
I have a repair policy with Currys but it will not fix my fridge freezer – now I'm £360 out of pocket
Q. I PAY £36 a year for my Currys Care and Repair plan for my fridge freezer.
The policy says that if my fridge stops working Currys will come and fix it within seven days, if not, I could get a replacement.
1
In October, my fridge developed a fault and would not keep my food cold.
I called Currys and it sent an engineer to check what was causing the issue.
After a few days I called Currys again and a man came to my home to fix my fridge.
He said it couldn't be fixed so Curry would send me a new one.
But I haven't heard anything from them since.
I really needed a working fridge so I contacted another company.
I paid £360 for a new fridge freezer, which was delivered the next day.
I've wasted £36 and am now hundreds of pounds out of pocket.
Can you help?
Kathryn Cudmore, Lincolnshire.
A. Your plan with Currys promised care and repair but you received neither when your fridge unexpectedly stopped working.
I was disappointed to hear that Currys had fallen below its usually high standards.
The Care and Repair policy promises breakdown support when you need it.
Once you have signed up you should be able to contact Currys as soon as a device breaks.
The company is so confident in its ability that if it takes more than a week to repair your appliance then you can get a replacement for free.
Meanwhile, if the device can't be repaired then Currys will give you a gift card so you can get a new one.
This is what you were told when the repair man came to your house.
Despite these promises Currys left you out in the cold - which was more than could be said for your fridge freezer.
I wanted to get your issue resolved as soon as possible so I put your case to Currys.
A spokesperson apologised and said it was not the level of service Currys prides itself on.
You have been sent a cheque for £333.32, which includes the value of the voucher, refund for your policy, original delivery, installation charges and the cost to recycle the old product.
I am so glad the money is back with you.
It is always worth complaining to a company if its service falls below the levels you were promised.
Make a note of the date and time you made any calls to a company's customer service.
Squeeze Team total: £223,150.
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Times
20 minutes ago
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In buyers' market art is in the sale, just look at Brighton (not United)
The key to poker is understanding the value of what is in your hand. In the winter transfer window of 2023, when Chelsea offered £55million for Moisés Caicedo, Brighton & Hove Albion said 'no'. They said the same again when Arsenal followed with a £60million bid, and still no when they raised it to £70million. From the outside, there was consternation. Danny Murphy told talkSPORT Brighton's stance was 'ridiculous' and 'for £70million I would have driven Caicedo there'. But when the summer window opened and Chelsea returned with offers of £60million, then £70million and then £80million, Brighton's answers remained emphatic: no, no, and no again. It was another no when Manchester United entered the running and no when Chelsea suddenly raised the ante and went all the way to the £100million mark. At last, when Liverpool mooted £111million, Brighton accepted a bid — and yet still there were cards to play. Chelsea returned to the table with £115million and finally, in August 2023, Caicedo was on his way. Though not before Brighton, who had paid only £4million for the Ecuadorian midfielder 18 months previously, managed to insert a sell-on clause, guaranteeing a healthy slice of any transfer fee Chelsea get for Caicedo in future, into the deal. Brighton's owner, Tony Bloom, was known as 'The Lizard' during his professional poker career and there may be no one better in the game for the cold-blooded execution of player sales. There are a thousand books and courses on the art of selling but it is the most undervalued, unperfected element in English clubs' transfer operations; the overlooked secret of player trading. Bloom and Brighton are outliers. According to a senior figure in the recruitment department of a top Premier League club: 'Everyone invests loads and loads of money on scouting, talent ID, data, coaching, blah, blah, but very little on the sales side of things. There is no strategy. What's the plan when clubs want to sell a player? Sit there saying, 'I hope someone comes in for him.' ' The situation is made all the more curious by the fact that in this age of Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and inflated fees — which must be funded somehow — an ability to raise money through sales has never been more important. So many Premier League clubs, in this window, find their plans dependent on how effectively, and lucratively, they can offload players. United are the most obvious example, but Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, Aston Villa and many others need to offload players. It doesn't excite fans, who focus on the shiny new stars arriving, but getting rid of the right ones, at the right prices, can be as crucial as signing well. United, in straightened times and in the straitjacket of PSR, are trying to fund a squad makeover to fit Ruben Amorim's style. Having spent £62.5million on Matheus Cunha and had two bids — the latest for £55million plus £7.5million in add-ons — rejected for