Martin Lewis' Personal Blog

Giving evidence (click for video)

Now I must admit, having had to check through the transcript the other day (they ask you to do it for accuracy) and realising that I do go on a bit, I haven’t actually been able to bring myself to watch the video, especially as I may just have kicked off a wee bit at one of the MPs.

However, as it’s an important issue I wanted to post the link below in case any one wants to see it (you can see our report of the session here: MPs told credit application system is flawed).

Also giving evidence after us are the banks, credit reference agencies and the OFT (it’s a full morning’s worth).

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MoneySavingExpert.com Homepage

Of course it was on a Wednesday, the day we send out the weekly MoneySaving email, which is always by far the biggest traffic day of the week.

I thought stats nerds would like to see the exact details (by our internal google analytics set up):

• 906,727 visits – ie different trips to the site
• 731,856 unique visitors – ie different people in the day
• 3,112,288 page views – the number of different pages people look at

On the day the top 10 articles viewed were all more consumery (as happens as we head toward Christmas):

1. Discount Voucher Deals
2. X-factor vote result MSE news
3. Restaurant Vouchers
4. Free Wills Guide
5. The Latest Email
6. Supermarket Shopping Guide
7. Shopping Section Page
8. Top Savings Accounts
9. Coach and Train Deals
10. Cheap Champagne Deals

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The system of policing the internet can actually work. A couple of months ago some forum users sent us a note that they’d spotted a site in the US that had lock-stock and smoking barrel stolen the content of the forum.

I don’t just mean similar categories I mean they were grabbing people’s user names and entire threads, and copying them directly to make it look as if their forum was huge and had a great deal of content.

The aim of course is to make them look big and popular, build credence, attract search and undoubtedly then try to flog as many products as possible on the side.

We tried to get in touch with the site owners, who as usual in these things ignore all contact – so we went to the ISP and asked for the site to be taken down.

And thankfully received this from it today:

“Hello, we received no response from the downstream user and have disabled the site”

Now click it and the copycat has been terminated.

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PS I’ve deliberately omitted the site name so it doesn’t get any search relevance from a link here.

Having blogged yesterday about RBS, NatWest new mini banks and my worries about which bank customer’s will belong to when banks are split, I found myself in the lift with Alastair Darling at GMTV this morning. So, much to the consternation of his press officer, I said “excuse me” and put these worries to him.

The main concern is that when these new banks are split out of the existing ones, who will go with the new banks? Provisional expectations are TSB and Cheltenham & Gloucester to be split out of the Lloyds group, part of Northern Rock to be sold off, and Williams & Glyn to come from RBS.

Take the example of once-prominent North West-based bank chain Williams & Glynn, which merged with RBS over 20 years ago – will its old customers be automatically demarked to go to the new bank?

His answer was simple:

“You can’t compel a customer to move bank. We’ll be doing this first with the new bit of Northern Rock; we’ll be writing to customers and giving them a choice about what happens.”

The same principle also applies to the potential splits from the other banks.

When I asked whether for a customer with a portfolio of products with a bank, let’s say they have a mortgage, a credit card and a bank account – would it apply by product or customer, his answer thankfully was:

“it’s by product, so if someone had savings and borrowings they would get two letters giving them a choice of what to do with each.”

I pointed out that there had been little message out there on this, and perhaps understandably he said:

“that’s because the announcement’s only just been made”

Which of course is true – it was only thirty minutes old at the time. However it’s been widely flagged in the media, and the crucial issue of what’ll happen to customers was quiet.

Sadly the lift journey ended before I got full clarification of exactly which customers would be written to; would it be all customers, or just those who were former incumbents of the bank (more intergral to the Lloyds & RBS situation than Northern Rock)? Still, I’ll get on the phone to the treasury for that info later (update note tue pm – it has now confirmed to us that it is customers in affected branches who will get the choice)

Having said that, the answer so far is broadly as good as we can expect; giving customers choice. In these mammoth banking machinations we need be very careful not to play with customers as if they were just pawns in a giant game – sold off to satisfy the whims of EU regulation and recoup spent funds.

Comment and Discuss

The government has announced it is planning to spin off sections of the megabanks created during the deep debt rescue needed in the midst of the financial crisis.

We hear that Williams & Glynn, a mainly North West-based bank that NatWest took over decades ago will be resurrected by RBS, TSB and others are likely to be demerged from Lloyds, and the good bits of Northern Rock will be sold or floated.

Ok so all this sounds great, but what I’m not yet clear on is what it means for customers?

