Shop Direct lose £24.7 million in PPI Claims.

Shop Direct, which owns Very.co.uk and Littlewoods.com, have reported a loss of £24.7 million in one year. This is in stark contrast to a £24.9 million profit in 2017. The company has put the loss down to a further £128 million set-aside to compensate customers who were mis-sold payment protection insurance (“PPI”).

This comes after Shop Direct announced in April that it will be closing three sites in Greater Manchester, and will replace them with one larger packing warehouse in the East Midlands. Nearly 2,000 jobs will be affected by the closure and Shop Direct says the limited Reachability, layout and loading restrictions are the reasons behind relocating its operation. The company have set aside a further 22.5 million to cover costs associated with the closure.

Revenue at Very increased 9.9% to £1.4 Billion, which drove up group sales 1.5% to just under £2 Billion. However, Littlewoods revenue was down 14.5% to £569.7 Million, largely down to the fact that the company struggled with the performance of furniture and homeware departments and also the closure of a customer rewards scheme.

New chief executive Henry Birch said: “Four months into my role as CEO, I’m hugely excited by the potential of Shop Direct. Today we’re announcing results that show a good underlying performance in a competitive external market.

“We’re trading in line with our expectations and preparing for the important peak season. It’s a changing and competitive market but our growth trajectory and differentiated customer offer gives us confidence for the year ahead.”

As the window for PPI claims is due to close in August 2019, there is still time to put in a claim if you feel you have been mis-sold payment protection insurance. Shop Direct previously sold PPI to their customers up until the year 2014. So if you held a credit account with the sales group, you may be eligible for a claim.

Green Star Energy mis-selling Tariffs.

Green Star Energy pays out £361k to thousands of customers for mis-selling tariffs on utility discount. Nearly 9,000 households have so far been paid compensation after Green Star mis-sold them gas and electricity. Energy regulator Ofgem says these customers were only offered tariffs from Green Star when using Utility Discount website. This meant that these customers were not offered cheaper deals available to them, possibly saving them hundreds of pounds.

As a result, Green Star Energy is paying £361,415 in compensation to 8,815 customers who took out deals with the supplier through Utility Discount. Green Star energy has also agreed to pay £151,376 to Ofgem’s consumer redress scheme for vulnerable households. So if you were a customer of Green Star Energy and you were not properly advised by the company, you may be eligible to make a claim.

British Airways Breach – Were you affected ?  

British Airways customers have been warned that around 380,000 card payments on its website and app were hacked during a 15 day breach of its data. British Airways says the breach related to bookings and payments made between 10.58pm on 21 August and 9.45pm on 5 September.

The airline says that no passport or travel information was stolen and the breach is strictly related to personal and financial details. The breach points to hackers Infusing code directly onto the company’s website, which went undetected for 15 days. It is yet another example of highly skilled hackers breaching high profile companies cyber security. The attack was a simple but targeted approach, when a customer clicked to buy a ticket, the code would scrape the credit card information and open payment page then forward the data to a fake site run by the hackers.

If you made a booking using BA during those dates, what should you do now?

British Airways has said that it is in the process of contacting all affected customers, and is telling customers to contact their banks and credit card providers. It is best to follow you banks advise here but they will more than likely cancel the cards affected and issue you with a new one.

BA says the incident has now been resolved and all systems are working, the airline also said that any customers who lose out financially will be compensated.