Episode 19

On Sunday 24th February, more than 30,000 Swansea City fans will travel to Wembley to cheer on the Swans as they take on Bradford in the Capital One Cup Final.

It’s the club’s biggest game in recent years and Swansea’s ticket allocation sold out within days to season ticket holders and members of the official 'Jack Army' supporters club.

The two football clubs are the only official suppliers of tickets but X-Ray has learned that desperate fans are still prepared to risk buying on the black market to see their heroes play.

Unlike concerts or other sporting events, when it comes to re-selling tickets, football is a whole different ball game.

It’s illegal to re-sell match tickets or make them available to others without the organiser's permission. If you’re caught you face a £5,000 fine and a ban from future matches. But what about fans who’ve been left empty-handed for Sundays final?

Kevin Hughes, from Llandrindod Wells - a Swansea City fan for 20 years - has resorted to placing an advert online to see the big game.

It’s a risk he’s taken before – and he’s had his fingers burned when he was left stranded after buying a championship play-off ticket from another fan on the black market.

He told us: “I was supposed to meet the seller with the tickets outside Wembley, but the tickets failed to turn up and we were stuck outside."

So when the next big game came around he tried a different method. He and his brother paid more than £200 to a website called Online Ticket Express, which claimed to have tickets for sale.

He said: “We paid over the odds, but it was a game that we really wanted to get to." Then Kevin had some very bad news. The day before the match Online Ticket Express contacted him to say they had no tickets. He was devastated and spent weeks trying to get a refund.

Eventually he got some money back but the company kept hold of a hefty handling fee.

We found hundreds of complaints online about the Spanish based firm, ranging from tickets failing to arrive to being in the wrong section of the ground. And Online Ticket Express have some very interesting small print, which spells out what they will and won’t do if fans experience problems.

They won’t help if you’re refused entry, or ‘ejected’ from a match because someone else’s name is on your ticket. If your tickets get lost in the post you’re on your own. And if you find yourself in the middle of the other team’s fans Online Ticket Express helpfully suggest you don’t wear your team's colours!

It may sound funny, but Leigh Dineen, vice chairman of Swansea City FC, is horrified. He told X-Ray: “Please do not go onto these websites and buy a ticket. You are not guaranteed that the ticket you’re getting will actually get you into the ground or into the part of the ground where you’re going to feel safe.”

The Premier League is worried too. They gave X-Ray a list of unauthorised sites that they’re urging fans to avoid - and Online Ticket Express is one of them.

We searched all the sites on the warning list and found five advertising tickets for the Swansea/Bradford final this weekend, all at very high prices, even though none are authorised to sell them. The websites claim to be acting as a ‘middle man’ service, putting fans with spare tickets in touch with buyers.

Anyone in the UK who re-sells their ticket is definitely breaking the law, but when it comes to these websites the law is less clear - and because they’re based outside the UK it’s harder to enforce.

As for this Sunday’s Cup Final, it remains to be seen how many fans who’ve bought tickets from unauthorised sites will be left counting the cost.

When Donna Marie Jones from Denbigh forked out for a new Apple iPhone after hers developed a fault, she didn’t expect it to reveal the identity of another customer.

But that’s what she says happened when she bought a refurbished phone from the Apple store in Liverpool.

She got it home to discover it was full of its last owner’s personal information and bank details.

When she rang the previous owner to tell him, he was shocked and told her he’d taken it into the same store two days earlier.

We contacted Apple but they wouldn’t comment on the incident – they have now sent Donna a brand new iPhone and given her back the £139 she paid for her refurbished phone.

Donna’s experience made us wonder how easy, or difficult, it is to ensure all your personal data is cleared from a smart phone – especially important if you’re planning to sell it to make some extra cash.

So our reporter Rachel Treadaway Williams gathered up a collection of smartphones that members of the X-Ray team had wiped, as if they were ready to be sold second hand.

We then enlisted the help of mobile security expert Jason Hart. He’s a member of e-Crime Wales – and an ethical hacker – and asked him to conduct an experiment using ‘information harvesting’ programs, which are freely available on the internet. And unfortunately, that means criminal hackers can easily get their hands on the same tools.

After just a few minutes of investigative work, Jason had uncovered a wealth of information on two Blackberrys and an iPhone – finding Twitter account details, photographs, videos, an entire contacts list and even access to an online shopping account.

Jason said: “We've managed to find a substantial amount of data – enough to compromise each of the three individuals' online accounts.”

The problem is smartphones contain a huge amount of data about us – from traces of websites and apps we have used, to usernames, passwords and notes we may have saved to the phone.

So how can you wipe your phone safely if you’re going to sell it? Here are Jason’s top tips:

• Delete the data on your phone by restoring it to factory settings – if you don’t know how to do this then consult your phone’s instruction manual and if you don’t have the manual any more, contact the manufacturer or visit your local mobile phone store;

• Take out and destroy your SIM card. Many people don’t realise that the SIM card, as well as the phone, stores data so if you sell the phone with the SIM card in it you could be giving away information such as your contacts list;

• Check for any other storage devices on the phones. Often phones have another memory card, which you can take out by opening up the back of the phone. Make sure you remove this and either keep it somewhere safe or put it into your next phone;

• And be aware of what you are storing on your phone. Don’t save passwords or PINs, for example, which would be very useful in the hands of criminals.

Too often the humble shed is dismissed as nothing more than a place to shove your shovels at the bottom of the garden.

But Anne and Steve McDonald from Haverfordwest had much higher hopes for their shed, hoping it would give them the space to enjoy the hobbies they love. For Anne it's arts and crafts while Steve was planning to build a model railway in the new shed.

Keen to do things right, the McDonald's paid hundreds of pounds for a concrete base for the shed. Then Anne spotted an advert online for a large shed with a ten-year guarantee and asked the company, Highgate Garden Buildings, to pay her a visit.

Steve said: “A chap came down and 'oh yes' he said. The base was one of the best bases he'd ever seen.”

Anne says she asked about maintaining the shed. She explained: “I said we need something that's low maintenance. He said with this one, you won't have to do anything with it for at least 1ten years. Ok, I thought that sounds pretty good to me.”

The McDonald's paid more than £1,600 for the shed and up it went.

Everything seemed rosy while the sun was shining, but three days later the wet Welsh autumn arrived and the shed started leaking badly.

Anne said: “It was coming in where the windows are, it was coming in between the slats, soaking the slats, and in the end it was coming in the roof.”

Anne complained to Highgate and sent photos, but she wasn't happy with their response.

They said the shed needed guttering, downpipes and a soakaway, as well as a waterproof coating - all at the McDonald's expense. Not the low maintenance shed they said they’d been promised.

Highgate told X-Ray they had given this advice to the couple when the shed was delivered, but Anne strongly disagrees. “If somebody had said to us you need to do this straight away, we'd have had it done straight away," she said. "You don't spend £300-£500 building a base and then £1,600 on a shed, and then ruin it by not looking after it.”

Anne and Steve decided to get an expert opinion and asked a chartered surveyor to look at the shed. The surveyor said the problems were down to poor workmanship and the company's suggestion of guttering wasn't the answer.

Since reaching a stalemate with the company, the shed has sat empty in their garden for months. On one occasion, the couple put Anne's spare wheelchair in it for a couple of weeks, and it became mouldy and damp.

We contacted Highgate Garden Buildings, who insist this is a one-off complaint. They say there's nothing wrong with the 'craftsmanship' of the shed.

Since we got in touch, they've finally been out to see the problems for themselves and, as a gesture of goodwill, they now say they'll fit some guttering and waterproof the shed.