Will my grandmother who used to bank with Williams and Glynn for example be moved back there automatically, or will she stay with NatWest/RBS? If she is moved and its products are better or worse than her current bank will she be given a choice?

What about someone with multiple products who perhaps had a TSB bank account but a Lloyds mortgage – will they both be moved – or will they be separated?

While it’s all very well to hear about these new banks, someone seems to have forgotten to mention what’ll happen to customers.

So let’s put our thinking caps on now. The only fair way to do this for me seems to be to offer EVERY customer of the banks the chance to move with NO CREDIT CHECK to whichever of the products they want. Yet the bureaucracy this causes will be huge.

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Walking through the gates of Downing Street is a bizarre experience. Before you get there it’s all hustle and bustle, but then once through it’s an old-fashioned London street that seems bizarre as there’s no traffic or people.

Yesterday afternoon, MSE Wendy and I went to meet two of the PM’s special advisors to chat about the state of play on bank charges and credit issues (see No. 10 to stop banks dipping into account & Gordon Brown on Bank Charges MSE News stories).

Yet I’ll leave those issues for elsewhere on the site; as it was my first trip, and I suspect many are intrigued by how it works, I thought I’d put down some notes to try and paint the picture as best I can while I still remember.

How do you get in?

We reached the Downing Street gates, went up to the policeman & told him we were on the list. He checked, looked at our ID and then we were in. Next step was the police security booths and metal detector to check our bags.

Once through, it’s a walk across the empty street to the doors of Number 10. The ubiquitous policeman is waiting outside and you’re not quite sure what to do.

He said ‘knock the knocker’ and Wendy – looking a bit like a kid who’d just been given sweeties – took hold of the big brass handle and rapped it.

Before she was done knocking the door swung open; it seems there’s a man stationed right behind it ready to let you in.

Walking into Number 10.

There’s a small reception room at the front. Immediately we were asked if we had mobiles or Blackberrys on us, and as we did, we we were asked to leave them – turned off – in a stack of pigeon hole type boxes on the left.

Each small box has a numbered ticket which you take with you so you can grab it when you come back – though no one’s checking.

Then it was onto a large red sofa, until someone came to show us to the meeting room.

As we were being shown through, I think I looked up and counted five stories above. We walked for a minute or so, including up the famous staircase flanked with pictures of former Prime Ministers.

Most of the recent ones are done in vertical columns of two – the only single one is Tony Blair’s at the end. So it seems the occupant after Gordon Brown will need to have the photos rearranged in columns of three to accommodate them all in future.

What a meeting room!

Being shown into the meeting room was a bit of a surprise. I was expecting a small room with a desk to sit across – absolutely not!

It was a huge ornate room, with two antique-looking green, possibly satin covered (not my forte) sofas in the centre, a coffee table between them, and vast empty space all around.

On the coffee table was a pot of tea, a pot of coffee and a mixed plate of biscuits (I took a Bourbon and one of the ones with the red jam showing in the centre that isn’t a Jammie Dodger).

As soon as the meeting got going both Wendy and I soon forgot about the location and got on with it; quite strangely the auspicious surroundings make you want to focus on the job in hand.

On the way out.

On the way out we were shown through the neighbouring room, which had large windows letting in the light, and a series of four or five tables with more antique type chairs around them.

It was then explained this is the main meeting room where the cabinet meets – though the long table was missing.

If you’ve ever taken the summer tourist tour of Buckingham Palace you’ll have a good idea of what these rooms are like. They’re very similar in feel to the rooms that face the gardens there – though quite a bit less ornate and no gold leaf.

After that it was downstairs to pick up our mobiles and out the door.

When I was there the man at the door said, “I hope you’re on a good tariff” then the comment of the day “if you’re here to save us cash we really must be in trouble!”

Now I had wanted to pretend to be all cool and walk out, but Wendy rightly suggested we should each have our pics taken outside the door – after all everyone else does it – so dutifully I’ve plopped mine below.

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I’m a loser. I’ve a history of losing mobile phones. This isn’t the first time I’ve admitted it though, in fact there’s a whole chapter dedicated to it in the Money Diet.

Last Thursday night was another classic example. I’d been kindly invited by GMTV to the London Press Ball, which is in aid of the journalists’ charity. Coming back in the early hours I’d jumped into a black cab; thankfully the cabbie’s missus was a MoneySaver and we had a brief chat about that.

Next morning I suddenly realised there was no mobile phone in my pocket, and that sinking ‘loser’ feeling I’ve had all too many times before grabbed me in the pit of my stomach – I’d left it in the cab.

