I received a fine in the post a few weeks ago of £80 (reduced to £40 if I pay within 4 weeks) for not taxing a car that I didn’t own.

I sold my Porsche to a dealer in October of last year and duly sent of my part of the registration document to the DVLA to inform them of this the very same day.

For whatever reason this was not processed and the fine was issued. I never received a reminder to tax the car and never thought any else of it. Big mistake. When I wrote back to the DVLA on receiving the fine enclosing a copy of the slip I had kept I was told I would still have to pay the fine.

Apparently it is my own fault for not making a note in my diary for 4 weeks time to contact them if I didn’t receive a letter from them thanking me for telling them I no longer owned the car.

Even if I had sent the slip by special delivery and had proof that they had received it, if for whatever reason they didn’t action it I would still be liable.

I’m starting to think the Government has these systems in place as an additional revenue stream. They can’t raise enough tax in the usual way so they dream up other ways of doing it.

Last year I was fined £100 for supposedly not getting my tax return in on time even though when I rang them they admitted I had and couldn’t understand why I had been fined.

Is it any wonder I don’t trust our Government or their departments?

I have a Linksys WAG54GS that I bought only a couple of months ago and if it disconnected from the internet the only way I could reconnect is to go status and press connect. Obviously if I wasn’t at home at the time and had access to the router I couldn’t do it and the internet connection to my house would be down until I returned.

This was a real pain as it meant I had no access to my webcam, CCTV system or Sony Locationfree amongst other things.

I tried everything I could think of with the settings. I tried both connect on demand and keep alive but nothing worked so I decided to try their online support and after waiting for more than 30 minutes for an operator they suggested I upgraded the firmware of the router. This has actually solved the problem but what annoys me is I only bought this a couple of months ago and the firmware I had version V1.00.08 needed to be upgrade to V1.00.12 which was released on 06 December 2005!

So why on earth are they shipping routers with firmware over a year old or are they telling me I bought old stock?

I would prefer to think that it was old stock (although I have my doubts) as I can’t believe any responsible company would want to ship routers with firmware which is so out of date and had been upgraded twice to fix known problems.

We’ve got a Warmworld HE 70 boiler which unfortunately broke down a few days ago. We also have a service contract with British Gas so called their engineers out to fix it. When the engineer arrived he said to me “has anyone told you that this boiler is obsolete and the company doesn’t exist anymore so we can’t get spares for it?”.

To cut a long story short, after the 3rd visit it was diagnosed that we needed a new sequence control board which they didn’t have and as it was obsolete probably wouldn’t be able to get one and we would need a new bioler. I was told the call would be left open and their obsolete spares department would search the country for one but that would take about a week before I even got an answer. I was also told that if I found one they wouldn’t be able to fit it as they didn’t supply it and I’d have to make my own arrangements.

Meanwhile we freeze. Anyway, a quick search on Google for Warmworld Boiler Spares proved fruitless so I thought I would do a search for Warmworld UK Ltd to see if there was any details on them being taken over by a different company.

Imagine my surprise when the first result was Warmworld.co.uk

The company does exist so I rang them and asked if they had the spare part and was told yes, its in stock, part number BS7707 and it costs £62.09.

I explained to the gentleman on the phone that we had a British Gas Service contract and that we were told the company no longer exists to which he told me, yes they do (obviously) they have the spare parts and they supply to British Gas.

So I called British Gas, gave them all the details and they sent them off by email to their spares dept and was told they would contact me. When they didn’t call back it was explained to me that they aim to read emails and return calls within 48 hours.

I could get the part delivered to me before they even read their email!

So if British Gas or anyone else says you can’t get spare parts for Warmworld boilers anymore that’s rubbish. Warmworld can be reached on 0117 949 8800.

Don’t let the engineer leave your house without giving him the number and insisting the spares team call them while he is there otherwise you may end up cold like us for days to come.

What is it about this country that makes someone a celebrity for doing nothing other than being in the papers. Celebrity Big Brother’s decision to bring back Jade and her family to the house and then have the other celebrities wait on them is farcical.

Donny did the right thing and escaped over the wall stating, I’m not f**king waiting on a mooron and her family.

Jade enters the Big Brother House and then complains to Big Brother that the 3 remaining celebrities were cold. How can she honestly put herself into the league of Jermaine Jackson from the legendary Jackson 5, Ken Russell the controversial film director and Shilpa Shetty, a famous Bollywood actress.

Jade tells Shilpa she is the 25th Most influential women in the world and then explains she doesn’t know what inluential means. Where did she get that from? Worse still, she actually believes it. This is from the girl that thought that East Anglia was abroad!

Jade’s Mum asks Shilpa (maybe looking down on her) Do you live in a shack or a house? How rude!

As if Jade, her Mum and boyfriend weren’t scrapping the barrel enough there is talk of Jades Grandparents going in today!

Ken has apparently asked to leave now and I wouldn’t be surprised if more of the others ask to go until we are left with Jade and her extended family.

Maybe Channel 4 will have to rename the show to Non-Celebrity Big Brother

Okay, I got a final demand from Talk Talk today that told me if I didn’t pay up within 4 days they would refer my case to a debt collection agency.

Once again I went through the process of calling their Credit Control department to be told they can’t deal with my account and that I would need to speak to customer service. So they put me through to the wrong department and then transferred me to a dead line.

I called again and this time someone was a little more helpful and told me they would arrange for a credit to be raised on my account to zero the balance. When I asked them about the money they owed me they said I would need to speak to customer service. This time I actually got put through to someone but clearly they didn’t understand their own billing system and I kept getting put on hold so they could speak to their supervisor. I was then told they were going to keep the money I had paid them by way of a cancellation fee.

There should be no cancellation fee as I was out of contract and had given more than 30 days notice but this was what the Talk Talk girl was told to say by her supervisor.

I tried to explain to them about my overpayment and eventually they hung up on me. I guess my only option now is to take them to the small claims court. It’s a lot of hassle and the money involved isn’t a great deal but it is the principle of the matter now. Companies like this don’t deserve to be in business. It’s a shame that us Brits have to put up with such crap customer service and it’s annoying that we have come to accept it as well.