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Simple Property Marketing Solutions says it can sell my timeshare for an upfront fee - is it a con?

A.L.writes: I am sending you a copy of an email from Simple Property Marketing Solutions Limited, which has also been phoning me, saying that it has received a firm offer of more than £7,000 for my timeshare in Florida.

It states that the deal can proceed only if I pay £995 upfront.

My timeshare was bought in 1997 and I have always felt that it is now worth £1,500 to £2,000 maximum.

Mix up: Salesman wanted an upfront fee to sell a timeshare in Malta (right), but it was in Florida

This is very, very suspicious.

For a start, after you asked Simple Property Marketing Solutions (SPMS) to put details in writing, the email that you received said the company was pleased to confirm the offer of £7,450 for your timeshare in Malta.

It was left to you to point out that your apartment is actually in Florida. And SPMS never did explain whether the buyer it was supposed to have found wanted to spend his holidays in one place or the other.

But even more alarm bells rang when I read the company’s demand that for the sale to go ahead you must first pay £995 as ‘a refundable liability insurance deposit’.

There is some mumbo-jumbo about how this will supposedly protect you as it means you will not have to release ownership of your timeshare until the buyer has paid the £7,450 that SPMS says has been promised.

SPMS is based in Norwich, and I asked director Marc Burton to explain the terms of the insurance policy he was offering, and to let me see a copy so it would be clear what risks were covered and who might benefit if something went wrong.

I also asked him to explain why his company’s terms and conditions refer to ‘marketing and liability fees’, rather than to ‘liability insurance’. And I pointed out that charging such upfront fees for timeshare deals is now illegal under EU law. As the industry watchdog website mindtimeshare.com confirmed to me: ‘Upfront fees were banned from any timeshare resale process under the EU Timeshare Directive approved in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2011.’

Finally, I invited Burton to explain why he wanted you to send your £995 to the bank account of Simple Property Solutions Limited. The name is very similar and customers could easily fail to spot that it is a completely separate company and not SPMS at all.

Burton offered no comment or explanation, and when I tried his 0845 phone number a few days ago, it was clear that I was being transferred – unsuccessfully – to a mobile number.

In short, far too many question marks for comfort. SPMS is not sure whether it has sold a timeshare in Malta or Florida. It won’t explain what your fee covers.

And it won’t say why you must send money to a different company’s bank account.

If Burton fails to come up with answers, do not part with a penny.

Another week, another blunder by the taxman Mrs I.B.writes: A tax refund I was due was sent to the wrong bank. I am sending you a copy of the reclaim form so you can see that I gave the Revenue details of my account at Barclays.

Tax office staff in their wisdom decided to send my refund to someone’s account at Lloyds TSB.

Your account is with Barclays in Stowmarket, Suffolk, so you were more than a little surprised to get a letter from the taxman confirming that you had been overtaxed  last year and that your £417 refund was on its way to Lloyds TSB ‘as nominated by you’.

The reclaim section of your tax return clearly shows the name and address of your Barclays branch, and even your sort code and account number.

When you called the Revenue to protest, you were told it would take up  to six weeks to stop payment of the cheque that had been sent to the wrong bank, and then issue a fresh cheque to the right bank. In fact, the tax office has managed to do this in three weeks.

But who your £417 went to at Lloyds TSB – and why it went there at all – is still a mystery. A Revenue spokesman told me: ‘It is not clear why this happened.’

And he added: ‘I can only apologise. Our first mistake was sending the payment  to the wrong bank.  We compounded our error by keeping the customer waiting before we got the replacement payment to where it should be.’

Expats had to return from Spain to sort Isa shambles Mrs L.M.D.writes: My husband and I are approaching our 77th birthdays and could be doing without the hassle we have had from Nationwide Building Society.

We each invested in an 18-month Isa bond and started getting letters saying Nationwide  did not have details about us that were needed under  money-laundering regulations.

We received 14 letters altogether. I wrote twice, but the letters just kept coming.  I phoned but always ended up with a call centre. We were at  our home in Spain, but because this was getting us so upset we flew back and went to Nationwide in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, taking our passports and lots of other documents.

After an hour, we were told the branch would inform the society’s head office in Swindon, Wiltshire. However, still the letters came. I have now been invited to reinvest, but my husband has heard nothing.

This is all down to human error. Nationwide’s Isa was fine, and while people living abroad cannot invest in an Isa, you can leave existing Isa savings untouched to preserve their tax-free status. So what went wrong?

The society agrees that you did visit the Sutton Coldfield branch, and staff there took copies of all the bits of paperwork you gave them to prove your identity.

Sadly, nobody then updated your records to say that your identities had been confirmed, which is why the annoying letters continued to arrive.

Nationwide assures me it has now placed a note on its system, confirming that you are who you say you are.

By the time you read this, you will have received a call from the society apologising for its mistake, and you will also be receiving £200 to make up for the inconvenience.


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