Dear Listener

Two warnings this week, based on emails from listeners.

We are getting a worrying number like this one about an email which seems to be from HM Revenue & Customs and asks the recipient to click a link to claim a tax refund. “Is this email real or not?” wrote one listener” It seems real but I am not sure why I would be due a tax refund. Should I respond?” NO! And if I could do that in very big one inch capital letters I would.

HM Revenue & Customs never ever ever ever ever sends out emails offering tax refunds. Never. Under any circumstances. So if you get one it is a scam and is after your financial details. Just clicking on the link could give the crooks access to your computer. So just delete it. It is always a fake.

And it is very sad to report that we are getting a new batch of emails from people who are just discovering they have lost money in landbanking scams. We covered this story in March http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/9415008.stm and talked to Billy McNaught. He was sold small rectangular plots in protected fields for £15,000 a time when a professional valuer told us they were worth £75. Altogether Billy spent more than £100,000 on these plots on the hope – or promise as he saw it – of getting planning permission for building on them.

The company that sold him his almost worthless land is now in administration. And other listeners have also told us about letters from administrators of landbanking companies that have gone out of business. The letters ask for details about the deals and how they were marketed. I hope the administrators find some money left to give back to these hapless investors. But somehow I doubt it.

Meanwhile please remember – and tell everyone you know – that it is never ever ever ever ever a good idea to buy land from a company that calls you out of the blue to sell you land with the hope of a big gain when the land gets planning permission to build homes. No-one has ever ever (etc) made money in such circumstances and never never (etc) will.

***IN MONEY BOX THIS WEEK***

More revelations about the AA and how hard it can be to leave the breakdown service. An insider tells us…my lips are sealed. The AA, we hope, responds.

The Treasury Select Committee steps in to the growing row (judging by emails) about the banks’ plans to scrap cheques by October 2018. They need to give it a lot more thought, Committee chairman Andrew Tyrie MP tells us, as he announces a new investigation by his powerful Committee.

F   a   s   t   e   r   payments still going   s    l    o    w. We’ve done this so often since they were first promised in 1999 and delivered in 2008. And to be fair many payments between banks do now travel closer to the speed of light than the speed of snails. But three years on a listener complains that he made a payment to his own bank’s credit card and the money still took five days to reach the account – by which time he was charged a £12 penalty. 

The Post Office Travel Money Card has been scrapped. And the replacement – imaginatively called Post Office Travel Money Card Plus – won’t be here until, well we don’t know. Some time in the future. But what happens to the unspent credit on the Money Card? And why has Post Office made the change anyway?

There may be more, less or exactly that agenda. It’s still the middle of Friday. Find out what makes it and what is left behind on Radio 4 on Saturday just after noon. The repeat is on Sunday at 9pm and you can of course listen any time via the podcast page www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moneybox. Check out our website www.bbc.co.uk/moneybox to follow links, download transcripts, send us stories or ideas you want us to look into and Have Your Say on credit card payments that it is impossible for you to cancel.

This newsletter is available at bbc.co.uk/moneybox/newsletter around the time it hits your inbox (tell your friends who don’t subscribe) and you can join more than 5900 others who enjoy my random but timely thoughts on money whenever I’m awake at www.twitter.com/paullewismoney.

Best wishes,

Paul

PS don’t forget the programme trail on Breakfast on BBC 1 around 0840. And I am back on Breakfast on Thursday morning around 0640ish and around 0820ish (time, like toast, is flexible on Breakfast!)

e-mail Paul Lewis