Weekly Money: the stories we noticed 9 to 13 November

The personal finance stories you may have missed this week

Across the country this week people paid tribute to fallen soldiers (Getty Images)

13 November

Online ticket agencies are cheating consumers by flouting the Consumer Rights Act, reckons Which? It spent eight weeks monitoring four of the biggest secondary ticketing websites and found evidence that consumers are missing out.

It said tickets appeared on re-sale sites before they were even officially released and accused the online sites of ignoring re-sale restrictions. Its research also revealed tickets appearing simultaneously on primary and re-sale sites and some suspicious ticket release patterns.

It isn’t illegal to resell tickets for profit but Which? executive director Richard Lloyd, said: “Sites should adhere to the Consumer Rights Act so that fans understand what they’re buying. The Government should crack down on those who resell tickets at inflated prices on an industrial scale.”

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Building societies have agreed to review age limits for mortgage borrowing as more people over 65 find they need to borrow. The mutuals point out that the trend is set to heighten as consumers are tending to buy later and go for longer repayment terms.

Paul Broadhead of the Building Societies Association said: “As the average age of a first-time buyer continues to increase, borrowing into retirement is becoming increasingly commonplace, rather than a niche form of lending.”

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Unlucky for some? People actually take more care on Friday the 13th which falls today, presumably with a nod to the age-old superstition. New research shows that insurance claims on Friday the 13th are dramatically lower than the monthly average - in fact according to Policy Expert there are half the number of claims compared to an average day.

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House prices are still set to soar. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said that UK house prices were expected to rise by 4.5 per cent a year over the next five years, a cumulative increase of around 25 per cent.

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A total of 2,500 homes were repossessed in the third quarter, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. This was unchanged from the previous quarter, although the number of homes in serious arrears did increase by 400 to 23,700 during the period July-September.

The CML’s director-general Paul Smee said the figures were positive overall, but warned that home-owners should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the continued low cost of borrowing. “There is possibly a risk that people will postpone thinking about the prospect of higher payments as the timing of rate rises continues to stretch beyond previous expectations,” he said. “We would urge all borrowers to plan ahead, as prevention is better than cure.”

12 November

Almost 13m people now claim state pension with the average payment £130.30 a week, according to the latest government figures. The level of the New State Pension due to be launched in April 2016 will be announced in the Autumn Statement on 25 November. Experts expect it to be set at around £155 per week. Those already retired will be largely unaffected by the impending changes.

Tom McPhail of Hargreaves Lansdown said: “The reforms will simplify the system. However the transition will not be straightforward and the government does not yet appear to have got to grips with how to communicate the changes effectively.”

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A new book published today warns that the state pension changes will ensure that older women in the UK will lose out disproportionately and will suffer greater poverty as a result. Shockingly only 20,000 women will actually qualify for the new full state pension compared to 130,000 men in its first year 2016-2017.

On top of that many women will suffer the double whammy of being forced to work longer because pensionable age rises from the 60 they expected when they started work to 65 and then eventually to 67, points out Neoliberalising Old Age author John Macnicol.

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TalkTalk is offering all its customers a free upgrade to compensate for the recent cyber attack, in which thousands of people's personal data was leaked online. Dido Harding, chief executive, said that one-off costs were estimated to be around £30m to £35m.

11 November

If you’re a Virgin Media customer, get set to dig a little deeper to pay for your broadband and tv packages from next February. Charges will soar by 5.4 per cent in 2106 with package prices increasing by up to 3.99 a month, including a £1 line rental increase.

Gregor McNeil of Virgin Media claimed: “We are doing everything we can to keep prices as competitive as possible.” Sky, meanwhile, has already hiked the cost of line rental charges by £1 a month to £17.40 from 1 December, while Sky voicemail will increase from 25p to £1.25 a month.

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A debt management company that made more than one million nuisance calls in a month offering to write off people’s debts has been fined a record £120,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

In the unwanted calls from Oxygen Ltd, the company played a misleading recorded message that claimed to be a “government awareness call”. It prompted 214 complaints from fed-up and harassed consumers and after an investigation by the government watchdog, the South Wales company was found to have made more than 1m automated calls without people’s consent during April.

Peter Tutton of StepChange Debt Charity, said: “While the fine is welcome, there is still much more to be done. More than half of British adults have been contacted by fee-charging debt management companies or marketers selling high-cost credit and this is still a real, everyday problem.”

