'Service charge gripes 'up 46%'

23 September 2011 Last updated at 23:01 GMT By Brian Milligan Business reporter, BBC News Some complaints have been made about one-off charges of thousands of pounds Flat-owners' complaints about service charges have risen by 46% in two years to 7,600, figures show.

They queried the amount they were being asked to pay for maintenance and repairs, the Leasehold Advisory Service for England and Wales said.

In some cases flat-owners have been asked for payments of tens of thousands of pounds by those who manage the blocks they live in.

But an agents' association said actual numbers of complaints remained low.

'Frustration'

Rod Campbell, a former film stuntman from Zimbabwe, lives in a block of flats in Worthing in West Sussex.

He and the other 44 leaseholders have been told to pay £11,000 each to cover recent repairs. This included painting and installing new railings.

"The people here are feeling the heat and they are very frustrated," he said.

"To find that sort of money, in a one-off payment? Pretty much impossible."

Rod Campbell said that residents were feeling the financial pinch

The managing agents have justified the charges to residents by telling them in a letter that they are trying to "push for a better future".

There are 2.5 million leaseholders across England and Wales.

That refers to people who own their own flat, but who are obliged to pay maintenance and service charges to the owner of the freehold.

The flats can be part of a block, or an individual house.

Just over 7,600 queries or complaints about one-off charges have been recorded in the last year, according to the Leasehold Advisory Service. That is a 46% increase over two years.

Anthony Essien, chief executive of the service, puts that down to the fact that more people are worried about their finances in tougher economic times.

But he also said that some managing agents could be overcharging flat-owners.

"There must be, on occasion, some poor behaviour," he said. "It happens."

Overall he believed that the situation was not as bad as in the mid-1990s.

"However that does not mean that there are not mistakes made, and overcharging."

'Staggering'

Those who own flats previously owned by local authorities can be in an even tougher situation than Rod Campbell.

Continue reading the main story

A lot of people do not understand what they are paying for and what they are getting”

End Quote Steve O'Connell Greater London Authority inquiry leader On the Warwick Estate in West London, flat-owners are being charged up to £35,000 each for repairs.

In some cases that could be more than they actually paid for the flats in the first place.

Westminster Council justifies the charge by saying that no repairs had been done to the tower blocks since the 1950s.

They have had new lifts, windows and cladding installed.

A spokesperson said the value of the individual flats was likely to increase as a result of the improvements.

But Steve O'Connell, who is leading an inquiry into maintenance charges for the Greater London Authority, is not impressed.

"£35,000 is a staggering amount," he said.

Any recommendations his committee makes before the end of the year could be applied across the country.

"There are a lot of unhappy people out there, and a lot of people who do not understand what they are paying for and what they are getting. I hope we can help them," he said.

Growth

In the early part of this decade, half the homes being developed were flats, as a result of the property boom. That is much higher than the long-term trend.

There are now twice as many leaseholders in England and Wales than there used to be.

David Hewett, head of the Association of Residential Managing Agents, believes that is one reason for the increase in complaints.

"We have got to get this into perspective," he said.

"That is 7,000 complaints for 2.5 million flat-owners."

Like Anthony Essien, he also believes people are becoming more money conscious in difficult economic times, so are doing all they can to reduce costs.

Rights

Under the 1985 Landlord and Tenant Act, leaseholders have the right to examine any receipts for maintenance work.

That work has to be deemed "reasonable".

If not, leaseholders can take their managing agents to a Leasehold Valuation Tribunal.

But, despite that safeguard, some in the industry are highly concerned that the whole business of property management remains unregulated.

However, countries like France and Australia take a very different view. They have a system whereby property managers are licensed.

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'Service charge gripes 'up 46%'

23 September 2011 Last updated at 23:01 GMT By Brian Milligan Business reporter, BBC News Some complaints have been made about one-off charges of thousands of pounds Flat-owners' complaints about service charges have risen by 46% in two years to 7,600, figures show.

They queried the amount they were being asked to pay for maintenance and repairs, the Leasehold Advisory Service for England and Wales said.

In some cases flat-owners have been asked for payments of tens of thousands of pounds by those who manage the blocks they live in.

But an agents' association said actual numbers of complaints remained low.

'Frustration'

Rod Campbell, a former film stuntman from Zimbabwe, lives in a block of flats in Worthing in West Sussex.

He and the other 44 leaseholders have been told to pay £11,000 each to cover recent repairs. This included painting and installing new railings.

"The people here are feeling the heat and they are very frustrated," he said.

