Episode 4

Have you ever thought about alternative ways to invest your money? Low interest rates mean you won’t make a fortune by stashing your money in the bank these days, so many of us are considering other options - and some are more risky than others.

Eighty one year old Meryvn Jones is a former steelworker from Tredegar who wanted to leave a sum of money for his children. He wasn’t sure about the best place to invest his savings, so when he was cold-called by a salesman from a wine investment company back in 2009, he was interested in what the salesman had to say. “He seemed to be very knowledgeable about it. He even knew which side of the river certain grapes were being grown.”

Mervyn admits he knew very little about wine, but was reassured by the salesman’s friendly manner. “They used to ask you did you suffer with ill health or anything else, what was the matter with you. I think this is one of the things, you get taken in by how friendly they were.” After building up a relationship with Mervyn, the salesman promised him a guaranteed return on his investment at a much better rate than he’d get from a bank – all he needed to do was invest in fine French wine which was still in the barrel, or ‘en primeur’. This would then be stored for several years, until it had appreciated in value and could be sold on at a profit.

Some of these bottles of wine cost hundreds or even thousands of pounds, not the kind you’d find on the shelves of your local supermarket! Mervyn decided to test the water with a modest investment of two to three thousand pounds for a case of wine. He says that in the early days things seemed to be going well and he even received a small payout on his investment of about two hundred and sixty pounds. Mervyn believed he was onto a winner and over the next two years the company repeatedly rang him to offer him new investments. By 2011 his entire life savings ended up in their hands - around thirty eight thousand pounds in total. Mervyn thought his money was safe but then a few months ago, he tried to cash in his investment –and that’s when the problems began. The company seemed very reluctant to give him any information and eventually stopped taking his calls altogether. Mervyn started to get very worried and reported it to the authorities who have told X-Ray that they are investigating. We’re keeping a close eye on this story and we’ll you posted on any developments.

But is it really possible to make money out of investing in wine? We put that question to industry expert called Jim Budd, who writes about wine for a living and runs an online blog for investors to share their experiences. He told us that if you want to dabble in fine wine investment, it should only be a small part of your portfolio, and you really need to contact a range of legitimate companies that deal in wine investments to see what they’re offering. As for how you find out whether you can trust a company? Well for Jim, the alarm bells start ringing if you get cold-called… and his advice if that happens is just to put the phone down!

Getting a landline connected in your new house should be a doddle!

At least that’s what Chris Kingmartin from Nefyn in North Wales thought.

And because Chris has high blood pressure and ME a landline is a lifeline. His illness means he can’t work and with his wife out at the office six days a week, he relies on the phone in case he falls ill, particularly because mobile phone signal strength can be poor on the Llyn Peninsula.

So the couple telephoned BT last December, a month before they moved house, to make sure they’d be connected in time. Chris told X-Ray: “BT said, right, we can do it two days after you move in and that was fine. We could live two days without the landline - everything seemed fine at that time.”

But six months later, after chasing BT and being visited by a number of engineers, they’re still waiting for the landline. It means Chris has had to spend almost every day around his friend Des’ house to stay close to a landline. Des said, “There's been days when Chris has come here and you can clearly see the strain has been too much for him to take”.

What's really angered Chris, though, is that BT has still taken an average of £40 a month from the couple's bank account to pay for their landline, broadband and television package, despite all the problems.

However, after the couple got in touch with X-Ray, BT has finally connected up a working phone line. The telecoms company has apologised for what it called an "unacceptable delay," which it blamed on a fault in an underground cable. Chris is also getting a full refund for all the payments he has made in between.

A woman from Ceredigion has been left angry and out of pocket by a company that promised her a quick sale on her home. Kathleen Farrell and her husband have been trying to sell the bungalow they currently share in the village of Dihewyd, near Lampeter, for four years. The couple are divorcing and want to move out and buy separate homes. Last November, becoming desperate, they turned to a quick-sale firm called Gateway Homes from Leeds. It promises an offer on your house within 24 hours.

Kathleen said: “They had told us that they had cases that had turned around in three weeks. We were told there was no stress.”

Gateway Homes makes its money buying up homes at a knock-down price and selling them on at a profit. Kathleen’s house had been for sale at £230,000. Gateway offered £157,500 subject to final valuation. They also cover the legal and survey fees, but in Kathleen’s case it took them two months to send a surveyor out to value her home. 

Kathleen said: “We were given a date in December and a time for someone to come out and survey the property. We waited in all day and nobody came. We didn't get a surveyor until the end of January in the end.”

By February Kathleen says Gateway Homes were telling her and her husband the sale was imminent. Reassured, they each made offers on separate houses. Then, at the end of March, the sale collapsed when Kathleen says Gateway told her they’d over-valued the property.

Kathleen said: “Everything's been a total waste of time. Our property has been off the market for the last four and a half months, which we could have missed out on a potential sale because of these people.”

Kathleen and her husband estimate they spent a total of two thousand pounds in legal fees on the separate homes they’d been trying to buy. Both deals also fell through.

Kathleen said: “We not only lost out on the house purchase, we've also lost money as well. To me that's not fair…these people just seem to be getting rich quick on other people's misery.”

Gateway Homes is based in Yorkshire – Trading Standards there have had a number of customers contact them about last-minute price drops by the firm. The Office of Fair Trading is currently looking into the way quick-sale firms operate.

Gateway say they're perfectly entitled to pull out of a sale if they're unhappy with the valuation, and that they advised Kathleen not to incur any legal expenses. They do admit, though, that her case should have been handled more quickly. They say they've disciplined one member of staff, and put new procedures in place to stop it happening again.