Bryan Mbeumo, they want a striker, wingback, midfielder and goalkeeper but whether they recruit in all those positions will depend on what funds they can realise from offloading their unwanted players, such as Alejandro Garnacho, Marcus Rashford, Antony and Jadon Sancho. All bar Garnacho are on wages that severely restrict which clubs can afford them, and United's new director of football, Jason Wilcox, has the added headache of Amorim and/or those players themselves making clear it is time for them to leave United, taking away any chance of hard-balling would-be buyers. Arsenal are close to announcing deals for Martín Zubimendi, Christian Norgaard and Kepa Arrizabalaga and are working on the signing of Cristhian Mosquera from Valencia — all for sensible fees. Yet Mikel Arteta's main requirement is a new striker, and with targets Viktor Gyokeres and Benjamin Sesko priced in excess of £60million, the club are looking to raise about £50million from sales. They would listen to offers for Oleksandr Zinchenko, Jakub Kiwior, Reiss Nelson and perhaps even Gabriel Martinelli. With their income slashed by failing to reach the Champions League, Aston Villa are looking to reduce player costs by £80million this summer. They have sold cleverly in the past — getting €188million (£160million) for Jhon Durán, Moussa Diaby and Douglas Luiz last season — and will have to sell smartly again, ideally starting before the PSR 2024-25 accounting deadline of midnight Monday. Pep Guardiola has threatened to quit if City don't reduce the size of his squad, and Jack Grealish is the most eye-catching item in their shop window. Guardiola may benefit from having a new sporting director, Hugo Viana, whose experience (gained at Sporting Lisbon) is within a player-trading model as opposed to the departing Txiki Begiristain, one of the best sporting directors of all time but who has only worked at dominant clubs in periods where there was little emphasis on sales. After the £40million signing of Milos Kerkez pushed their summer spending beyond £200million, Liverpool are not finished recruiting but need to balance their expenditure with more sales on top of the £24million already received for Caoimhin Kelleher, Nat Phillips and Trent Alexander-Arnold. Jarell Quansah is expected to join Bayer Leverkusen for £35million after the European Under-21 Championship and Tyler Morton, also excelling at the tournament, is another asset they will seek to realise. Talks are continuing with Napoli over a deal to sell Darwin Núñez, while Federico Chiesa, who interests several Serie A clubs, is also likely to be sold. Ideally, with Kerkez aboard, the Liverpool would raise funds by disposing of a left back. Andrew Robertson is considering interest from Atletico Madrid but may stay for the final year of his contract, though, and Kostas Tsimikas is happy in a back-up role. A 'Greek Scouser' who describes Liverpool as 'the Broadway of football' may be hard to shift. The importance of sales was laid out at the end of the previous summer transfer window by the online football finance expert Swiss Ramble. From 2022-24, Brighton's gross spending on players (£411million) exceeded that of Liverpool, Newcastle United, Villa and — by a significant margin — the outlays of supposed peer clubs such as Brentford, Fulham and Crystal Palace. But their net spend? It was just £20million. They had traded their squad upwards — readying it to finish a club-record eighth in 2024-25 — for less than £7million per season, thanks to sales. The analysis showed Chelsea and City to have been by far the period's biggest sellers. The massive recruitment programmes undergone by both would have been impossible without recouping through player disposals. The pressure on Arsenal, United, Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle was also clear in the figures. Those clubs' relatively low sales left them with big net spends. Arsenal's gross outlay on players was only £50million more than City's over a five-year period, but their net spend was £480million more. The problems that stores up perhaps explain why City can now spend with abandon to help Guardiola rebuild while Arteta is still waiting for his striker. Everton were the only club to make a transfer profit from 2020-24, showing how selling was fundamental to the club's very survival during the stricken final years of Farhad Moshiri's ownership. But selling is not just about how much you make, it's about which goods you are willing to part with, and though City raised £499million by offloading players from 2022-24 it was a period where they parted with talents including Cole Palmer, Morgan Rogers, Liam Delap, James Trafford and Julián Alvarez. None look like wise disposals now. There are different ways of measuring how 'good' a player sale is. One is to compare at the price achieved to market value and, using Transfermarkt's calculations, the best business of last summer included Newcastle realising £22.2million more than market value when selling Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth achieving £20.8million more when selling Dominic Solanke to Tottenham and Wolves extracting £13.2million more for Max Kilman than the market said he was worth. However, another way is to look at the value of the player sold a year down the line. The blossoming of Anderson at Forest suggests Newcastle actually undervalued him. On the other hand the Kilman deal looks even better from Wolves' point of view — 12 months on