"To find that sort of money, in a one-off payment? Pretty much impossible."

Rod Campbell said that residents were feeling the financial pinch

The managing agents have justified the charges to residents by telling them in a letter that they are trying to "push for a better future".

There are 2.5 million leaseholders across England and Wales.

That refers to people who own their own flat, but who are obliged to pay maintenance and service charges to the owner of the freehold.

The flats can be part of a block, or an individual house.

Just over 7,600 queries or complaints about one-off charges have been recorded in the last year, according to the Leasehold Advisory Service. That is a 46% increase over two years.

Anthony Essien, chief executive of the service, puts that down to the fact that more people are worried about their finances in tougher economic times.

But he also said that some managing agents could be overcharging flat-owners.

"There must be, on occasion, some poor behaviour," he said. "It happens."

Overall he believed that the situation was not as bad as in the mid-1990s.

"However that does not mean that there are not mistakes made, and overcharging."

'Staggering'

Those who own flats previously owned by local authorities can be in an even tougher situation than Rod Campbell.

Continue reading the main story

A lot of people do not understand what they are paying for and what they are getting”

End Quote Steve O'Connell Greater London Authority inquiry leader On the Warwick Estate in West London, flat-owners are being charged up to £35,000 each for repairs.

In some cases that could be more than they actually paid for the flats in the first place.

Westminster Council justifies the charge by saying that no repairs had been done to the tower blocks since the 1950s.

They have had new lifts, windows and cladding installed.

A spokesperson said the value of the individual flats was likely to increase as a result of the improvements.

But Steve O'Connell, who is leading an inquiry into maintenance charges for the Greater London Authority, is not impressed.

"£35,000 is a staggering amount," he said.

Any recommendations his committee makes before the end of the year could be applied across the country.

"There are a lot of unhappy people out there, and a lot of people who do not understand what they are paying for and what they are getting. I hope we can help them," he said.

Growth

In the early part of this decade, half the homes being developed were flats, as a result of the property boom. That is much higher than the long-term trend.

There are now twice as many leaseholders in England and Wales than there used to be.

David Hewett, head of the Association of Residential Managing Agents, believes that is one reason for the increase in complaints.

"We have got to get this into perspective," he said.

"That is 7,000 complaints for 2.5 million flat-owners."

Like Anthony Essien, he also believes people are becoming more money conscious in difficult economic times, so are doing all they can to reduce costs.

Rights

Under the 1985 Landlord and Tenant Act, leaseholders have the right to examine any receipts for maintenance work.

That work has to be deemed "reasonable".

If not, leaseholders can take their managing agents to a Leasehold Valuation Tribunal.

But, despite that safeguard, some in the industry are highly concerned that the whole business of property management remains unregulated.

However, countries like France and Australia take a very different view. They have a system whereby property managers are licensed.

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Cameron's trip: no service, no tip, at Tuscan cafe

ROME — A barmaid has made a name for herself, but no tip, after telling British Prime Minister David Cameron he could carry his own cappuccino during his Tuscan holiday breakfast.

Francesca Ariani was alone and swamped with customers on Sunday when Cameron came up to the bar's counter and ordered two cappuccini and a coffee for himself, his wife and someone else, according to the barmaid's boyfriend, Jody Ceruti.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Dolce Nero bar on Monday, he said Ariani told Cameron he would have to carry the beverages to an outdoor table himself. And Cameron did, first carrying the cappuccini, then the coffee.

Cameron paid the euro3.10 ($4.50) bill at the cashier's, but left no tip. Ceruti shrugged off British media claiming that Cameron had stiffed Ariani. Not tipping when you serve yourself is "very normal by us," he said.

Ariani said it was probably better that she didn't know who Cameron was when he was placing his order. "It would have made it difficult for me," she said in a telephone interview, because other customers wouldn't have been served if she had given the Camerons special treatment. "When we can, we do wait on the tables, but we usually don't," given short staffing, she said.

Swarming with tourists
The Tuscan countryside in summer swarms with British tourists.

Ariani, who is also a co-owner of the bar in the town near the Arno River, spent much of Monday giving interviews in the cafe, which was closed as usual on Monday.

She suspects that when the cafe reopens on Tuesday, her regular customers will tease her.

And should Cameron return?

"I've publicly invited him back, in TV interviews," she said. "I'd apologize to him for not having recognized him and try to give him a little better service."

