in favour of T-Mobile 100 per cent of the time

• telling customers that any decision by CISAS was final, and as such any complaint could not then be contested in court

• in further conversations with two individual members of T-Mobile’s Complaints Investigations team, a customer was told that T-Moble had consulted with CISAS about the changes before they were announced

To summarise – T-Mobile told customers they had no chance of winning by going to CISAS, that they’d lose any right to take T-Mobile to court by going to CISAS, and that CISAS had rubber-stamped the changes anyway. The first statement is intimidation; we don’t think that’s what a service provider should be saying when looking to resolve a complaint through independent arbitration. The second statement is intimidation and a lie, since the CISAS website states “if you reject the decision, the company do not need to keep to it – you will still be able to take your complaint to court”. And CISAS are very clear that their role is to provide arbitration for resolving complaints independent of either party; not only would any prior consultation or agreement between the two contradict the role of CISAS as an independent adjudicator, but it would step well outside the remit agreed with Ofcom.

As an aside, one email from T-Mobile also stated that:

“I have also spoken with our legal department in relation to your previous email. They have confirmed OFCOM have advised that the forum you got the information from has misquoted OFCOM and they are looking at bitterwallet.com in relation to this.”

It was the first we’d heard of it so we contacted Ofcom about misquoting them, as well as the other statements T-Mobile made concerning CISAS. Ofcom have now told us that they contacted T-Mobile this morning to discuss our findings, and as a result have advised management that the statements made by their staff were not true, were not to be expected in these situations, and should not be repeated in the future.

As an aside, another email from T-Mobile has defined their interpretation of “material detriment” as the increased charges being likely to cause a 10 per cent increase in a customer’s overall payment. Our opinion would be that this should be contested by customers with CISAS. By including line rental, bolt-ons and VAT in the calculation, T-Mobile are making any increase appear less detrimental, since it will be a smaller percentage of the total. However, the changes in roaming charges are universal and so unaffected by a customer’s line rental plan or other additional costs. The point of material detriment is whether the increases will cause your call charges to increase, so as we pointed out, this calculation should be based on call charges alone, not the overall bill.

The ongoing saga concerning T-Mobile has taken a surprising twist today. For six weeks we’ve highlighted T-Mobile’s refusal to deal fairly with customers, with regards to the service provider’s massive increases in the cost of international roaming. The charges form a legitimate part of a customer’s contract, but T-Mobile deliberately excluded them from the clauses allowing the right to cancel without penalty – even if they caused material detriment.

Ofcom has today told Bitterwallet that T-Mobile is wrong to do so, in that customers who are likely to suffer material detriment as a result of these increases should be offered the right to cancel without penalty.

On Friday we published correspondence between T-Mobile and Ofcom, which indicated they supported the consumer’s right to cancel without charge in this matter. We contacted Ofcom for clarification concerning this and their ongoing investigation:

Bitterwallet: When is Ofcom likely to conclude their deliberations and determine whether an investigation is required?

Ofcom: Ofcom has been monitoring complaints and has discussed the issue with T-Mobile. T-Mobile have confirmed to Ofcom that if customers feel that they are genuinely affected, to their material detriment, by the increase in certain roaming charges then they should call T-Mobile to discuss their account. Customers should ask that their inquiry be escalated to a Customer Service Manager who will discuss the available options. If customers are not content with the outcome of those discussions they can use the Dispute Resolution Scheme. T-Mobile is a member of CISAS.

On this basis we do not intend to open an investigation into T-Mobile on this issue.

Bitterwallet: What is meant by the final line of the statement (published here)? It indicates that Ofcom believes if the changes cause will impact on a customer’s bill, then T-Mobile cannot hold them to the existing terms and conditions.

Ofcom: It is our view that if the increased roaming charges are genuinely of material detriment to a consumer then under General Condition 9.3, T-Mobile should inform the Consumer of the ability to terminate the contract without penalty. If T-Mobile and the customer are in dispute over whether or not the increase in charges is of material detriment, then the customer can use the Dispute Resolution Scheme.

