Customer Voice The place to have your say Home  |  News  |  Forum  |  Links Notice: SSI.php was unable to load a session! This may cause problems with logout and other functions - please make sure SSI.php is included before *anything* else in all your scripts! in /home/cvoice/public_html/forum/SSI.php on line 160 Tesco to pay milk farmers more In a move that many observers may wish to reserve judgement on, tesco has announced it will offer contracts to around 850 farmers to pay them 22p per litre, a significant amount more than the current average price. NFU president Pete Kendall described it as "the most significant and encouraging development in the dairy industry for a very long time" In a market where the price of the product has become dictated by the retailers buying it rather than the producers, the propo... more... Network Rail announce expansion Network rail have announced a programme of expansion and improvements for the countries rail network, an investment that is expected to total around £2.4bn. Improvements which are to be carried out over the next two years will include lengthening platforms, new sections of track, and improved signalling. According to Chief executive John Armitt the programme of improvements is to increasing demand on the rail network. Mr Armitt said: "Three million people use the... more... Landline to mobile rates to come down Ofcom has announced it will be setting a limit on the amount mobile phone companies can charge for connecting landline users to customers on their network. The new limits come into effect from 1st April and it is estimated by Ofcom they will save landline users an average of £8 per year. more... Nationwide launch 25 year fixed mortgage Nationwide building society have announced a mortgage which has an interest rate fixed at 5.49% which will be attractive to home buyers who are concerned about future interest rate increases, which have been relatively frequent in recent years. This long term fixed rate will only be available for a limited period. The mortgage has a clause which will enable customers a "get out" without penalties after 10 years. more... Green Homes grants reorganised The Low Carbon Buildings Programme, which provides grants for people to install renewable energy sources such as solar panels on their homes has been suspended for April while the scheme is re-organised. As part of the recent budget announcement the scheme was given an additional £6milion. The scheme at present has been a victim of its own success with the £600,000 monthly budget for the scheme in March being allocated within 2 hours. According to a DTI statement the... more... Royal Mail loses Work And Pensions contract After a year's trial with UK Mail and TNT, the Department of Work and Pensions has awarded its £12m bulk mail collection contract to UK Mail. The change makes DWP the first government department to decide to use a postal operator other than Royal Mail. The collected mail will be delivered to its final destination by Royal Mail, but the deal still represents a significant loss of business to the government owned behemoth. more... Scottish Gas introduce payment fines Scottish Gas have announced they will be fining customers £5 if they fail to pay their bill within 28 days of receiving it. The company claim the £5 charge will help offset the cost of chasing late payments. A Scottish Gas spokesman said: "The £5 charge reflects our costs in following up customers' debts and is an approach similar to that taken by many other companies, such as BT, though we won't be applying the charge to any vulnerable customers." How Scottish G... more... HSBC Charges extra for betting HSBC have announced that as of 1st Feb it will charge its credit card customers more for gambling transactions. Affected customers will be charged the rate usually used for a cash advances rather than a normal purchase. Some online gambling services accept payments via Paypal, which will be unaffected. This applies to the interest rate and not the one off fee which is applied to other cash transactions. "This is one of a number of changes we have made to our credit card off... more... First class stamps rise to 34p Royal Mail have announced that as of April, the price of a standard first class stamp will go up from 32p to 34p. Second class stamp prices are also to go up by 1p to 24p. The new "Large Letter" prices, which were only introduced in August 06 will also go up, with first class going up by 4p to 48p and second class items by 3p to 40p. "Stamped mail made a loss of £237m in the 2005-06 financial year, equivalent to 6p on every first and second class stamped letter,"... more... UK Co-ops discuss merger The Co-operative Group and United Co-operatives, the UKs largest consumer co-operatives have begun discussions that could lead to a merger. Should a merger take place, the resulting group would have more than 4,000 outlets across a range of services. "The boards of the Co-operative Group and United Co-operatives have agreed to discuss the possibility of a merger between their two societies," the