MEMORIES OF MAURICE HEALY The news of Maurice Healy’s death has saddened many – not just because of the qualities of the human being that was Maurice but because with his passing the ranks of the first movers of what we were proud to call the consumer movement grow ever thinner. Jeremy Mitchell has written …

Pete Eisenegger writes: It’s a pandemic. Consumers are being cautious. People are losing jobs. Meanwhile Global Warming continues and the need to adjust and bring our carbon footprints down becomes ever more pressing. As is the need for energy efficient homes. Building new modern homes to the standard needed is easy compared to upgrading the …

Consumer Rights Argued at Highest Level On 13-14 May 2020 at the Supreme Court, former Chief Financial Ombudsman, Walter Merricks CBE, took a class action on behalf of consumers against Mastercard to the highest court in the land. The action was taken with support from a small group of consumer experts, amongst them Arnold Pindar …

Fatal Accident I had just started work, years ago, when a colleague was killed in an accident in one of the lifts serving our civil service building. Several of my colleagues had to give evidence at the Coroner’s Court. The memory has stuck with me but happily, deaths are very rare and lifts are now …

We were all very saddened to hear of the death of Lynn Faulds Wood , due to a stroke. Lynn was a good friend to the National Consumer Federation and a tireless advocate for consumer rights. Lynn chaired the British Standards Institution’s Consumer and Public Interest Network. In this role, she also represented consumer views on …

  Did you know writes Arnold Pindar that the week commencing 19 November was “Electrical Fire Safety Week 2018 – “Safer over Sixty-Five”? Electrical Safety First (ESF) has developed guidance for older people and their relatives for electrical safety in the home. You can read about it on the BSI site. ESF reports that around 350,000 people are seriously …

Just as a Fitbit does not of itself make you fit, we are now learning that smart meters, those devices that are supposed to give consumers a live display of how much gas and electricity they are using, do not automatically make you smart or indeed save you energy. A Minister and his Meter Now …

NCF Consumer Congress 2017 brought experts from around the UK together to explore what Brexit means for consumers. Our aim was to send a clear message to the government about the importance of consumer protection, and what needs to be done to maintain and enhance this. Brexit provides a unique opportunity to take a fresh …

  There are arguments over how protectionist the current EU trade deals are outside the EU so that goods coming in from outside the EU are much more expensive than they need be. The EU say that the average tariff they put on in trade deals comes to between 2% and 3%. However a few …

  What does an EHIC card provide? Twenty-seven million of us have a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) which entitles us to free or reduced- cost medical care if we are visiting European Economic Area (EEA) countries (includes Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein in addition to EU members) or Switzerland.  Effectively, this means that visiting patients …