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EVERY week, Tony Hetherington replies to readers' letters, adding comments, advice and the results of his enquiries.
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If you think you are a victim of financial mismanagement, or want advice before investing, write to Tony Hetherington, Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS.
Sorry, but he cannot give personal replies. Please send only copies of documents - if these are relevant to your enquiry. We regret that they cannot be returned.
Ms E.C. writes: We run a hotel and had a guest whose booking was made by his firm, Whitby Birch of Birkenhead. We sent it an invoice for £175, which we had been told would be paid by return. It wasn't.
I have rung many times, only to be told that the accountant was absent, that I had missed that month's cheque run, that the cheque must be lost, and so on.
WHEN someone doesn't pay their bills, one option is to call in debt collectors. But it might not work in this case, for Whitby Birch is a firm of - debt collectors.
Its record of failing to pay its own bills borders on the unbelievable. In 2000 it was sued seven times for debts totalling £3,750. And last year it notched up 31 court appearances.
I found cases against Whitby Birch in court records in Lewes, Chelmsford, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Reading, Scunthorpe, Newcastle, Birmingham and about a dozen other towns and cities.
Last November alone, Whitby Birch was in court nine times. The sums involved ranged from £200 to £18,921. In all, they totalled more than £75,000. And this year has started in the same vein. Last month, Whitby Birch was sued twice, in Worcester for £302 and in Bristol for £1,764.
Its reputation has even spread to Germany, though this was less of a surprise when I found that it is owned by a German, Michael Bruckner, who lives near Birkenhead on Merseyside.
It seems that Whitby Birch approached German businesses offering to insure them against bad debts. But German watchdogs issued a public warning, saying: 'The Federal Supervisory Office for Insurance warns against making contracts with Whitby Birch. It cannot offer insurance in Germany. Even the British insurance regulator does not know Whitby Birch.'
But Whitby Birch is well known to the debt collecting trade body, the Credit Services Association. Director Kurt Obermaier said: 'I have been getting calls about it from exasperated people for the past two years.
'I have made the Office of Fair Trading aware of this. Trading Standards know and the police know. We have no control over this company. It has never been a member - and it certainly will never become a member under any circumstances.'
I will not advise you to throw good money after bad by taking Whitby Birch and Michael Bruckner to court yet again. But anyone approached to do business with this man or his firm should be warned that there is a serious risk of ending up out of pocket.
The safest course is to have nothing to do with them.
Premium on prizes
Mrs J.J. writes: Why has the number of Premium Bond prizes plunged? The Channel 4 teletext listing usually shows more than 20 pages of prizes between £5,000 and £1 million, but this month it has eight.
PREMIUM Bonds seem to be suffering death by a thousand cuts, and the Government is wielding the knife.
When you buy bonds, you lend the Government money. In return, it pays interest that makes up the prize fund.
Last November, Chancellor Gordon Brown paid 3.5% to be distributed as prizes. This month it has fallen to 2.9%, and in March it will be 2.4%.
National Savings officials have halved the number of prizes worth £5,000 or more and cut £500-£1,000 prizes by 25. But you spotted the prize slump, and other Premium Bond holders will, too.
Fruitless Quest for free holiday
R.F. writes: Travel Quest of Exmouth offered us a holiday in 1999 in return for attending a sales promotion. We paid £161 in deposits and fees, which were to be refunded when the holiday was arranged. We continually contacted the company and were told that a holiday would be offered soon, but it became obvious that this was meaningless. I complained and was told a refund would be sent - but still, more than two years later, no cheque has arrived.
TRAVEL Quest has a history of attracting complaints. It has worked with many timeshare salesmen, who tell people they have been awarded a 'free' holiday. To get this, you have to attend a timeshare presentation, where you find there are fees to pay.
I have twice invited Travel Quest to comment, without success. Perhaps your cheque is in the post as I write. If not, ask your local Trading Standards Department to pass your complaint to officials in Exmouth, Devon.
Alternatively, I can tell you that Travel Quest has succeeded in joining the Association of British Travel Agents - a decision ABTA may regret if complaints persist. ABTA offers an arbitration scheme and officials say that if the firm agrees, they will investigate. So challenge Travel Quest to submit to ABTA's jurisdiction and let me know what happens.
Apart from you, another person I feel sorry for is travel agent Geoffrey Bingham, who runs a respectable firm also called Travel Quest in East Preston, near Worthing, West Sussex. He told me: 'I get calls from all over the country, sometimes three in a day, from people who are angry at the other Travel Quest. They think we are that company, and they are very upset.'
Having your own good name stolen is one thing, but having someone else's bad name inflicted on you must be particularly hard to bear.
Bank left my mum, 89, in tears
Mrs V.D. writes: You wrote some months ago about the Yorkshire bank branch in Burnley that held on to money in a deceased customer's account. Now its Middlesbrough branch has done exactly the same to my mother, aged 89. Her brother died, leaving just £784 in the bank. We were given no choice but were simply told by the bank that the money would be paid to the funeral directors.
YORKSHIRE bank says that when you and your mother visited the branch in Middlesbrough, Teesside, you were advised that paying the funeral bill out of your uncle's account was purely optional.
According to the bank, branch staff would happily have paid the £784 to your mother if she had produced 'an approved form of identification'.
Your version is a little different. You say that you and your mother spent more than two hours at the bank, producing first the death certificate and then your mother's pension book and various cards carrying her signature. Each time, the assistant would take these and disappear to seek advice. Your mother was then asked for her passport, which she didn't have, and she began to cry.
Yorkshire bank staff then requested a letter from her own bank, Barclays, certifying that your mother is trustworthy. The two of you went to Barclays, but found that the request would have to go to a different office. You then returned to Yorkshire bank and were confronted by a different member of staff who started again from the beginning.
At this point your mother gave up and agreed that the bank should pay the funeral bill. Or as a Yorkshire bank official put it to me: 'At this point, Mrs D and her mother requested that Yorkshire bank pay the account balance towards the funeral bill. This was purely their decision.'
If so, and all this really is a completely voluntary matter, I do wonder why people complain.
Can it be that some of the bank's staff are so bad at explaining its policy, and so insensitive towards the bereaved, that complaints are inevitable?
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