THE Consumer Crew are here to solve your problems.
Mel Hunter will take on readers’ consumer issues, Jane Hamilton will give you the best advice for buying your dream home, and Judge Rinder will tackle your legal woes.
Jane Hamilton, property expert
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Porch choice is smart pick
HAVE you got some front? Social media searches for “front porch” have hit a five-year high, as “frontscaping” emerges as the winter’s top home trend.
Outdoor specialist gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk has shared its tips for making the most of street-facing outdoor space.
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A spokesman said: “Historically, porches may have been overlooked while people concentrate on their back gardens. But this is changing as people look for creative and innovative ways to make the most of these spaces.”
1) Island life: Create an island or focal point with a rockery feature or plants. This will break up the scenery by providing a central point of interest.
2) Pretty porch: Climbing plants around a porch or over the front of a house add drama.
3) Consider contrast: Large planting beds either side of a grass pathway, filled with thick bushes and a ring of bright flowers, will offer an eye-catching display for visitors and home dwellers.
4) Bring on the baskets: Tight for space? Put up brightly coloured hanging baskets either side of your front door.
5) Be bold: Want to make even more of an impact? Create a water feature or a stone path.
6) Seasonal theme: Use the space as a seasonal canvas, especially at this time of year. Add a festive wreath to the front door, some twinkling lights and other seasonal decorations.
Buy of the week
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RIGHTMOVE’S most viewed home of the year is the opulent £15million mansion in the celebrity enclave of Chigwell, Essex.
You could be neighbours with the mansion’s new owner by snapping up a more affordable one-bedroom apartment, above, in the nearby village of Chigwell Row.
On for £300,000 at rightmove.co.uk/properties/89665198.
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Plan to grow to sell
HAVING planning permission in place to extend your home boosts its value by an average of 21 per cent – that’s £46,000 on a typical property, according to new research.
Homes in Bradford experienced the biggest uplift in value.
A house there with planning permission sells for 52 per cent more than those without.
James Forrester, MD of Midlands estate agent Barrows & Forrester, which conducted the study, said: “One defining trend of the pandemic has been our push to buy bigger homes.”
Deal of the week
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THE vibrant purple shade of “Orchid Flower” has been selected as 2022 colour of the year by trends forecaster WGSN.
Add a dash to your home with this £9.99 artificial orchid from homescapesonline.com.
SAVE: £10 on similar styles elsewhere
Judge Rinder, legal expert
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‘‘When vandals wrecked vehicles on our road, police did nothing. Can I get compensation for the damage?’’
Q) MYSELF and some neighbours had our vehicles vandalised by two men in the early hours of the morning. They were both caught on CCTV on our street.
My vehicle was damaged quite badly and so far it has cost me £950 to repair the tyres and windscreen, with a further £1,750 quoted to sort the paintwork.
The police said on the day they could not help. They just gave me a crime number for insurance purposes.
Two people have been investigated and one was sent back to prison the day after the criminal act.
Can my neighbours and myself make some sort of a claim for the damage caused to our vehicles? And if so, from whom?
KEITH, Durham
A) It is disappointing (to say the least) the police chose not to pursue these vandals, especially when they had such clear evidence of them damaging your cars.
The result of this failure is, I’m afraid, that no charges were brought against this pair.
So there is little you can do in terms of claiming compensation from the State and there is no point whatsoever suing the criminals themselves.
This is why the cost of car insurance has gone up significantly in many areas. It is a costly reminder of how overstretched and under-resourced our police service are.
Q) AFTER buying our new house recently, we got the keys, stepped inside and saw that a new wall had been built in the living room, taking away about 15 per cent of the floor space.
This wall was put up as there is a loft conversion, originally built in 2006, that had never been signed off by building control.
We’d requested that this was put right before we exchanged contracts – hence this wall being built (apparently by the vendor, who is a builder) to create a safe passageway down the stairs and out of the front door in the event of a fire.
But this wall has completely changed the layout inside the house and has massively reduced the living space.
They also removed a radiator to put up the wall and never re-sited it.
So there is now no heating in that end of the house, while pipes stick out of the floor. Surely the vendors should have kept us informed over what they had to do to make this property safe and let us view it when it was complete?
Should we just shut up and put up, being thankful they made the house safe? Or have they broken any laws?
R, Scarborough
A) You certainly should not “shut up and put up”.
The solicitor you instructed to deal with the purchase of your property should have agreed in the contracts precisely what remedial building work was to be undertaken by the time you completed on the house and moved in.
Any work that had to be done should have been completed by the seller to a competent standard – and certainly without altering the floorplan of the house, which is entirely unacceptable.
Your starting point here is to urgently make contact with the original solicitor you used, explaining what has happened.
If they drafted the contracts properly, you should be entitled to compensation for the cost of the work of getting the house back to the state you agreed in the first place.
Tree row
Q) WE are an elderly couple in a bungalow with a large oak tree nearby on council land.
It is years since the council pruned the tree and several branches hang over our roof.
We fear a large branch could fall and damage our property. Can we force the council to prune it?
Douglas, Shrops
A) The council owns the land where this tree is planted, so is responsible legally for the overhanging branches.
It would also be responsible for any damage they might cause. Write again to the relevant department (find this on the council’s website) making clear the branches must be removed.
Your local ward representative may help. If branches encroach on to your land, you are legally entitled to cut them back.
Mel Hunter, reader’s champion
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Billing saga So annoying
Q) IN January, my landlord switched me from SSE to So Energy, which asked for my meter readings.
Three weeks later I got a statement saying I was £501 in debt.
I knew straight away the readings I gave must have been wrong, so I called So. But no one answered. I emailed and got a reply asking me to take a picture of the readings.
I told them I didn’t know how to do this but I never heard back.
I decided to switch suppliers but So objected because of this outstanding balance.
Still I couldn’t get hold of anyone, so I left it for another few months. Then my daughter found a YouTube video showing how to get the reading. So I emailed again, attaching a picture of it.
Since then, So has emailed asking for more information and pictures. I am struggling to do this and asked for someone to come and read the meter. A month later, I still haven’t received a reply. I haven’t had a bill since February.
Joanna, Wolverhampton
A) Every time you tried to sort this out, So gave you another hoop to jump through. In the meantime, the £500 bill had not gone away.
I finally got things moving. So got in touch with your previous supplier and worked out your opening reading.
It corrected your bills and, taking your direct debits into account, said you owed nothing and gave you a £30 goodwill gesture.
A So spokesperson said: “We have resolved the issue with the customer and gave them a monetary gesture of goodwill. The customer is therefore happy to consider the matter closed.”
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Q) WE booked a room at the Macdonald Manchester Hotel via Expedia, paying £184.
It was for one night but as we arrived we were told Expedia had cancelled the booking.
We’d missed our last train to get home, hotels nearby were full and the Macdonald had one room available – the same as we’d booked but for £330. We had no choice but to take it.
We called Expedia at once but had no joy speaking to a call centre in Egypt. We emailed a copy of our invoice and were promised an outcome within 48 hours.
Six weeks after our stay, we’ve got no further response.
We are pensioners and £330 on top of the original £183 is unaffordable. It’s left us in desperate need of our refund.
David and Trisha, Newcastle
Most read in The Sun
A) It seemed pretty obvious to me you were due a full refund.
I got on to Expedia asking for its side of the story in case I was missing something – but I wasn’t. It said a “system malfunction” led to the cancellation and promised a refund.
I gave the firm short shrift for not sorting this sooner. Given the error was at its end, the travel company should have resolved this in your favour straight away.
You eventually got the full £514 back in your account.
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