Case Studies

Mr R was our first client for the Making Life Simple service and his story is as follows:

​

He was 96 years old and lived alone in his own property.  He was not married, but had a sister and a niece, neither of whom lived locally.

​

Mr R signed up for Making Life Simple in early 2017 and we began by scanning and shredding his historic bank statements, retaining only the previous quarter on his Making Life Simple file, and then continuing to scan and shred quarterly thereafter.  He was visited in person twice per quarter to collect the latest information and then to review and return it updated.  We familiarised ourselves with his general financial position, filed necessary documentation in his client folder and began monitoring his financial position quarterly, raising queries where necessary and scrutinising each quarter’s bank statements thoroughly. 

​

With increasing familiarity with his financial position gained over the first year, we were able to correct an annual direct debit which was being duplicated (i.e. he was being charged twice for the same thing).  By monitoring his bank statements and in discussion with him, a couple of other historical anomalies came to light.

 

The first concerned payments to the managing agents of his leasehold property.  Mr R lived in a top floor apartment which was managed by an external property company.  In 2012, all residents were asked to make a voluntary contribution towards a sinking fund to be applied to future roof repairs.  As Mr R lived on the top floor, he felt that this might be a priority for him, so he began making regular contributions to this fund.

​

We contacted the managing agents on his behalf to try to understand exactly what payments Mr R was obliged to make towards the ground rent/service charge, etc.  The name of the managing agents had changed twice in the last 5 years so he had lost track.  By reference to his historical bank statements and by probing the situation, it became clear that the balance of the roof sinking fund had reached £1,500 in 2017, funded entirely by Mr R as he had been the only voluntary contributor.  Following some discussion, it was agreed that it was inappropriate for this money to be retained as no proper plans were in place for any roof repairs.  Therefore, the outstanding balance of £1,500 was returned to Mr R in February 2018.

​

As his familiarity and confidence in our service had grown by then, Mr R highlighted another situation over which he felt he had lost control.  This involved an extended warranty on a washer/dryer which he had purchased in 2015.  It turned out that he had been paying both the manufacturer and the supplier for a warranty which he had not even needed.  Acting on his behalf, the Making Life Simple service managed to claim back a refund for Mr R from both warranty providers.  This amounted to another £1,000 returned to Mr R.