Category: information

Resolve Your Complaint Expertly

https://www.resolver.co.uk/

Resolver is a website designed to make it easy for people to complain and it’s free to use. Resolver say their goal is to help make complaining quick and straightforward.

Resolver also works with MoneySavingExpert.com which is the UK’s biggest consumer advice website.

For some years there have been complaint templates available on the Internet and these make life easier for making a complaint.  But Resolver has taken the next step and automated the process online.

Resolver was started by James Walker, after his energy company ignored a complaint of his. James realised that complaining was complex and hard work and that there was no service that proactively helped consumers resolve their issues.

Resolver say “For the past decade we’ve used template letters to help – over 10m have been downloaded just on our PPI and bank charges reclaiming campaigns alone. The free technology Resolver provides can take this a leap further: automating the process, including drafting the letter, sending it, monitoring replies and then escalating it to an Ombudsman or key complaint body if it’s not sorted”.

Resolver tries to guide and support you throughout the complaint process. The system makes recommendations on next steps and when to take them, helps you keep track of your complaint and enables you to store all relevant information securely in one place.

Resolver was not set up to attack businesses or give them a hard time but to streamline the whole complaints process and reputable companies prefer this approach and work with Resolver.  They now work with tens of thousands of companies.

To use Resolver, you select the company you wish to complain to. If it’s on their list then you are presented with information about the company, their rules on complaint procedure and any other relevant information. Then you start your ‘case’ which means to entre all of the relevant information and it is sent to the company concerned.

Resolver keeps tracking of your case and any progress or fresh messages.  This is a very useful service.

If you have a complaint to make – Resolver.co.uk is a good place to start.

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Identity Protection by Lifelock

Identity theft is where fraudsters assume your identity in order to access your bank account, take out new loans in your name, use your credit cards or carry out other criminal activities using your name.

Having your identity stolen can obviously be extremely damaging to your life as you may lose your money and end up in serious debt without any knowledge of what’s happening. By the time you realise that you’ve been attacked in this way, your life could have been wrecked and getting your identity back can be a long and painful process.

Lifelock is an American company that advertises heavily in the field of identity protection.

Lifelock say they leverage unique data, science and patented technology and provide identity threat detection, proactive identity alerts, and comprehensive remediation services. They have 4.4 million members currently.

Lifelock has three layers of defence for its members

1. DETECT & ALERT

The technology scans millions of transactions every second for threats to your identity, that is for unauthorised use of your identity.

2.   RESTORE

If identity theft occurs, then a U.S-based Identity Restoration Specialist will work to resolve your identity theft problem.

3.   STOLEN FUNDS REIMBURSEMENT

They reimburse stolen funds depending on the level of your plan i.e. how much you pay (the limit is $25,000 or $100,000 or $1 million)

If identity protection is a serious concern for you, then a service such as Lifelock may be of interest to you.

But you would still need to be cautious and use common sense as Lifelock doesn’t prevent identity theft – just makes it easier to catch and resolve the problem afterwards.

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Warning: e-Dinar Cyber Currency

E-Dinar is a cyber currency and it’s also described as an Internet community of people who use the e-Dinar   currency.

It is also an investment which people choose because of the promise that they will get 20% growth per month.

Is e-Dinar a ‘real’ cyber currency?

That is difficult to answer as there isn’t an agreed definition for a cyber currency. However, as with all cyber currencies there is a set limit to the number of coins available. In this case it was 22 million e-Dinars initially then last year after some changes to the currency, including an exchange to rename the currency as EDR, the value of people’s holdings dropped dramatically and the business now say the new limit is 22 billion e-Dinar  coins.

That’s an enormous increase and potentially devalues the e-Dinar dramatically.

If you want to get e-Dinars, you can buy them on the trading exchanges.

Can the Promised Growth Rate of 20% Be True?

They say that e-Dinar is the currency with a growth rate of 20% per month. Therefore, buying e-Dinar for the first two years of its existence, you will earn with the same rate, but you have to rely on that promise.

E-Dinar had delivered 0.65% per day for 3 months on the EDR but they recently changed everything  to EDC which shows very little trading volume.

The E-Dinar Compensation Plan

People are paid commission on the 20% monthly return. If you recruit people into e-Dinar then you get a share of their benefits and if they recruit further member then you also get a share (a little smaller) of their benefits and so on for up to 7 levels.  This is typical multi-level Marketing.

Is e-Dinar a Pyramid or Ponzi scheme?

E-Dinar’s only business activity seems to be the recruiting of people into e-Dinar.

The only source of revenue for the members is affiliate investment, made on the promise of a 20% monthly return

The promise of 20% ROI for two years may keep people in the currency for that period, but after two years – they may drop out. If a lot of people do that, then that’s when life becomes difficult. Will the scheme  pay out or stop?

http://behindmlm.com/mlm-reviews/e-Dinar-review-edr-unit-ponzi-points-cryptocurrency/

If you know anything about this currency and how it works, let me know by email.