Having tried all the sadly too well-honed methods of recovery, I’d given up by the time I went to do my slot on Radio 2’s Vine at lunchtime.

Yet as I left the radio studio the producer said to me “a cab driver’s just rung in, he’s got your mobile phone and wants to know how you want to get it back”.

Now it’s back in my pocket I just wanted to say a huge thanks to him for going way beyond the call of duty to get it back to me. It’s really appreciated.

I’m going to try not to be such a loser in future.

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Whenever I look at the premiership or any other football table mid-season it occurs to me that the display is mismatched according to the amount of games teams have played. This is more prevalent later in the season when there’s a bigger discrepancy between games

Now of course you can simply look at the “games played” and “points column” but for a bit of fun, I thought I’d apply some of the nerd-dom I usually look at MoneySaving with to see if I could make football league tables a little easier to view relative positions. After all one of the joys of a Sunday morning is looking through the tables’ minutiae.

The Current Premiership Football Table

I grabbed the figures below from BBC sport on on the evening of 18 October 2009.

I opted for the basic one without goals as for the purposes of the redesign that’s irrelevant, though the goals scored could be included too.

New Premiership Table with added stats.

Here is the same table but with three new columns added. As it’s early in the season the impact is still small, but it makes a difference.

The new columns are

A. Pts dropped.

Displaying points won is accurate for teams lower in the table, as there it’s all about scraping as many points as you can. Yet for teams near the top you expect them to win most matches, so teams who’ve played less will be disproportionately disadvantaged in the table.

By displaying the points dropped and comparing that, you get to see their relative performance; it’s a bit like the “par” score in golf.

B. Avg points per game.

This stat isn’t in itself so intuitive, but I’ve added it as the next column is worked out based on it – it does however average out a team’s performance so far.

C. Relative points.

This is the number of points the teams would be on if they’d all played the same number of games based on their average. It’s worked out by multiplying the avg no. points per game by the number of games played by the team in first position.

Table Reordered by points dropped.

Doing this substantially reorders the table. While I think it probably has significance for the upper part of the league, with both Arsenal and Man City (hoorah) moving ahead of Tottenham, I suspect it’s less appropriate lower in the table, where teams tend to drop points with every game, so the order simply reflects how many games are played.

Table reordered by Relative points.

I think this is perhaps the fairer overall way to demonstrate the table. The order is much closer to the standard table, but as the season goes on where one team mid-table has played three or four less than the next, it will correct those anomalies. For example Everton has moved up an appropriate couple of places here.

Of course this is just a bit of fun, though as someone who enjoys the tables perhaps even more than the football, I’d love to see some of these adopted.

Comment and Discuss

The Post Office has decided to pump serious money into advertising its savings products – using former James Bond Roger Moore – he of the effervescent eyebrows.

And international espionage is exactly the right theme, for unlike the vast majority of savings accounts, Post Office savings are NOT protected with the usual £50,000 per person UK guarantee (see the Safe Savings guide).

In fact, Post Office branded savings accounts are part of the Bank of Ireland, and it operates the ‘passport exemption’ when it comes to savings safety, which means your money is protected by Ireland’s government, not the UK’s.

The good news is until 2010 it offers to guarantee an unlimited amount, but the bad news is questions over the strength of the Irish Government’s finances have been raised. As equal or better rates are available elsewhere (see top savings) it’s worth questioning whether it’s worth it.

Frankly I think it irresponsible of the Post Office to advertise its savings without making this clear to customers. The Post Office is a uniquely British brand, and many assume its savings are part of the UK government owned NS&I – yet that’s totally separate. I wonder how many know this?

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I’m quite excited about the programme on tonight. I’ve always wanted to do a Thrifty Ways programme, and it’s on ITV1 at 8pm. Often when doing a Tonight I do the voice-over without seeing the programme, as it’s done by the team in Manchester. This however was a London production, so I’ve seen it.

I think it’s a really nice watch; a good Friday night mix of info and entertainment. Most of the tips aren’t actually mine, they come from Old Stylers on the forum boards, many of whom have done a great job – I hope they like it. Of course, hardcore thriftsters will know these tips, but I think many across the country will get a new lease of life looking at what can be done.

Do let me know what you think.

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Forgive me slipping straight into a football analogy for the economy, yet as a Man City fan we’re quite used to tragedy so it lends itself nicely.

This season, even though City has new owners and a strong new team, I’m still focused on us hitting 40 points. Once that’s done it means we’re safe from relegation, and we can concentrate on aiming for the Champions League or at least UEFA.