For the record, the prime minister, whose government is forging ahead with a rigorous austerity program in Britain, got off cheaply. Besides saving on the tip, he escaped what often is a hefty premium for table service at Italian cafes.

Back in London, Cameron's Downing Street office declined to comment while the premier is on a private holiday.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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HMRC service standards lambasted

29 July 2011 Last updated at 23:00 GMT The tax authorities are not as welcoming as they should be, the MPs found The way taxpayers are treated by HM Revenue & Customs has been lambasted by MPs on the Treasury select committee.

Their latest report says public dissatisfaction risks undermining public confidence in the tax system.

The worst problems were in getting tax offices to answer phone calls at peak times and "endemic" delays in replying to letters.

HMRC said it had taken steps to improve its service in the past year but admitted it had "more to do".

"We have recruited 1,000 additional contact centre advisers to manage exceptionally busy periods this year," said a Revenue spokesman.

"We have improved the way we deal with post, for example, rapidly reducing turnaround times on PAYE and self-assessment post.

'Disturbing'

The MPs report blamed bad management, demoralised staff, excessive job cuts, and increasingly complex tax laws for the poor level of service it had discovered.

"The evidence we have received in this inquiry has been disturbing," the MPs said.

"HMRC's delivery of services to the general public has fallen to unacceptable levels in several areas.

"There is considerable dissatisfaction among the public and tax professionals with the service provided by the department," the MPs added.

Frank Haskew, of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW), doubted that the situation would improve.

"Given the necessity to reduce the current 70,000 staff by a further 10,000, we are not convinced that HMRC have the resources or the capability to deliver on improving service standards," he said.

'Damaging impact'

This concern about the future was echoed by the MPs. They said that the HMRC did a good job in collecting taxes.

But they were worried that the quality of service for taxpayers could become even worse.

They pointed to:

excessive reliance on the internet for filing tax returns, or giving information, to the disadvantage of those without good internet connections "overly ambitious" computer projects such as the forthcoming plan to make employers submit "real-time" data for the PAYE systemthe continuing legacy of unresolved tax discrepancies from past years still affecting millions of tax payerssenior management's approach to running HMRC which the MPs described as "very disturbing"increasingly complex tax lawsthe possibility that further job and spending cuts could undermine the department's ability to do its job properly.

"We are concerned that HMRC's performance will continue to deteriorate if further reductions in resources are badly managed," the MPs said.

"There was near unanimity among our witnesses that the reductions made so far have had a damaging impact."

Make it easier

Other tax advisers agreed with this diagnosis.

Chas Roy-Chowdhury of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) warned: "If reduced funding leaves HMRC unable to address the basics of maintaining a service for compliant taxpayers, the potential damage to the economy and reputation of the United Kingdom is immense."

Robin Williamson, of the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group (LITRG), said: "If HMRC want to improve taxpayer compliance and reduce error levels, they need to make it easier for people to contact them and get advice that is prompt, accurate and understandable."

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Will new 3-D video service boost Nintendo 3DS sales?

 Nintendo

"Dinosaur Office" is one of the very first 3-D videos offered by Nintendo's new video service for the 3DS. Will original video offerings and Netflix streaming help sell the handheld game gadget?

The Nintendo 3DS is a sharp little gadget that lets you play video games in eye-grabbing 3-D without having to put on those goofy 3-D glasses ... and yet, this sharp little gadget isn't selling as well as Nintendo had hoped.

Perhaps it's the device's $250 price tag. Perhaps it's the lack of a signature Mario Bros. games. Perhaps people just aren't that excited about 3-D. No matter what it is, Tokyo analysts are now saying they expect Nintendo's first quarter earnings to disappoint — in part thanks to lackluster 3DS sales.

But Nintendo is soldiering on, rolling out new features for the 3DS to help increase its appeal and boost sales as we push toward the all-important holiday buying season.

This week the company launched a new video service that now allows 3DS owners watch short videos in sharp 3-D. And earlier this month, Nintendo also added the Netflix video service to the device. (Alas, the 3DS's new Netflix app — which requires an unlimited streaming subscription — does not stream movies in 3-D.)

Video to the rescue?
Starting this week, the new Nintendo Video application can be downloaded to 3DS devices for free from the online eShop, which arrived on the gadget just last month.

The video app delivers a hand-picked variety of short-form videos to your machine each week. New videos will be added and older videos will be removed on a regular basis to keep things fresh, Nintendo says. The videos themselves are two to three minutes in length and will include a mix of short films, music videos, comedy performances and movie trailers.