So Ofcom have determined T-Mobile should have offered the right to cancel without penalty, but also decided there will be no investigation into the service provider’s actions. What does that mean?

First, Ofcom is saying that if you will suffer material detriment – if your bill will increase as a result of the new charges – then T-Mobile should have given you the right to cancel. How do we define material detriment? That’s a little trickier – Ofcom told us “there is no set percentage to determine “material detriment” – it is assessed on the particular circumstance of each case.”

That’s very unhelpful, but because it’s so ambiguous we’d suggest it allows two ways to prove the new charges affect you:

• have you been abroad in the past three months? Check your bills – if 10 per cent (or more) of the total call charges are as a resulting of roaming charges, it’s reasonable to assume you will suffer material detriment in the future (we’re suggesting 10 per cent because this is an unofficial figure that has been suggested by Ofcom and other service providers to customers in the past)

• have you made plans to travel abroad in the next three months, or for a significant amount of time while under contract? If so, it’s reasonable to assume the new charges will be of material detriment to you

Follow the procedure as stated by Ofcom above, since T-Mobile have told Ofcom they will follow it. If T-Mobile refuse to resolve the issue then contact CISAS for arbitration. Include copies of your bills or travel arrangements that prove the likelihood of material detriment in the future, and a copy of this post too. Therefore, you’re providing a) proof of likely material detriment and b) a statement from Ofcom stating that T-Mobile should have offered the right to cancel without penalty in this particular instance. We’re not sure how CISAS can rule against you in this situation since Ofcom has clarified its position concerning T-Mobile, but no doubt we’ll be surprised. Let us know the outcome – we’d be interested to know what To-Mobile or CISAS define material detriment.

The second point is fundamental to this whole affair: according to Ofcom, T-Mobile should have informed customers of their right to cancel without penalty. But did they? Since material detriment is wide-open to interpretation, how did T-Mobile interpret it? In other words, were there any customers informed of the increased charges and their right to cancel?

Our posts on this story has received several dozen emails and several hundred comments over the past two months, and we don’t recall anybody who mentioned this happening. Perhaps nobody at all had travelled or worked abroad recently, but that’s very unlikely. Ofcom refused to clarify whether T-Mobile had notified customers, stating “the substance of our discussions with T-Mobile is confidential”.

So it’s over to you – have you travelled abroad in recent months, and have roaming charges account for 10 per cent of your recent bills? If so, did T-Mobile contact you? At the moment, judging by all of your comments and emails, we can only conclude that nobody was informed of their rights by T-Mobile, that T-Mobile refused customers with valid reasons for cancellation of their right to do so, and that T-Mobile broke Ofcom’s General Conditions – in which case, the regulator should reconsider opening an investigation.

UK-based parents who have shelled out for Disney’s not-exactly-cheap range of Baby Einstein DVDs could be in line for refunds following claims by so-called experts who say that plonking children under the age of two in front of the TV is harmful.

The sickly entertainment giant is offering refunds on up to four DVDs returned per household in the United States following the claims, although the move might also have something to do with the threat of a nappy-whiffy class action suit from irate American parents.

The Baby Einstein range launched in 1997 and is aimed specifically at ickle tiny babies, with the DVDs showing soothing images accompanied by classical music. An early Disney claim was that the DVDs could “foster the development of your toddler’s speech and language skills.”

But joy-killing ‘experts’ at the University Of Washington now say that for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs, infants understood on average six to eight fewer words than children who did not watch television. It is not known how many of these extra words are profanities or the names of cigarette and alcohol brands.

We look at it this way – if they’re indoors, safely watching a DVD, they’re not outside throwing their shoes at each other or drinking dirty water out of puddles . It’s life – someone or something is always going to get damaged one way or another.

There has been no decision as yet as to whether UK-based owners of Baby Einstein DVDs will be eligible for refunds.