Capital letters

This month, I found a £287 motor insurance quote on confused.com for my Mazda 323 with Swinton. This was better value than the £400 I had been quoted elsewhere. When I received the policy I noticed it had my car as dating from 1991, not 2003. Swinton claims this is my fault, insisting on £114 to rectify this, but my printout is clear - I had entered 2003. What is going on?AW, Yorkshire

Swinton wanted £401, so there would have been no point in making the switch - Esure would have been preferable at £330. Despite producing a printout of your confused.com application, Swinton claimed it was your mistake. Any rudimentary check could have found your number plate would have been impossible in 1991 - it should have used its database for this.

Swinton is apologetic when Capital Letters calls. It now accepts blame for the error and the inconvenience you have suffered. As a result, it will waive the extra £114, which it is pinning on an isolated systems incident - and says this will not happen again.

Don't share your time with these wasters

In 2001 we made the mistake of joining holiday club Cybertravel, paying £2,000. Before too long we realised our error and tried to cancel our membership, but Cybertravel went out of business and we gave up any thoughts of getting our money back, writing it off as a bad experience.

Last month, I was contacted out of the blue by a company called TV Travel which said it had taken over Cybertravel and was seeking to pay off its debts, including ours. The snag is that we will have to travel to the Canaries and pay a consultancy fee of £169.75 to collect the money we are owed, though our accommodation will be paid for.

Is it possible that this can work?JF, London

You received nothing for the £2,000 with Cybertravel so you should get your money back. But why should any company pay off money for one that has gone bust? TV Travel says that in return for the fee - don't forget to add your fares to Tenerife - it will put you up for a week in a timeshare resort and "during your stay you will be met by a qualified consultant who will help you claim back any lost funds due to your purchase of a holiday membership package and register your reclaim certificate". More likely, you will be sold another holiday club package as expensive and of as little use as Cybertravel.

TV Travel claims "we can guarantee 90% of your monies back that you lost purchasing a holiday package". Just how can it do this? Why should it? And how strong are its own finances?

Cybertravel was owned by an offshore entity called Thornton Ridge, which went bust as well. It is impossible to recover money in this situation, so anyone listening to TV Travel (whose ownership is unclear) would simply throw good money after bad.

Accountants address mistaken identity

We are pensioners and have lived at our address for more than 20 years. Over the past year, we have received several letters addressed to "Offshore Connections LLC" at our home. We have returned these to the sender unopened. However, we opened the latest - a demand for £663 from Baker Tilly. We are concerned either this is a scam or we will have debt collectors at our front door. Can you stop this?JH, Yorkshire

The bill from accountants Baker Tilly relates to transactions in March and September 2006 on behalf of Offshore Connections LLC, a limited liability company whose only links with your address is that it is also in Yorkshire.

Offshore Connections LLC was set up for Ian Clough, 44, and James Cochrane, 41, in April 2006 by Baker Tilly, which gave advice on its corporate structure. It is not clear what its business was to be but it would appear never to have traded. There is no explanation of how your address came to be associated with it but Baker Tilly contacted you to say there will be no debt collectors and it will write off the company's outstanding invoices.

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