During this week's launch, 3DS owners can find two animated short films — one of them from famed funny site CollegeHumor.com called "Dinosaur Office" — along with a trailer for the "Captain America" movie.

While the pickings are currently pretty slim, Nintendo says that in the coming weeks the app will offer exclusive 3-D videos from music artists Jason DeRulo and Foster the People, as well as trippy performance troupe the Blue Man Group. But they'll really kick things off Wednesday with an exclusive 3-D music video from the band OK Go.

Will these 3-D video offerings from Nintendo help boost 3DS sales? Well ... maybe.

The 3-D video playback looks nice and crisp on the device's top-screen. Meanwhile having Netflix access on the 3DS definitely helps broaden its appeal. Certainly, in an age when smartphones have trained gadget owners to expect their devices to do many things at once, Netflix and Nintendo Video are the kind of feature boosts that the 3DS needs.

But what would make Nintendo Video a real boost for the 3DS is if it offered longer 3-D video fare (TV shows and movies). The 3DS is one of the few portable devices with glasses-free 3-D capabilities and having the ability to take 3-D movies on the go would make the gadget very appealing indeed. Nintendo has implied, in the past, that this was a possibility. So here's hoping that pans out in the not-too-distant future.

For the time being, however, I think it's the games that will ultimately have the real power to drag the Nintendo 3DS out of the sales doldrums. Though an alarming number of 3DS games have been canceled recently, Nintendo will be pulling out the big guns in the coming months. The company plans to launch a brand new "Super Mario" game for the 3DS along with "Mario Kart 3DS" this holiday. They will follow that up with "Luigi's Mansion 2" for the 3DS next spring.

Expecting disappointment
But before that happens, Haruka Mori, a technology analyst at Barclays Capital in Tokyo, reports that he expects Nintendo to post a $11.9 billion net loss in the April-June quarter and even miss its full-year financial targets.

Why haven't you bought a Nintendo 3DS?

Who needs the 3DS, I'm perfectly happy with my standard-issue DS.Who needs the 3DS, I've got my smartphone.The games! Where are the games?I'm saving my money for the PlayStation Vita.What the heck is 3DS? And is it contagious?VoteTotal Votes: 97

For the fiscal year ending March 2012, Nintendo is forecasting sales to rise 8.4 percent to 1.1 trillion yen ($14 billion) and net profit to climb 42 percent to 110 billion yen ($1.4 billion). The company also expects to move 16 million 3DS machines this fiscal year.

"It is not only the 3DS that is struggling at present," Mori said in his recently released report. "Sales of the legacy DS and the Wii — which has been discounted in Europe and the US — appear to be below plan."

And laying off the 3DS for a moment ... it seems some folks are having a hard time getting their heads around Nintendo's forthcoming Wii U game console and that's causing some of Nintendo's problems as well, Mori believes.

Though In-Game editor Todd Kenreck and I immediately saw the appeal of the device (due to launch next year) when we were given a sneak preview of it at the Electronic Entertainment Expo last month, Mori said the Wii U has failed to impress investors who have had difficulty judging the potential of the unusual machine with the beefy touch-screen controller.

But nobody — not even the most talented financial analysts — can see the future. And so I'd remind people who are ready to count Nintendo down and out, that much of the world mocked the Wii when it was first revealed. And that game machine went on to crush the competition and changed the face of the video gaming industry at large.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

For more game news, check out:

Winda Benedetti writes about games for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things right here on Twitter or join her in the stream right here on Google+. You can check out the In-Game Facebook page right here.

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Ericsson goes into OFW Remittance Service

The same company that brought us the Xperia Arc is also entering the financial services industry. The new company, Ericsson Money wants you to ditch Western Union but with a few conditions.

It’s a one-way street — you can only open an Ericsson Money account if you are in Germany, UK, Italy, France, Poland, Spain and Sweden.

I tried opening an account (just to test it) and maybe send money to my relatives in the province but I’m locked out. It’s pretty obvious that the service is targeted towards OFWs in those countries since they’ve partnered with Globe and Smart for the local exchange (you receive money transfers from Ericsson Money via Smart Money or Globe GCash).

And if the tutorials videos they put up on their website tells it all, the service isn’t much different from the likes of Western Union. In any case, this is more like a battle for who offers the cheapest remittance rates and who can remit the money the fastest.

The Central Bank of the Philippines estimates a total of $18.7 billion in OFW remittances for the year 2010. Getting just 1% market share is already huge (Php8 billion) and I’m thinking Ericsson knows that already.

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