Part of me wonders whether the economy too has just this “no relegation” mark. Signs point to economic decline slowing; this week’s unemployment figures, while bad, show a slower fall than previously.

A year ago, if someone told us the real economy would’ve escaped as lightly as it has, with a short and severe fall in growth and unemployment rather than a prolonged fall, many people would’ve doubted it.

While there’s always a chance of a double-dip recession and things getting worse again, maybe it’s possible to hope the risk of cataclysm is now over?

I’d love your thoughts.

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Unlike many, I’m sympathetic towards MPs this morning. Many are in the following awful position:

• They made an expenses claim.
• They told the official body what they were doing and had it approved
• Now retrospectively they are being told they got too much money and need to find the cash to pay it back.

To me there’s an argument this is against natural justice. If they acted within the rules, even if some now consider those rules to be flawed, to demand money back doesn’t seem to flow.

Yet before there’s too much sympathy, lets look at what happens with tax credit overpayments to a MILLION people a year every year (see the tax credit overpayment help guide).

• They are given £100s or £1,000s in tax credits.
• The amount is calculated by the state and approved.
• Then retrospectively they’re told they got too much money and need to find the cash to pay it back.

Another awful scenario, except here the people involved are likely to struggle to pay the cash back, or will have their current credits taken off them instead, leaving them struggling on the breadline.

Worse still, we’re discovering many of them are still facing overpayments even though they followed the golden rule and “told them of every change”

I hope MPs will see the similarity – it may make them change this appalling system.

Comment and Discuss

Q. How many TV experts does it take to make a coffee?

A. Two.

GMTV green room this morning. There’s a new tap which gives either boiling water for coffee or cold water.

Dr. Hilary and I went to grab a coffee. Sadly the tap defeated us. It had two tabbed flaps and a button. It took four cold cups of coffee before we finally worked it out.

Nuff said.

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PS. Though the morning wasn’t all bad– I broke my rule and asked for a pic from Alexandra Burke (only the second time I’ve ever done it) as I was passing. Hoorah!

I stooze, you stooze, they stooze, he’s a stoozer, she’s got a stoozepot, we’re all stoozing.

While the practice of stoozing – making money from earning high interest on 0% debt – is less profitable than it used to be, I’ve discovered the Oxford English Corpus (the 2 billion word research body behind the Oxford English Dictionary) has an open file on it.

While other lexicons have included or nodded at the word, the OED is the bastion of language legitimacy, so to get it in there is the true test.

Countdown to inclusion?

This all came about while I was recording a week’s stint as the guest in the dictionary corner on Channel 4’s Countdown; one of the treats of doing the show (‘specially for a Scrabble player like me) is you get to sit next to the lovely Suzie Dent, the permananent lexicographer there, and can therefore fire word questions at her all day.

Note to self: If on again, I must remember to ask her why being full of awe (awful) is bad, but having some awe (awesome) is good?

While there the presenter Jeff Stelling asked me about stoozing, which led to a discussion with Suzie. She promised to follow it up with the OED who she’s affiliated with, and I received this email.

“It’s confirmed that they have a file on it which means that it will be considered for inclusion each time a new edition of any of their current English dictionaries is being prepared. At the moment (because of low interest rates?) it has slightly slipped from view in the Oxford corpus – a database of current English which includes thousands of texts,web pages, newspapers, chat room and forum posts, etc. That doesn’t however militate against it coming back into view more prominently.

In short, it is on the active consideration list. So keep at it!”

Can you still stooze?

Of course it’s true the return on interest rates and the introduction of balance transfer fees mean Stoozing is less profitable than it used to be, it can still make those who are debt free money.

The easiest way is simply to get the longest 0% for spending credit card possible, which is roughly for a year. Then spend on it rather than using your bank account (though do ensure you make the card’s minimum repayments). This way your unspent cash builds in your bank account and you can save it in a high interest savings account or cash ISA

Those with decent credit limits can easily make £100s a year (though do it carefully, see the full stoozing guide) for more info.

Comment and Discuss

Which works best, campaigning in the full glare of publicity, or working through official channels to lobby, push and get things done?

MSE’s traditional campaigning style

The perception of MoneySavingExpert.com has changed over the past few years. Even as recently as 2007, when calling the Treasury to get answers about the Northern Rock crisis, we were virtually ignored (see the Wake Up Treasury blog). Then, getting an influential politician to react on any issue was near impossible.

The closed door to official channels left two main routes for the site and I to campaign on issues we believe to be important.

• Media Attention.

