I can't believe I've got so worked up over 30p but it's the principle of the thing!!

I had to go to Cardiff on Sunday night (lovely place by the way - great for a weekend away). I got a cab at the station to take me to my hotel. Getting the cab was an experience - they're all in a jumble at the station and I couldn't work out why the driver who told me to pile in was the next one - he didn't seem to be next.

When we got to the hotel and he stopped the charge screen said £4.40. I had a £20 note in my purse but I knew I had a £5 note in my pocket so I searched around for it so that he wouldn't have to use up his change.

When I found it, blow me if the charge wasn't £4.70! I said 'how come?' and he said it was 'waiting time'. Waiting time!! I said how was this? I was just looking for a £5 note - that's not waiting time! I said it was not legal and how dare he. He said it was legal and I had to pay it.

I then insisted on taking his licence number and registration number which he let me do. The cheek of it!

I paid grudgingly and told him that I would be complaining, which I duly did when I got into my hotel room. I went onto the Cardiff County Council website and found a rather useful press release entitled 'Cardiff Clamps Down on Unscrupulous Taxi Drivers'. Ha! I'm not the only one who's been defrauded.

The release urged members of the public to complain about bad practices among cab drivers in the city and I did just that, through the helpful email address given on that page.

Happily, today I have had a long email back from the Council saying that the practice is not acceptable and sending me an official form in which to complain. I'll also be speaking to them over the phone and giving chapter and verse.

After all, as the concierge at my hotel pointed out, if this guy is doing that to every customer every day, he'll be making a tidy profit. Yes, I know I shouldn't get worked up over 30p but the gall of the man really got my goat. I'm going to make sure he doesn't do that - or worse - to any other unsuspecting visitor to this great city!

Adding to Serena's blog about bank fees is the continuing fight against the quality of the items you buy. So many people just buy clothes, shoes, stationary, and other bits and bobs which after a week, a month, or a bit longer, just don't live up to the standards that you required when purchasing the product.

The great thing is that we do have law to cover us from being ripped-off as a consumer - check out the Scamwatch article for more - and I took that on with great power last week.

I'm free to admit I don't have a lot of money these days, and when I do it goes on the important things. So when four of my five pairs of new tights from Marks & Spencer ripped each day I wore a pair I was not happy.

They were supposedly ladder-free, and neither pair tore in the same area, which just tells me they were flimsy all over. Granted they were the £3.50 box of cheap M&S brand 15 denier tights, but they still don't say "single use only" or "just because you buy these cheapies they won't last".

So I took all four broken pairs into my local store and explained the situation - basically that not only is it not value for money, but how can they sell something that I would expect to pick up in Primark and not M&S?!

I did get my money back, but the shop assistant's alternative was to tell me to buy the better brand, which was one pair of 30 denier for £3.50. Instead, I spent £4 on a pair of 60 denier tights that I know will get me through the cold of winter.

Let us know what consumer battles you've won, or if we can give you some tips to help win your battle!

Moneymagpie Mara.

I’ve just moved into a new flat and frankly I’ve found the whole process comparable to climbing Everest.

Everyone knows that moving is a stressful business, but my situation was certainly not helped by having the additional problem of, as my landlord put it, ‘the most incompetent estate agents known to man’.

They were incredibly polite and obliging right up until my flatmates and I gave them our initial deposit. As soon as they were assured of our business however, things rapidly began to go downhill.

It still pains me to go into all the infuriating details, but needless to say no-one in their office ever knew what was going on with our property. Everyone who worked there was seemingly incapable of passing on messages to their colleagues, and a lot of the time, no-one bothered to answer the phone at all.

After having crucial details (including our moving dates) frequently changed at the last minute, and then finding out from our landlord afterwards that they had told us several blatant lies, I was fuming.

Towards the end of this whole ridiculous debacle, there was a surreal moment when I was stood in the lounge of what was so nearly my new flat in some kind of anger-fuelled daze while a representative of the estate agent and the landlord argued over legal documents that weren’t in order.

Of course, this resulted in our moving dates being put back, AGAIN.

Despite saving ourselves £90 each by telling the director that we would not be paying our administrative fees, seeing as the only administration that took place was carried out by us, I just didn’t feel like they cared about how much trouble they’d caused us, which was hugely infuriating.

It’s frankly pretty frustrating to think that these supposed professionals who are responsible for something so hugely important, can cock it up so monumentally, seemingly without trying at all.

Even our landlord who, thank heaven, is an extremely professional and considerate man, phoned us the other day to say he was heading down to their office with his cricket bat, and would we like to come? Admittedly, I was tempted.

After toying with the idea of some satisfying violence, I’ve decided to get my own back in a much more constructive way. I’m going to write to a few consumer affairs programmes, then write the estate agent in question a very polite letter explaining what I’ve done, sit back and (hopefully) enjoy the results.

It does worry me to think how many other people must have had a similar experience and were either too fed up or too exhausted by it all to fight to at least get some kind of compensation. The notoriously bad reputation of estate agents is a standard joke, but just how much longer are we all going to accept their substandard service without complaint?

This is one Moneymagpie who is simply not going to let them get away with it.

Moneymagpie Jo

Last week, I received a bank letter that made me angry. In fact, for a good few minutes I was huffing and puffing around my flat doing a passable impression of Victor Meldrew.

This letter informed me that my annual overdraft review had just taken place. This was a surprise in itself, as - after banking with these chaps for ten years - this was the first I'd heard of any such review.

Anyway, in a nutshell, it had been decided that my overdraft would stay the same for the next 12 months. The same amount interest-free, and the same overall limit. So no changes, no alterations.

As my overdraft suits my needs fairly well, everything in the garden seemed to be rosy. Until, that is, I got to the last sentence of the letter. A tiny phrase - nestling coyly at the bottom on the final page - told me that a £25 'arrangement fee' would be deducted from my account.

HUH? I'm being charged that for WHAT? A letter?

I spent a fruitless ten minutes on the phone to my bank's call centre, trying to pin down exactly what the £25 fee was for, as nothing new had actually been 'arranged'.

When the staff member in question had obviously run out of pre-scripted answers, I terminated the call and pulled my jacket on. Clearly this was a struggle to be had face-to-face.

By the time I reached my bank's local branch, I'd had a good long think about all the things I could buy for £25 - and frankly, I was pretty narked. And after I'd queued for 20 minutes to talk to a real live human being, I was smouldering.

I finally cornered a scared-looking manager and asked politely (albeit through gritted teeth) just what exactly was being arranged. He peeked at the letter, and - like magic - he agreed that as my overdraft was staying the same, I would not be charged a fee. He assured me that the process would be reversed and that the £25 would not leave my account. Hoorah.

A couple of days later, I logged onto my account online. And you can imagine the nasty shock I got when I saw that the day before, the £25 'arrangement fee' had indeed left my account.

I'll cast a veil over that final grisly scene - sufficient to say I paid my branch another visit, I got the £25 refunded and I imagine the afore-mentioned member of staff is still hiding in the toilets.

So all's well that ends well. But the whole debacle really showed me what absolute chancers banks seem to be. If you're not proactive, eagle-eyed and on top of your game, these sort of 'slip-ups' can leave you seriously out of pocket. And mistakes like this never seem to happen in favour of the consumer, do they?

One final thought. In this day and age, with instant international communications and the glorious worldwide web, it seems very odd that the only way to get anything sorted still involves the customer chasing the offending party around a table. Brave new world, eh?

Until next time,

MoneyMagpie Serena