Your ideas

I have been moving my bills on line to reduce my use of paper. However, when trying to sort out my late husband’s finances the solicitor seems to be insisting on an original bill as ID. Fortunately I have one, but should consumers be warned to keep one bank or utility bill in paper form?

The solicitor/conveyor quotes a price for the job. When they are good and ready, and ONLY when THEY are good and ready, the sale completes and they take there fee and hand over the other monies to whichever parties. Stop the solicitor taking his money, there should be a gap between the sale completing and the solicitor/conveyor getting their fees. Only if the customer is fully satisfied should they then be paid. I asked my solicitor to ask specific questions via email, their reply was something like, ‘I will ask the questions that I feel need answering and advise you in due course’. Not one of the issues I had with the sale were answered, just the ones they were interested in, and in their own time. They should give you a price, and an exact date when all searches etc in your property will be completed by. If this criteria is met, they get the full fee, if not, they don’t. Buyers pulling out at the last minute should be stopped, the French system, you commit to a deposit, you have 1 week cooling off, then you sign, pull out, you lose your deposit.
Another way,
You decide to sell, instruct your solicitor/ conveyor, they do the necessary searches, they all know the necessary searches, get them done before the new buyer comes along. The sellers solicitor should do this, not the buyers. Then approximately one month after the sale, the solicitor gets their fees less any agreed for his incompetence.

See above

After renting cars for the last 30 years I discovered this year a nasty addition to the hidden charges: the cross border fee! As we know the majors (Avis, Hertz, Europcar, etc) have each created a low cost subsidiary with fancy names, hoping not to tarnish their reputation & allowing them to boost up their own prices. However this year they introduced exorbitant cross border fees into their low cost subs (InterRent, Firfly, etc), making them as expensive. So hidden that when I phoned AutoEurope, a leading comparaison website, to check on a GoldCar quote, the agent told me no, but when I asked him to double check he found it, pretending not to know about it? That’s another matter. Is this the end of low cost car rental?

We recently bought a new car (BMW X1), and within a week, had a puncture in one tyre. A replacement tyre was required, but my 2 local tyre dealers (in Aberystwyth) were unable to acquire one for 5 days. I managed to buy one on-line at a premium but that took 3 days to deliver. My nearest BMW dealer admitted to there being a supply issue. When a new car is introduced, should there not be some rule as to availability of parts ? I now feel that I need to buy a fifth wheel and tyre, just to feel secure when driving on long journeys.

The other day i receive an email from BG asking me if i wanted to upgrade to smart meters.As my house is only 3 years old the smart meters were fitted as standard.However i decided to carry out some research,and my findings left me totally incredulous.It seems that if you have a smart meter fitted by for eg.EON,then switch to BG for eg.the smart meter becomes a dumb meter.Last year nearly 5m customers switched suppliers,so in a worst case scenario,if all the switchers had smart meters before switching,then after switching they would have dumb meters.How ridiculous is that?I would imagine that the smart meter rollout is being paid for by the customer via their bills.This is another own goal by toothless OFGEM/Govt.they should not have allowed the rollout to begin until a standard smart meter was available that worked for all energy suppliers.The rollout should be halted immediately,and anyone switching should be made aware that their smart meter will not function after the switch.So it will be back to reading your own meters again.I am not sure however if the energy monitor will still work