All your personal finance questions answered, this week, credit cards, Smurfit Stone shares and Central Bank notices.

Credit cards

With reference to recent pieces on credit card charges, I contacted my Visa provider, AIB, last May regarding changing to another provider. I was told at that stage that I was not liable to pay the next charge until April this year. To avoid paying stamp duty on my Visa card this year, I was told I would need to cancel my card by contacting them in writing before April 1st, 2004. As I was in the process of getting a mortgage, I have avoided changing any of my financial services providers.

I contacted AIB this morning and explained that I contacted them last year and explained the situation. I was told that because they had no record of my call last year, they could not help me.

On two occasions in the past I have had to contact AIB Credit Card Centre to complain about a service and on both occasions when I called back a second time to see if the problem had been rectified, they had no record of my previous call.

I have been an AIB customer for 12 years and told the customer service adviser that I was not happy with the service provided and that I would be changing both accounts. He said there was nothing he could do about it. Is there anything else I can do?

Ms E.S., email

As it happens, whether they mislogged the call or not would not change your situation. Once you held the AIB Visa card last May, you were automatically going to face a charge come this April 1st in respect of the period from April 1st, 2003, to March 31st, 2004.

If you had changed provider last May, you would have been charged this sum immediately by AIB and would have faced the same charge again this April from your new card provider. There has been a lot of confusion about this, not least in my own mind, but the stamp duty is retrospective and as long as you held a card on April 1st last, you had no way of avoiding the €40 stamp duty that will be activated this April.

In terms of the broader issue of your dissatisfaction with the bank, there are a couple of things you can do.

First off, you can follow through on your threat and move your business elsewhere. Sad to say, that is about the only customer action that most of our mainstream financial institutions understand. Customer service is, to be generous, patchy. The problems with that course are: a) transferring banks is inordinately difficult to do in Ireland as you have to ensure that things like the payment sent directly to your bank, such as wages, and outgoings, such as direct debits, are moved to the new bank. This is all down to you, unlike in the UK, where the banks have to process the switch in one fell swoop. As a result, there are added costs and plenty of room for error; b) there is no guarantee that the new bank will be any more responsive. At least where you are, your 12 years' experience should give you some leverage, even if that is not always the case.

Short of such drastic action, you can keep going up the customer service chain. Supervisors also have supervisors and then managers and then general managers. However, I think you need to change your approach and conduct as much of your business with your credit card provider or bank in writing or by email. Even if you make a call to complain, follow it up with an email. That leaves a paper trail, which is all important when considering the third option - a formal complaint to the ombudsman for the credit institutions, whose address is Ombudsman for the Credit Institutions, 8 Adelaide Court, Dublin 2, telephone: 01- 4783755.

Smurfit Stone

I received some Smurfit-Stone shares a few years ago in the buy-back as part-payment for my Smurfit shares. Since then I have received no information on their performance, let alone an annual report or dividends. Is this right?

Mr T. McK, email

You say you received some Smurfit-Stone shares as part of the privatisation operation at the Jefferson Smurfit group. I assume you did not actually receive a share certificate and that might explain why you have heard little recently.

Smurfit-Stone trades on the US markets and over there shares are held electronically. If your shares are in a nominee account, the information on the company, including annual reports, dividends and the like, will be sent straight to whichever broker is hosting the nominee account.

This is one of the fundamental weaknesses of nominee accounts, although they certainly serve a purpose for people who do not want to be individually identified as owners of stock in a particular company.

I suggest you contact your broker, who should, in any case, have been keeping you up to date with the progress of your portfolio. In the interim, you will certainly be able to track company information, including annual reports, through its website www.smurfit-stone.com.

If, for whatever reason, you hold the shares through a share certificate, you should receive the information directly and I would suggest you contact the company immediately. In order to keep track of the stock, the closing price of Smurfit-Stone is quoted each day in the New York list on the markets page of this newspaper.

Central Bank

From time to time advertisements appear in The Irish Times from the Central Bank giving notice that, at the request of the firm(s) concerned, the Central Bank has, under Section 16(1)(a) of the Investment Intermediaries Act 1995, revoked the authorisation of the named firm(s). Can you please clarify what this is about?

Mr G. McD., email

All investment intermediaries are required to register with the Central Bank, which licenses their activities. If a firm wants to quit the business for any reason, it must notify the Central Bank. The Bank then revokes the licence.

Such a notice in no way indicates that a firm has done anything wrong or that it is under investigation. People can choose to drop or alter their licence if they move from being, say, a broker offering advice on the full range of products to being one offering advice on the products of several but not all companies. It could even be that the intermediary is retiring or getting out of the business for some other reason.

Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, D'Olier Street, Dublin 2 or e-mail to dcoyle@irish-times.ie. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice. Due to the volume of mail, there may be a delay in answering queries. All suitable queries will be answered through the columns of the newspaper. No personal correspondence will be entered into.