What do you want Martin to ask Mark Hoban, Treasury Minister?

gil2625

:eek: Please ask WHY Orange are allowed to rip off loyal customers with a ridiculously high bill when a locked (password protected) mobile has been stolen, they were informed as soon as it was noticed but too late for some b*****d to make almost £300 worth of calls to Morocco by removing the sim card and using it in another handset; this was done in the preceeding 22 hours, it is not as though it was over a month or even a week. If it is their T's & C's as they insist surely they should be morally obliged to lock the sim also instead of putting the onus on an unsuspecting customer? Also, why in cases like this is the customer not allowed to terminate the contract? Our son is a student and it leaves us (senior citizen parents) to foot the bill _pale_ :mad:

expatasia

Economic Secretary (Economic and Business), HM Treasury, and also Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Economic and Business), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform—Mr. Ian Pearson, MP, stated during the House of Commons' Icelandic Banking Debate,"There is no legal bar under UK financial services regulation that would prevent a non-UK resident from opening a new bank account here."


Ask Mark Hoban if any progress has been made on this. When will expats be able to open UK bank accounts instead of being forced to go offshore where there is much less protection? Thanks.

Moneyslave

I would like to know whether the minister proposes to investigate the scandal which was the mis-selling of with-profits policies in the mid 80s.

These were sold on the pretext of smoothing out stock market fluctuations. In reality bonus payments are being kept to a minimum behind a cloak of secrecy. When I have queried this I have been told that interest rates are too low when the stock market has been high and conversely that the stock market is significantly down when interest rates are high.

The fact is these policies were sold on the basis of quoted returns at a time when there were very few such policies maturing and I have been told of companies whose figures were manipulated to achieve a higher placing in the performance tables. As more policies matured these figures have been unsustainable.

The mis-selling of endowments is one thing. Those of us trapped in a with-profits equivalent or pension is another. Please help.

daveclarke5

My Defined Benefit scheme finished 29/6/11 and we are just enrolling into a Money Purchase scheme. It would appear that the private sector is ahead of the public sector in this respect. I was a trustee and have some exposure to Investments and I am better placed than most, however, my Company has chosen Prudential, who have 75 different funds to choose from but we can only select from 16 (so we already have restrictions). Of the 16 there are factsheets, one page each to choose where to put your funds, these sheets offer facts, but facts only to a trained eye and not enough facts alone for people to choose the correct funds. There is a default "Lifestyle" scheme but it appears this investment is worse than similar investments. Hence if you do nothing you will end up here. If you choose and make the wrong decisions you will end up with a very poor pension in the future. The emphasis has shifted the responsibility from Companies and financial experts who have obviously gotten it drastically wrong over the last 20 years or so, to Joe public, most of whom will not understand any of this, nor have a desire to learn until they are in their 40's/50's/60's when it will be to late! A statistic I read said that 75% of fund managers fall below the average! The government is guaranteeing to consign at least 49% of people to a below average pension and a poor future to which it will ultimately cost the Government because they will have to pick up the shortfall in benefits. My question is why is the Government sanctioning the free for all in pensions to unscrupulous Financial Companies, advisors, investment managers, that will result in a total disaster in the future?

pureve

Ask the Treasury to do away with ISAs and replace them by increasing the personal allowance. Why? Look at the interest rates - the only people benefiting from ISAs are the banks and building societies who get access to billions of pounds of saver's money paying interest rates only marginally higher than they pay on accounts which are taxable. If ISAs were abolished banks would be forced to pay the real market rate to get these same funds.

MSE_Martin

Hi folks,

While I know lots of you want to ask about big changees in the system (eg scrap ISAs above)- truth is that won't happen. Im far more interested in the way things work now being broken or not thought of - as then we can try and get something done.

Martin

Vagabond_UK

Please ask why the current credit reporting system is so stacked in favour of the lender? Who agreed to the six-year period of credit reporting?

E.g If you have a four-year old default on your file, why does it continue to affect your creditworthiness for a further two years if you have had a clean history since in the four years since the default was issued, even if it was settled quickly?

Its unfair to continually penalise a person that has maybe got into trouble in the past for whatever reason but has since rectified the situation to continue to be punished if it can be shown that their financial behaviour has improved.

billshep

Is there anything the government can do to make banks look after existing customers. I'm not too bothered about getting the top rate for my savings, but an account that gave me a reasonable rate over the long term would be hugely beneficial as I've got far better things to do with my free time than chopping and changing accounts every year or so!

sobrique

My biggy - would he rather that the 'average man' be saving or spending? At the moment, the rate of inflation and interest rates are such that they simply don't favour people saving money.

GWR_2

I'm not sure that is the correct person to ask, but - with all the problems and strikes going on about civil service pensions and the supposed need to re-negotiate them, again, - what is parliament doing about MP's pensions?
Are they also "giving up certain priviliges" that they consider other civil servants need to give up?
Their pensions are worked out on, I beleive 40th's of final salary. How do they equate "equality" with other pensions when normal civil servants have been calculated on 60th's?