Pennies from heaven

While one random act of kindness can supposedly change the world, I am delighted to report three random acts of kindness have amounted to a much needed holiday for our family.

When Christmas  2008 came only eight weeks after the Grand Opening, every penny I received in gifts from my family went towards heat, light, food and fuel. We had weekly benefits of £300 a week and nothing to spare for presents let alone luxuries. Our life remained like this for many months leaving me trapped in my beautiful,  but expensive to heat, country home with creditors shouting abuse at my door, debt collection agencies constantly telephoning, baliff visits looming  and no idea where the tunnel was let alone where the light at the end of it might be.

A year later when Christmas came around again we had lost our home but had managed to secure a roof over our head in the form of a drafty, leaky old farmhouse which had stood empty for nearly a year. By this time my husband was working at M & S but we had to use the Christmas money sent to us as gifts to finance the purchase of presents for our children and grandchildren.

This year was completely different.

With rental income from lodgers bridging the gap between torturously cold and bearably comfortable, I felt able, for the first time in three years, to spend the three hundred pounds my father sent us, on a luxury. So, on New Year’s Eve, I paid £321 for five return flights to Spain thanks to my Dad and his wife’s generousity.

Three years ago, within days of discovering our predicament, my father- in -law urged me to take my children away from the continual harassment and verbal abuse which went hand in hand with the demise of our business by moving to his apartment on the Costa del Sol. Not wishing to hide from our financial responsibilites I decided to stay and face the consequences so declined his kind offer to use his well appointed Spanish home complete with car and a full larder. Three years on he was only too happy to make the same offer again but this time for ten days in July.

Hearing the prohibitively expensive transfers from the airport were going to cost nearly as much as our flights, some Spanish resident ex-patriot friends of my father in law, whom we have never meet, offered to bring two cars to Malaga airport to collect us at a fraction of the cost of the commercial transfers available.

Because of these three independent acts of kindness, I, my husband and my children will fly to Spain for a ten day holiday of sun, sand and sea for which we have not paid one penny.  For me, this is a clear indication the “everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines”.

I do not doubt ex Lloyds Chief Executive Eric Daniel’s holiday plans, along with a fair few other HBOS and Lloyd’s executives, will have used tax-payer paid bonuses to finance much more extravagant and exotic summer breaks for their families than mine. I cannot, however, believe it possible for any of them to be looking forward to their vacation more than I am.

This feeling is priceless.

Good News Day

In 1814 Napoleon Bonaparte is reported to have said, “Never awake me when you have good news to announce, because with good news nothing presses; but when you have bad news, arouse me immediately for then there is not an instant to be lost.” Nearly two hundred years on I can whole heartedly relate to these words because for the past two and a half years I have awoken, every morning, with a sense of urgency in the knowledge there is not an instant to be lost when it comes to battling the banks for my family’s future.

During the last three months, if I have not been engaged in combat with HBOS and Lloyds, fulfilling the needs of my children, arranging a fundraising Ball or playing Mrs Mop to my lodgers, my focus has been on writing my blog.  My blog has become my platform and even a point of reference when trying to explain my position to others. Most of all, however, blogging has provided a vehicle by which to record the frustrations of not being heard in the hope that one day I will be.

This weekend, at last, I received not only good news, but evidence I have indeed been been heard and not just on one occasion.  

·        The Financial Ombudsman’s Service confirmed they are happy to receive additional evidence of the ongoing harassment I am still subject to from Merrils Ede solicitors. They have also informed me they anticipate their investigation will take at least eight weeks. This is very encouraging news because, not only does it give me written evidence they are taking my complaint seriously but it also offers my family and I some much needed sanctuary during this summer’s school holidays.

·        My legal friend JS tells me Merrils Ede’s refusal to supply me with the promised internal investigation report into my original complaint about them, warrants a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman. This news is also refreshing because in the past I have been unable to illustrate Merrils Ede’s vindictive attitude and incompetent nature  and because of this have been left completely exposed to their continued harassment.

·        The Office of Fair Trading at Cardiff County Hall has not only replied to my letter of 2009 and apologised profusely for their delay, but expressed grave concern Merrils Ede are, as I informed them, collecting debts without a consumer credit licence as well as flaunting many debt collecting guidelines. Armed with the evidence I have provided them, they plan to investigate Merrils Edes and report their findings to the Law Society. Words do not explain how relieved I am to be finally gathering some officialdom in my arsenal against HBOS and their henchwoman.

However, while every one of these instances has strengthened my resolve to return to the fight fortified, nothing has lifted my spirits more than the email I received this weekend from journalist, broadcaster and reporter Ian Fraser. In it was the link to his latest blog which was, for the most part, about my continued persecution at the hands of Lloyds and HBOS. He urged Chief Executive Antonio Horta Osorio to address “the sins of the past” if he is to live up to his comment “bring out your dead” as the pre-requisite to the massive clean up operation he plans to implement at Lloyds and HBOS.   I cannot thank Ian enough for illustrating my circumstances and can only hope through his words I may finally be heard.

For me, this weekend has most definitely been one which has been packed with good news and if Napoleon Bonaparte believed this warrants a lie in, who am I to argue? Here’s hoping Ian Fraser feels he’s earned a lie in too.

It's a mad, mad world

Along with the other Mum’s of the year five children at my son’s prep school, I am nearing the completion of their longitudinal study.  I am expecting to do quite well, in a nine year old boy sort way, but can’t for the life on me understand why, each year, the unwritten school law dictates this project should be produced. If the Mum’s are hard at work producing it then surely it is beyond the ability of the vast majority of the pupils for whom it is set.

 There is however, a bi-product.  The expectation for me to turn a small boy’s efforts into something the school can be proud of has allowed me to become an expert on Lord Kelvin the mathematician and physicist.  When, during my research, I discovered Lord Kelvin said “you can understand perfectly if you give your mind to it,” I found myself sighing in exasperation at my endless, and so far fruitless, attempts to have a meaningful dialogue with Lloyds TSB and HBOS.

Further frustrated at more examples of Lloyds TSB’s mindless and misguided actions when I read journalist and BBC reporter Ian Fraser’s recent blog I can't but be incredulous to discover Antonio Horta-Osorio is being rewarded with a “golden hello” in excess £13,000,000 in recognition of the difficulties he is to face in his new job as trouble shooter extraordinaire. Having written to Antonio Horta-Osorio twice recently I do not rate his chances at living up to the board of Lloyds TSB’s expectations if my experiences are anything to go by. My first letter to him was as Chief Executive of Santander. I wrote in an effort to solicit some support and compassion following an Abbey National campaign of bombardment due to our credit card default.

 On the second occasion I wrote to him in his role as Chief Executive of Lloyds TSB.  In this letter I asked him to intervene with HBOS. They have, over the course of two years, been harassing and bullying me in an effort to collect on a debt they know to be unrecoverable and which still hold they created.   In both cases I did not receive a reply and although I concede I am but a small fish, it does not bode well if organisations cannot communicate with their customers and  instead continue to waste share holders money chasing unrecoverable debt.  If this is too change I, like Ian Fraser, cannot see how paying Executives lavish rewards at any time, let alone in a recession,  can do anything other than massage their egos to the point of deity status.  To pay them obscene amounts before they have achieved any of the anticipated results seems nothing short of ludicrous. 

Lord Kelvin also said, “When you are faced with a difficulty, you are up against a discovery” and after the past two years of extreme financial and emotional hardship I can only agree  I have discovered after much personal difficult with both HBOS bankers and my son's longitudinal study,  the madness is clearly set to continue in both the banking world and at my son’s prep school.