groups said in a statement. "Talks have commenced and a further stat... more... New pension scheme announced The government today announced a new pension scheme they are calling "Personal Accounts" planned to come into effect from 2012. People who have no occupational pension will automatically be signed up to the scheme unless they opt out. The new scheme will be based on percentage of salaries, with the employee paying 4%, the employer paying 3% and the government paying 1% by means of a tax relief. The government estimate this will benefit up to 10 million people who... more... Cahoot loan rate rise Online bank Cahoot has written to customers of their flexible rate loan product to tell them the interest rate is going from 9.4% to 14.9% on 19th Dec. According to Cahoot, the new rate is still competitive. As Cahoot is planning on leaving the loans market, this may actually be an attempt to get rid of customers. The bank have said there is no penalty for early repayment, meaning customers can transfer their loan elsewhere. more... Iceland depot staff strike Staff at Iceland's north London depot are to stage a walkout today, followed by a further 24 hour stoppage on 15th Dec and a 48 hour stoppage from 21 Dec. The 250 drivers and warehouse staff are walking out over a 2.4% pay offer they rejected from DHL Exel Supply Chain, who run the depot. The depot supplies 180 Iceland stores across the South East of England. "DHL Exel Supply Chain remains confident that the effects on deliveries will be minimal and this matter w... more... Air Passenger Duty Doubles In his pre-budget report, Gordon Brown has announced that Air Passenger Duty is to double from Feb 2007. For most economy class flights within the EU this will mean an increase to £10. According to the chancellor the extra funds from Air Passenger Duty would be used to improve public transport. The report also announced there would be an inflation based rise for petrol duty of 1.25p per litre. more... Channel 4 Launches on demand Channel 4 has launched an on-demand internet service that lets viewers catch up with the majority of the station's programmes up to 28 days after they were aired. Content from C4s back catalogue will also be available. The cost of viewing the content starts at 99p per show, with films also available at £1.99. Channel 4 launched a similar service for cable customers earlier in the year. Whether shows available via the catch up service will include adverts is unclear. more... Lloyds TSB says "keep the change" Lloyds TSB have launched a new Debit Card scheme called Save the Change, designed to encourage its customers to save. All payments made with the card will be rounded up to the nearest pound, and the extra money put into a savings account. "We want to make it as easy as possible for people to get into the savings habit...at the end of the year customers will have a nice nest egg to build on for the future," Terri Dial, Lloyds TSB group executive director said. The... more... BT signs live football deal with Setanta BT has announced a deal with Setanta sports that will allow its newly launched BT Vision service to show 46 live Premiership matches during the 2007/08 season. In combination with an existing deal BT Vision customers will have access to 75% of premiership matches, live or "near-live". The addition of premiership football to the lineup may set up BT's new service to be in direct competition with Sky. The new service is essentially a freeview box with a hard disk recorder, an... more... ING Direct freeze interest rate ING Direct have told its customers that the interest rate on their instant access savings account will not be increasing in response to the recent base rate rise to 5%. Their interest rate will stay at 4.75% The reason the company gave in an email to its customers was that it thought they would rather be "earning consistently". The test for this reasoning will be whether ING reduces the interest rate on this account if the base rate goes down. Martin Rutland from ING is quo... more... British Gas to stop pre-payment backdating British Gas have announced that they will no longer be backdating price rises for pre-payment meter users.  This happens at present and is caused by the delay between a price rise, and an engineer visiting a customer's home to update their meter. This will no doubt be a relief to many on low incomes, who will be waiting to see if other companies follow suit. "British Gas has recognised that backdating price rises has a devastating effect on poor households," Teresa Perchard... more... Changes in Home Credit industry After a lengthy investigation into the home credit industry, the Competition Commission has issued a series of guidelines to companies, including providing clearer information to their customers. The guidelines are as follows - lenders to share data on customers’ payment records (to overcome the information disadvantages faced by lenders attempting to compete for customers’ business); - require lenders to publish prices on a website where customers can compare... more...