he is now worth £19.2million less than West Ham paid for him. City selling Alvarez to Atletico Madrid for £64million seems a bad deal by both measures. The price was £13million below the Argentina forward's market value at the time and now it is £21.4million below his market value — albeit add-ons included in the deal may allow City to recoup up to £17million. United fare dreadfully in the analysis. They have made 14 significant sales in the past three seasons, 11 of whom now valued higher than the fees received for them, with Scott McTominay, Anthony Elanga and Álvaro Carreras worth a combined £63million more. To value players, Brighton use the unique information provided by Jamestown Analytics, an offshoot of Bloom's betting data company, Starlizard. They stick to those valuations and ignore distractions: back in January 2023, Caicedo agitated to go, even posting a plea to leave on Instagram. Brighton did not go to war with their asset but calmly asked him to stay away from training until the transfer window closed and then extended his contract, to further increase his value. Only selling when a replacement has been signed or lined up is also the Brighton way. Marc Cucurella was replaced by Pervis Estupiñán, Robert Sánchez by Bart Verbruggen and Leandro Trossard by João Pedro. Caicedo himself was the replacement for Yves Bissouma and on the same day he signed for Chelsea, Brighton entered talks with Lille for his replacement, Carlos Baleba. Now Baleba, 21, is projected to be a future £100million sale but a club who made gentle inquiries came away with the impression that Brighton are unlikely to let him go until next season, because his replacement has not been identified yet. Liverpool's headaches are eased by having Michael Edwards and Richard Hughes to oversee trading. Hughes sold well at Bournemouth and squeezing €10million from Real Madrid for the last month of Alexander-Arnold's contract was remarkable even by Edwards's standards. During the building phase of the modern Liverpool, as sporting director Edwards raised £396million from sales from 2014-17 — enabling the recruitment of Virgil van Dijk, Mo Salah, Sadio Mané, Roberto Firmino, Joël Matip, Gini Wijnaldum, Adam Lallana, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Joe Gomez and Robertson on a pretty much obscene £58million net spend. 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The Sun
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Man at war with council after building a two-storey HOUSE on his driveway without permission
A businessman who built a towering second home in his garden has been ordered to tear it down - after it emerged he had only secured planning permission to build a modest garage. Raziq Ali was given the green light to replace a modest garage to the side of his £350,000 detached home near Bradford, West Yorkshire. Instead, the 41-year-old constructed what planning officials have described as a full-blown 'detached dwelling' with three floors and enough space for independent living. Bradford Council issued an enforcement notice in March, demanding Ali demolish the 85 sq/m structure within three months, after ruling that the illegal development completely 'dominates' the area. Yet when MailOnline visited the property, in a secluded avenue in the village of Thornton, building work was still taking place inside the annexe, which neighbours said had been kitted out with high-end furniture. A glazed corridor had also been constructed to link the two buildings together. 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A later planning bid suggested the building would be used by care providers to stay over and provide assistance was also refused by planners who ruled that the 'size, design and appearance of the built annex is not appropriate or acceptable'. The council said that the garage conversion it had initially approved would have provided 'adequate additional space'. In May last year, the council issued an enforcement notice demanding the 'unauthorised three-storey building' be removed in three months. An appeal of that decision was dismissed in March by the Planning Inspectorate. Laura Renauden, an inspector appointed by the secretary of state, concluded in her report: 'Permission was obtained for a replacement garage building on the site, but the building constructed is somewhat larger than that permitted, and is said to have self-contained facilities. 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'Those have not been supplied here.' In Sowden Grange, a small cluster of detached homes, neighbours claimed Mr Ali did not live at the property and that builders continued to work inside the illegally-built house. One suggested Mr Ali had spent more than £200,000 to build the structure, and now faces a costly demolition bill to raze to the ground. Another couple, who asked not to be named, said: 'To be honest, at this point, we just want the matter resolved. 'We'd prefer to have actual neighbours living there. We're more bothered by the constant building work. 'The work's been going on for over two years now. Every time they do anything, our garden ends up covered in dust and debris. 'If they demolish it, we'll go through the same disruption all over again.' When approached by MailOnline, Mr Ali said he had instructed solicitors to contest the council's enforcement action but declined to comment further. Breaching an enforcement notice can lead to proceedings in the criminal courts.