First-time buyer Andrew Larkin has just got the keys to his new house - 18 months after his offer was accepted.

And the 33-year-old joiner and builder now faces having to carry out more repair work because of the delay.

Mr Larkin liked the look of the two-bedroomed, end-terrace house in Highgate Road, Clayton Heights, his offer of £25,000 was accepted in June, 1997 - and his nightmare began.

Solicitors soon discovered the house was owned by one member of the family selling it and the garden by another.

Because of the delays unravelling the legal knot, the time limits on his original mortgage offer and house survey ran out and he had to obtain both again.

And he says the condition of the property has deteriorated because it has been empty the whole time.

"It was just going on and on and I was getting more and more frustrated," he said.

"I even wrote to the TV series Watchdog but they said they had too much work on already.

"I never thought I would have so much problem buying a house.

"After all the hassle I went through, I won't be doing it again in a hurry. It was empty before I put the offer in and it's obviously got damp with no-one living in it so a lot of plaster has got to come off now."

Estate agent John Sykes, of Charles Walker, who handled the sale, said: "It must be going on towards one of the longest sales I have known.

"There must be other cases but I can't recall any.

"The average sale is generally two to three months - I could have sold between 30 and 50 houses with all the effort I've put into this one."

Mr Larkin's solicitor, David Butterfield, of David Yablon Minton Ellis, said: "It was odd - quirky - because the garden and the house were owned by two different members of the same family, one of whom had been dead a number of years.

"I have never had a purchase like this - we have had so much difficulty."

Solicitor Michael Gledhill, who was acting for the vendors, said: "It was the worst scenario in any transaction I have ever dealt with - it was an absolute nightmare.

"The title for the garden hasn't yet been registered - it hasn't gone away yet.

"It took me about two months going through old documents - some going back to the 1920s - to find out which original title the garden was attached to.

"It was like unravelling a maze - you went down one avenue and came to a dead end and had to go back and start again."

The Government is proposing introducing rules aimed at speeding up the house-buying system.

These will force the seller to produce a pack containing all the information about the house before it goes on the market and that would include a copy of the title deeds and standard searches.

The move has been welcomed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, whose Leeds spokesman Gerald Rigler said: "There is an awful lot involved in buying and the RICS is trying to ensure that things are speeded up."

Anger over mail order Christmas gifts delay

Furious Christine Mathers is still waiting for Christmas presents she ordered from a London business last year. Mrs Mathers received a letter from International Direct Inc. in November offering American perfumes and toiletries at bargain prices and decided to buy some for friends and relatives.

"I'm always buying by mail order and I've never had any problems before," she said.

Mrs Mathers, 48, who lives in Tong Street, sent off a cheque for £93 to the address on the letter - a PO Box number in London.

The cheque was cashed on November 16 but she hasn't received the items or a reply to the two letters she has sent since.

"I'm furious about it - this is the first time I've had a problem and it doesn't look as though I'm going to get my money back or the things I've ordered."

Rights and Wrongs traced the PO Box number to the Southwark area of London and then contacted Southwark Trading Standards. A spokesman said the department had received between 50 and 60 inquiries about the firm.

"The London address is just a mail forwarding agent," he said. "International Direct is actually based in New Jersey in the USA but it has set up a customer hotline in London after pressure from us.

"They do seem to be very slow at filling orders but people seem to get them eventually - although often what they get isn't what they ordered."

The mail forwarding company's manager, Lesley Hutchins, said: "International Direct received so many responses for Christmas - more than 250,000 - that they have got a backlog of orders.

"I can't say why this lady hasn't got her goods because the database is in America but if she would like to call I can arrange to get the goods to her or arrange a refund."

The International Direct hotline is 0171 237 5333.

We get results!

Scottish Power has finished investigating a case highlighted in Rights and Wrongs last week where an 81-year-old woman with senile dementia signed a new gas supply contract.

A salesman employed by a company hired by Scottish Power to sell in the Shipley area persuaded the woman to change her supplier from British Gas.

But her angry daughter Susan Wheeler found out - and contacted us.

A Scottish Power spokesman said: "We had a talk to the salesman and the agent concerned about the accusations made.

"As far as the interview with the sales agent is concerned, he said he was surprised and shocked that this had happened.

"He said he didn't get the impression at all that the lady was unable to operate her own household and he didn't think there was anything untoward.

"He acted in what he thought was a perfectly fair manner and in good faith.

"We have sacked people in the past for this kind of thing but not on this occasion.

"We are quite happy to cancel the contract and we have suspended the transfer process."

He said the company had "a very good record" in dealing with elderly and sensitive customers but he added: "It's a difficult problem - there is a line which is very difficult to draw when you have old people running their own household.

"You have to make a judgement and sometimes people make judgements which are wrong."

l The Millennium Bug - which some experts predict will cause global chaos in the year 2000 - may not be all it's cracked up to be.

The Advertising Standards Authority is warning advertisers not to exploit or mislead consumers by exaggerating the possible effects of the bug, so boosting their "fix-it" services.

The industry watchdog says the controversy about whether or not a personal computer will cope is down to a chip called a Real Time Clock and a program called BIOS.

An ASA monthly report says modern BIOS are clever enough to change to 2000 instead of going back to 1900 at one minute past midnight on December 31, 1999.

"Users should therefore not encounter problems so long as the BIOS is a modern one manufactured in the 1990s," the report continues.

"However, computers with old BIOS and RTCs - or those running specialist, "home-made" software - may suffer problems and here is where the fix programs can be of benefit."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.