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Billing issues accounted for nearly nine out of every ten complaints about energy firms received by Ombudsman Services between July and September.

Energy customers turned for help with disputed charges, inaccurate invoices and missing bills. Unsurprisingly Scottish Power led the table of shame accounting for 4,554 of the 13,212 energy complaints passed onto the Ombudsman in the three month period. Next was NPower with 3,581.

Chief Ombudsman, Lewis Shand Smith, said: “It’s clear that energy companies’ steps to improve their customer service are starting to pay off, but there is still more that could be done to ensure the service customers receive matches their expectations.”

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According to the StepChange debt charity, credit card debt is the single biggest type of problem debt. Two thirds of the charity’s clients have at least one card and their average debt is more than £8,000. It says that last year, 14 million people suffered a shock to their income or a change in circumstances and 4.5 million of them used credit to cope.

“People who use credit to cope are 20 times more likely to fall into problem debt than those who don’t,” said Mike O’Connor, chief executive of StepChange. “We see too many credit users falling into financial difficulty and more is needed to ensure that what should be a short-term product does not push people into unaffordable long-term debt.”

10 November

Expect some changes to your credit card terms as plastic card companies react to an upcoming EU cap on interchange fees. On 9 December credit and debit card processing fees, paid by a retailer’s bank to the cardholder’s bank, will be capped at 0.3 per cent and 0.2 per cent respectively.

The idea behind the move is to ensure that businesses will no longer have to pass excessive fees onto their customers. But credit card companies could scrap reward deals as a result, or even introduce or raise fees once the new cap is in place, warns Moneyfacts.

Capital One has already removed its cashback rewards, while Tesco Bank, NatWest and RBS have changed or withdrawn their point schemes. From next year, Santander is increasing the yearly fee on by £12 on its 123 credit card.

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More of us are ditching the big six energy firms in favour of smaller suppliers. Over the last year, six in every ten switchers left British Gas, E.on, EDF Energy, Npower, SSE and ScottishPower in favour of challengers such as First Utility, Extra Energy, OVO Energy and Co-operative Energy, according to GoCompare.

“Smaller energy companies have been dominating the best-buy tables for some time, so it’s not surprising that savvy customers have been switching to them to save money on gas and electricity bills,” said Tom Lewis of GoCompare.

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One in three new cars is now cheaper than used models if you buy on HP or PCP, reckons What Car? It says that competitive finance deals and low interest rates offered by manufacturers to shift new models can make them less expensive than second-hand vehicles.

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E.on has become the first of the major energy suppliers to be hit by new fines for failing to install smart meters for business customers. Ofgem said that E.on failed to provide two-thirds of its business customers with advanced meters by the deadline of April 2014 and fined it £7m.

If it fails to hit a new target it could face a further £7m sanction and a possible sales ban. Two more energy providers – British Gas and Npower – are also being investigated after the energy industry came up short in fulfilling a five-year target to roll-out sophisticated meters, that would give businesses more accurate bills, help them monitor their energy usage and make it easier to switch suppliers.

9 November

Women face losing around £36,000 worth of pension because they were given inadequate notice of crucial changes to the State pension age. As a result many are facing real hardship, warns retirement expert Alan Higham.

He believes the government has left hundreds of thousands of woman in financial risk by not making sure they knew that they would have to wait for a State pension payout. And he warns the government faces legal action from campaigners demanding fairness and justice.

“People cannot be left high and dry in real hardship as a result. The Government must act on the complaints its failures generate,” Mr Higham said. “The risk of doing nothing is a class action which could cost the tax payer a small fortune to compensate all affected while prolonging huge suffering.”

The campaigning group Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) has been petitioning the Government to reverse its decision not to award transitional financial help to those affected at petition.parliament.uk/petitions/110776

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The introduction of the National Living Wage will cost every residential care bed an extra £18 and could lead to the closure of more than 9,000 care homes, according to the care industry.

Malcolm Booth of the National Federation of Occupational Pensioners said it would be a disaster for many vulnerable elderly residents. “It demonstrates the urgent need to review the level of funding provided by local government and central government for this essential service,” he said.

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How much do you pay your dentist? It depends where you live. Routine dental check-ups vary by as much as £170 across the country, according to whatclinic.com. The cheapest dental check-up is just £15 in Birmingham while in one London clinic it would set you back £185.

But if you need dental implants – an expensive procedure used to secure crowns, bridges or dentures – head to Liverpool. They cost an average £2,101 across the UK but just £1,427 in the north-west city.