No help from Ebay on auction fraud

Last October, £71.13 was taken from my Egg credit card and paid to the Ebay auction site. I have never bought anything through Ebay, which has sent me an email saying it has 'taken appropriate action against the members who were involved in this unauthorised use'. Egg, however, can't investigate without more information from Ebay.
JS, Brighton

Ebay is being unhelpful but did at least phone you after my first contact to advise you to tell the police that another user on the system had used your credit card details and approach Egg for a refund. Ebay will not reveal the person's name, to you, me or Egg, nor explain the purchase, saying it will respond only when the police ask.

Egg thought it sounded like a disputed transaction rather than fraud as your card number was wrongly used only once and for a comparatively small amount. The time during which Egg could charge back the payment through Visa has now passed but it has agreed to treat the transaction as fraud and refund your money.

Taking care of next of kin

A cousin I haven't seen for years recently informed me that I am her next of kin. She owns her house but is soon going into a nursing home. She refuses to give me any information about her property, finances or solicitor, which makes it impossible for me to act on her behalf should anything happen. What is my position?
FA, London

You have no legal responsibility to her at all, even if she died and the nursing home contacted you to register the death. Usually relatives register deaths, but someone living in the same house or present at the death can do so instead. Her executors have the obligation to organise disposing of the body.

She doesn't have to say if she has named you as her executor and, even if she has, you can refuse to take on the responsibility. If there were no other executor, she would have died intestate, and an administrator is appointed by the court.

You could contact the nursing home to suggest the home manager encourages her to list her assets and lodge them with her solicitor, make a will if she hasn't, and ensure someone knows where it is kept. If you want to help, suggest she writes a letter, to be opened on her death, with the information she does not want to give you now. More information on registering deaths in England and Wales is at this website.

Still paying for loan I never had

I applied for a student loan in 2001 but changed my mind. I told Student Loans Company but apparently they did not log my telephone call, lost my letter and paid the first instalment, £488, to my bank account in 2002. I did not notice as it was swallowed up by my student overdraft. I paid off the loan last November but my January payslip showed £163 deducted for the loan.
HP, London

SLC has an automated system and says anomalies are difficult to process. When you repaid the loan, SLC agreed to write off interest because of its error. It recorded the loan as paid in full but it did not send a 'stop notification' as it had no record of having received payments via the Revenue.

Coincidentally, your employer then started deducting student loan payments from your salary because the Revenue told them that you had an outstanding loan. The SLC would not know about this until the employer submitted its annual records to the Revenue and the Revenue forwarded the information to the SLC.

The SLC issued the stop notice in February, after you phoned, and has refunded the overpayments to date. But your employer can take 42 days to implement the notice, which is why more money was taken from you. This, too, will be refunded.

Don't touch what you didn't ask for

I received an unsolicited approach from Meyers Associates in New York asking me to open an account to trade in US shares and suggesting an initial investment of £2,000. One investment was mentioned, currently trading at $2. Does this sound like a bona fide operation?
AB, Swansea

Genuine or not, don't touch it. There is no reason to buy shares in a US company you have never heard of from a broker you know nothing about. You would have no UK investor protection.

If you want to buy US shares, talk to a UK stockbroker. The Financial Services Authority warns against 'boiler room' stockbrokers, who cold call people in the UK to ramp shares. Though Meyers is not on the FSA's list of dodgy firms, it is not regulated in the UK so should not be cold calling, unless you responded to a mailing with small print saying you could be contacted.

No interest is not so interesting

My daughter has a £170,000 repayment mortgage costing £1,100 a month. An adviser suggests changing to an interest-only loan, reducing the cost to £600. She will sell the flat in five years, having repaid little capital by then. This way she could save £500 a month.
RS, Bristol

The cheapest way to repay a mortgage is on the lowest interest rate over the shortest time. After five years on a repayment loan, she will have paid off about 11 per cent of the capital or £18,700. If she doesn't pay that off, she has to borrow so much more for the next house, when interest rates could be higher. She will probably start a new 25-year term, again repaying little capital in the early years.

She should consider it only if she cannot afford the repayments. As she can, she will probably fritter away the £500 a month when it could have been reducing her debt. Instead, she should make sure she is on the cheapest mortgage deal.

· Email Margaret Dibben at money.writes@observer.co.uk or write to Margaret Dibben, Money Writes, The Observer, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER and include a telephone number. Do not enclose SAEs or original documents. Letters are selected for publication and we cannot give personal replies. The newspaper accepts no legal responsibility for advice.