This I did and further noticed that the fabric was coming unstitched on the end of the bag- very tiny seam which did not hold the stitching.They returned it to H.O. and they said it was an airline problem and would not replace or refund.I could however have another bag at half price. Why would I buy another to fall apart? I contacted Trading Standards and their only advice was to sue them. Totally useless organisation. Something must be done - I hear many people with the same problem where luggage is not fit for purpose and there is no comeback and guarantees are not worth the paper they are written on.

Shirley Wallis

Update - To follow

Video of this case to follow shortly

I loaned my daughter £6000 to put down a deposit on a house with her husband. We agreed that they would give it back when they have saved some money. In October 2010 they broke up and decided to get divorced. They are trying to sell the house but there is a problem as my daughter ex-husband is claiming that i gave them the £6000 as a gift rather than a loan and therefore claims that it does not need to be paid back. i am saying that it was a loan and does need to be paid back when the house is sold.

Sandra and her family were forced to leave the home that they owned after constant violent threats from their neighbours, which left them in doubt of their safety and that of their young son. The threats began after Sandra complained about the anti-social levels of noise and a noise abatement notice was served. Due to the neighbours, the family were unable to sell or rent their home and so had to hand the house back to their mortgage provider, leaving them £51,000 in negative equity, which they will now have to pay off. Sandra and her partner both work full time but it will take them over nine years to pay off this debt.

The family were advised that as the neighbours were council tenants, and as the problems had been reported repeatedly over a long period of time, Southampton City Council could be liable for compensation to cover the debts incurred as they had not acted to resolve the problem. But at the end of last year, the ombudsman judged that the council was not liable. This seems like a ludicrous situation.

More detailed information is at the bottom of this email, but I hope this is of interest and that you can help to raise awareness of this issue so that other families don’t have to suffer the same fate. The latest research that I could find (o this website http://www.problemneighbours.co.uk/how-big-problem-are-problem-neighbours.html <http://www.problemneighbours.co.uk/how-big-problem-are-problem-neighbours.html> ) states that 360,000 households had to relocate because of problem neighbours in 2009.

Here is a summary of the situation, as provided by Sandra:

Number of calls and logged problems:-• Made 22 calls in 17 months to the council

• 32 logged incidents on my log sheets
• 5 complaint calls made by other residents on the road on our behalf

Most of the problems were noise related at first, music, shouting, arguments, banging. Once the noise abaitment order was served the intimidation and vandalism directed at our family started. This is just a small selection of examples:-
• 10/09/10 - 11.55pm Porch window smashed with a stone and eggs thrown at front of house
• 06/01/11 - Eggs thrown at house and porch window broken (outer glass)
• 08/01/11 - Stone thrown at new (replaced) porch window
• 10/01/11 - 11.53pm Large rock thrown at porch window smashing it completely (which was caught on video)
• 18/01/11 - 1.30am Object thrown at bedroom window followed by consistent banging on bedroom wall.
• 23/01/11 - 10.30pm Object thrown against bedrom window

This was what my complaint to the council and ombudsman was based on:-
• We were not visited by anyone even though we were reporting problems for 17 months, this should have been done as part of there procedure.
• Asked me to fill in diary sheets but did nothing with them and have still not asked to see them
• I and other residents phoned the Out of Hours service on a number of occasions starting in June 2009. It took until August 2010 to get the problem witnessed
• The council accepted that our neighbours were causing problems but didn’t do anything to stop them
• The Council made no enquires about my problem in the 17 months that I was reporting problems to them
• Our case worker did not keep records of conversations i had with him, and then lied about the conversations
• No one has asked to see video evidence of our neighbours friend vandelising our property
• We were not advised that there were other departments in the council that could have helped (local housing and anti social behaviour team) at the time
• There were errors with record keeping
• Some evidence sent to the ombudsman was incorrect (in my view it was falsified)
• Despite the ombudsman saying the council made some mistakes she says it would not have made a difference so has decided not to investigate any further.