Letters

Letters

Too old to visit Greek antiquities

I booked a one-way flight to Athens with Easyjet for September. I now find it is difficult to get travel insurance or hire a car in Greece as I will be over 75 by then. I have asked Easyjet for a refund or transfer to a Mallorca flight where I know I will not have these problems. I have heard nothing.

RB, Bridport

Several insurers do take on the over-75s. Search the web for 'travel insurance' and 'no upper age limit' or call Help the Aged's new financial services company, Intune, or Age Concern. Next time check before you book, because older people face restrictions from certain countries as well as some car rental firms. On this occasion, Easyjet is being understanding and has agreed to refund your £33, despite being a non-refunding airline.

Wells Fargo slowcoaches cost me eight ponies

After living in the US, I returned to Scotland and deposited $20,000 in a new Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) account on 1 March. My US bank, Wells Fargo in Texas, has a $10,000 limit on individual electronic transfers and RBS said a cheque was no problem. Nothing arrived in my RBS account and I then learned it could take up to six weeks. I had no access to cash during that period. By the time the money arrived, sterling had strengthened and I lost £200 on the transaction.

PB, Glasgow

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correct that a cheque is no problem to a bank, but staff should have warned you about the delay before you decided which transfer method to use. Your cheque travelled from RBS to its correspondent bank in the US, where it was checked and posted to Wells Fargo for verification, even though it had come from your own Wells Fargo account in the first place. Wells Fargo returned it to the correspondent bank, which finally sent the funds to RBS. RBS says it had your money for only 24 hours before crediting the value to your account and used the best exchange rate on the day. Your money spent most of the time back in the US, probably with the correspondent bank. RBS has refunded the £30 transfer charge, but will not compensate you for the foreign exchange loss, as it denies making any mistakes.

Has buying from Orange squashed my credit rating?

I ordered a telephone online from Orange but, through various human and computer errors, submitted the order three times. Orange carried out three credit checks with Experian, which looks bad. Orange said I should contact Experian to have the extra checks removed, but Experian says only Orange can do that. I keep sending faxes to the Orange referrals department - there is no phone number - but have so far heard nothing.

MMcC, London

Experian says there are four Orange search 'footprints' on your file - three identity checks and one credit application search. Lenders look only at credit application searches, because only these reveal how frequently you apply for credit.

The identity checks do not affect your creditworthiness and are there to show customers who has been looking at their files.

Only lenders can instruct credit reference agencies to remove search footprints and Orange has now told Experian to take away two identity check searches.

Tiscali left me offline and out of pocket