BL writes: I closed my account with Co-operative Bank in March, and later discovered it had not credited my account with an agreed £20 in respect of an error it had made. At one stage I was told I’d have to reopen my account to get the cash, because “we do not issue cheques”.

Banks that don’t issue cheques are a new one on me. Thanks for making me smile and, I can assure you, causing red faces all round at the Co-op. You do now have the money, after some delay, and you want to add a word of praise for a lady called Kerry who was, you say, “magnificent” in trying to resolve it.

The Co-op has a system of automatic compensation for both personal and business customers if it fails to meet any of five service level guarantees it offers — an automatic £15 for personal customers and £25 for business customers, which sounds a good idea. However, as you found, it doesn’t always work when the customer has since closed the account.

Meanwhile, the Bs, who had been waiting for their promised voucher for a free case of wine on opening an account with Smile, the Co-op’s internet bank, have at last been rewarded after a chase from this column. They opened their account last November and were promised the voucher in February. It finally arrived in May.

Law Society leaves it late for justice

MS writes: I was mis-sold an endowment mortgage by a firm of solicitors in 1992. I complained to the firm in 2000, but am still awaiting a decision on compensation.

Hello again. You first featured in this column way back last September, when you described the quite unconscionable delays you experienced in trying to get your case heard by the regulation arm of the Law Society of England & Wales. It agreed you should never have waited so long to have your case heard, and awarded you an ex-gratia payment of £500 for the delay.

Since then, the situation has gone from bad to worse. The fact you have at last been awarded appropriate compensation is down to one or two committed individuals in the Law Society — with some help from this column.

Your case was set to be heard by an adjudication panel last autumn. Despite the fact your loss was assessed at just over £4,600, the panel awarded you only £500 in recognition of the poor service you had received, and nothing in respect of the loss, because it decided you would not have been able to afford the alternative of a repayment mortgage at the time you took it out. This was, not to put too fine a point on it, rubbish; at the time, endowments may have been slightly cheaper than repayments, but there would have been very little in it. On my advice, you appealed, and a second panel heard the appeal just before Christmas. It decided to raise your payment to £900.

I blew my top at that point. My contact at the Law Society fortunately agreed with me, so your case went back — for a third time — to a new adjudication panel. This time, at last, they came up with (just about) the right answer. You have been offered compensation of £4,616, although the previous £900 award has now been reduced to £200. However, the panel has also directed the Law Society to consider a further ex-gratia payment in recognition of the further delays you have suffered.

Most endowment mis-selling complaints are dealt with by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), but if the sale was made by a solicitor it must be heard by the Law Society. You have done fellow sufferers a great service by pursuing your case, because it has forced the Law Society to recognise that it should be dealing with such complaints using the same guidelines as those dictated by the Financial Services Authority for use by the FOS.

A&L creates a taxing problem

JL writes: Have you had any other small-business people writing to you about the Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank? I cannot believe I have been singled out for special treatment. I have spent since January trying to get the bank to do the right thing in correcting its error of wrongly deducting personal income tax from our business account. It is not a large sum, but it should simply have been recredited to our account.

You detailed your numerous efforts to get this tax repaid: the familiar litany of lengthy calls that got nowhere, and promises to call back which were not kept. At one point, you were told a manager tried to call you but had only got your answering machine, and had not left a message — this, apparently, being “normal practice”. As you say, “in that case, how are customers supposed to know they have been called?” You do point out that staff at your local branch were really helpful, but were not in a position to resolve the problem.

You have now closed your account and A&L has finally confirmed to you it is not able to recredit the interest; under the relevant corporate taxation legislation, you must reclaim this from the Revenue. The bank says it has now changed its systems to make sure this error is not repeated with other business customers. And it has sent you a cheque for £50 as a gesture of goodwill.

Travel cover is all or nothing at Barclays

ZE writes: I have a Barclays Premier card, which has an annual fee of £80 and claims to offer “valuable travel insurance”. People should be warned that the new underwriter’s terms and conditions make it a great deal less valuable than it might appear. The policy is valid only if all the travel — every single element of it — is paid for by the card.

You are quite right, and thank you for pointing this out. You have had lengthy correspondence with both Barclays and the underwriter, First Assist. The policy states: “to qualify ... you must...have paid for all travel, transport and accommodation using this card”. Fine for package holidays or cruises, maybe, but as you say, you sometimes stay with friends, or in small hotels and guest houses that don’t accept credit cards.

Your persistence in pointing out the defects of this has, Barclays tells me, at least resulted in the bank paying you £70 in order to buy replacement insurance for one trip, but the basic problem remains. The bank says: “Your comments will be noted and will be taken into consideration for future third-party negotiations.” I hope this isn’t just flannel.

Halifax lent too much to my parents

DR writes: Three years ago, my father and mother went to Halifax to discuss releasing equity in their property. Despite my father’s income being just under £10,000 a year, they were offered, and accepted, an interest-only loan of £45,000. Last year my mother died and it has emerged there was no life insurance to cover the loan. My parents did not want or need a sum as large as this. It should be a warning to others.

I can only agree. The problem with life assurance at the ages your parents were when they took out the loan (late sixties) is that it is expensive. Halifax says life cover was offered, but due to the cost your parents decided not to have it. You say they did not want a sum as large as this, and without your mother’s pension your father will have little to live on after meeting the interest payments. Because there is still £30,000 unspent from the original loan, the practical solution must be to use some or all of this to pay off capital, which should at least reduce his interest outgoings.

What this illustrates is that releasing equity is far from a free lunch. For many people in this situation the best solution is a drawdown loan, where a total borrowing figure is agreed in advance, and perhaps a portion borrowed immediately as a lump sum, but then the balance is drawn as income and, where the interest is rolled up, repayable only on death. This has drawbacks, too (it severely limits the amounts that can be borrowed, especially at younger ages, and interest rates may be higher than on normal mortgages).

A good starting point for anyone in this position is a fact sheet produced by the Financial Services Authority, called Raising Money from your Home, available at fsa.gov.uk or from 0845 606 1234. Then I suggest a visit to a competent mortgage broker.

• E-mail Diana Wright at the address below or write to A Question of Money, The Sunday Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1ST, giving a daytime telephone number. We cannot send personal replies or deal with every letter. Please do not send original documents or SAEs. Advice is offered without legal responsibility