Chancellor to Stop Subscription Trap Scam

The Chancellor Phillip Hammond will announce on Wednesday 8th March his plan to stop the scam known as the Subscription Trap and end misleading consumer practices.

This is where you agree to buy a product or take free samples, only to find out later that you’ve been subscribed and money is being taken from your account or credit card regularly without you authorising it.

This is a very common scam and unfortunately you can’t get your money back as it has been legitimate, though morally wrong of course.

The Chancellor promises the new measures will represent a crack-down on misleading consumer practices, including those which end up costing people money they aren’t expecting.

  • End subscription traps. The Government says people can end up in ‘subscription traps’ after they sign up to a paid-for service without intending to – for example, when a paid subscription starts automatically after a free trial. To address this, it plans to develop options to put a stop to this and ensure customers are notified in good time before a payment is taken. The Citizens Advice Bureau estimates that 2 million consumers have problems each year cancelling subscriptions.
  • Shorten and simplify small print. The Government will consider options for making terms and conditions clearer to consumers, including making the key terms much more obvious, examining the use of tick boxes, introducing rankings on good practice and improving understanding of which terms cause most confusion. (some mobile phone contracts run to 40,000 words).
  • Create new powers to fine companies that mistreat customers. Consumer enforcement bodies such as the Competition and Markets Authority will receive powers to ask civil courts to fine companies – including those in unregulated markets – which breach consumer law.

“Whether you’ve signed up to a music or TV streaming service, shopping service, wine club or beauty club, the key is to look out for these subscription traps when joining and diarise when to cancel if you don’t want it.

The details in these proposals will hopefully become clear over the next few months as the Business Department work on this and the Business Secretary will introduce the changes in a consumer green paper.

This package, once it becomes law, should eradicate a lot of bad business practice and make life easier for consumers.

Do you have an opinion on this matter? Please comment in the box below.

Lifestyle Survey Phone Calls

It seems to be stupid survey call season again.

I don’t know why, but these calls seem to happen for a period of weeks then stop for up to several months then start again. And this is the start – three calls yesterday and two today so far.

These callers are trained to be friendly starting with “How are you today Sir?”

Then a starter such as “I just have a few questions to ask you today please”

or “Please can you help me by answering just a  few simple questions about lifestyle?”

They ask questions to profile you – gender, age range, location etc. then the key questions are usually about things such as insurance, pets, children, safety, who supplies your electricity and gas, which supermarkets you shop at etc.

The questions themselves are mostly harmless, but these people sell the answers so if you answer “No you don’t have household insurance” then that makes you a good lead to sell to every home contents insurance company they can find.

The result is then lots more calls from insurance companies that you didn’t ask for.

Most of these survey companies operate from outside of the UK and claim they can ignore the fact that many of us are registered on the Telephone Preference Service and should not be called.  They are wrong in this belief and should not call TPS registered numbers.

Best not to answer such surveys unless you are happy to put up with the subsequent unwanted sales phone calls.

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Web of Trust

https://www.mywot.com/

“Powered by 140 Million Users & Machine Learning, our free browser extensions, mobile app and API let you check if a website is safe before your reach it, giving you a clean and safe browsing environment” claims the Web of Trust (WOT) website checker.

WOT claims to secure you against scams, malware, rogue web stores and dangerous links on the Internet.

The idea behind the Web of Trust is to try to make the Internet a safe place by automatically checking any website before your browser opens it. It does this by having a regularly updated list of dangerous websites. That list comes from its users marking websites as dangerous, so it’s crowdsourced information.  WOT say they also use blacklists compiled by other people, of dangerous websites.

This is a great idea – if you find a dodgy website then you tell WOT and they can then warn other people about it.

But, this approach does have it’s limitations.  For example, auction sites have been marked dangerous by WOT because of one or a few bad sellers. It’s also possible that some sites are marked dangerous by members because they don’t like them rather than there being anything dodgy about them.

Reputation icons are also shown next to links on search engine results, social media platforms, webmail, and other popular sites to help you search safely.

When the WOT add-on is installed, you will see a small doughnut shaped icon next to your browser’s address bar. The icon shows you the site’s rating and reputation: green indicates a safe website, yellow tells you to be cautious, and red indicates potential danger.

The Web of Trust website also has an online community with more than 100,000 posts so it is an important community which discusses website ratings, security and online safety.

Alternatives

There are lots of alternative services that provide a similar warning before you access websites.  Google Safe browsing is one of the most popular and is free.

There are also similar services provided by the makers of anti-virus and anti-malware software. Site Advisor is one of the most popular. These services don’t have the advantage of crowd sourcing but they are technically very proficient.

If you worried about the safety of browsing then do look at WOT and its competitors and pick the one that works best for you.

If you have had bad experiences with websites or these protection services – do let me know, by email.