  The nature of our work as journalists, and my own broadcasting role, means generating publicity is something we can do well. Even just putting an article in the weekly email means it’s under millions of people’s noses, and then with my range of other outlets, it’s possible to get info into the wide spread public domain at speed – plus with the right issues the papers will often join in.

• Mass Action.

  Married directly to media attention is mass action – and perhaps that’s the site’s campaigning speciality – mainstream activism – getting people to do things.

  Take PPI reclaiming. Which hurts more, the smallish fines imposed on lenders by the FSA, or hundreds of thousands of people asking and getting their money back?

Together, the two are powerful weapons for change, and have had real impact. Both bank charges and council tax rebanding are stories that’ve been on the front pages of many papers, and had millions of people engaging in them.

Yet the problem with campaigning this way is while it highlights the issue, and brings resolution for those who choose to get involved, it’s often slow to bring official change – and more importantly change for those people who often need the most help and protection, and who don’t help themselves.

MSE’s new campaigning style…

Over the last year or so things have moved on: the scale and profile of the site means it’s now taken far more seriously by opinion leaders and people in positions of authority. Perhaps we’ve even become a touch institutional.

In many ways the old style campaigning has brought us to this point. The ability to generate mass action – even if of a virtual nature – is an important one.

So now I suspect we’re entering a new phase, where we can start with old style campaigning, and by correctly picking the right topics, get our foot in the door to official channels.

This week’s there’s been a prime example. You may be surprised to hear it’s not the PM’s letter on bank charges. Whilst that’s hugely important, in many ways it’s a result of our traditional campaigning; it’s not that dissimilar from past work on the childcare tax credit black hole, or Nick Clegg on debt.

The Prime Example…

Actually the more radical switch is the “Why don’t we have a right to know the rate before applications go on credit files” campaign (see my credit rating campaign blog from last week).

Let’s be honest, there’s no way this story would generate front page newspaper coverage, and there’s little organising mass action can do to this one.

In the past we’d simply not allocated any time to working on the issue (other than trying to help people avoid problems), as what it needs is political or regulatory impact.

Yet instead of a people power campaign first, we teamed up with the official watchdog Consumer Focus to lobby the industry and met with the Treasury Select Committee. It has now launched an inquiry this low profile but high importance issue, putting it firmly on the agenda.

How much of this type of thing we’ll do or be able to do in the future I’m not sure, but my fingers are crossed. Certainly Setting Off is an issue I think needs addressing at speed, as is the problem with Recurring Payments.

Yet for me having these as potential extra weapons in the arsenal should broaden the scope of financial justice issues we can look at – though where the time’ll come from to do it I’ve no clue.

Comment and Discuss

Forget pop svengali Simon Cowell, ignore music maestro Jo Whiley, take no notice of the Mercury awards, as I’ve discovered the real predictor behind the musical throne.

It’s GMTV’s Glen, and other sound operators there…

At the back of the studio is a serious mixing desk and graphic equaliser. Each band which comes in to play usually requires its own specific set up. Now, this chunk of tech has a memory of over 100 different settings.

So, when a band comes in a lot the sound guys can simply save and recall their settings on the memory to save time. Of course, regular hit makers like Westlife are on there, but the key is who else they include.

My top tip for musical success now (and my credentials are hardcore – see this blog for proof) is the artist VV Brown, as when playing last week Glen saved her in the machine as ‘she’d be back’. Watch this space!

Comment and Discuss

Apply for a product and it puts a search on your credit file, which hits your credit score. Yet many products are rate-for-risk, so without applying you can’t know the rate.

This means many people apply for products, get accepted on a higher rate than expected, and then find it more difficult to go elsewhere because of the credit application.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how we were going to start campaigning on this, and things have already moved on with rocket speed.

• Treasury Select Committee Enquiry.

  Last Tuesday the powerful Treasury Select Committee of MPs announced it was going to take up our suggestion to investigate this problem. As part of it, I’ve offered them space in the MSE forums to get feedback.

  This is great news, as the committee actually has the power to compel people to attend it and give evidence, meaning we can expect a thorough run-through of the problems, and hopefully a result that’ll help force the debt industry into change.

• Reply from SCOR to our letter.

  I teamed up with Ed Mayo from Consumer focus to write a letter to the ‘credit data sharing committee’ (see the credit sharing letter).

  The chair of the committee has written back saying he thinks the issues raised are important. He’ll be putting it to his senior colleagues in the industry over the next few weeks, and will put it to the full committee when it next meets.

It’s my hope that these two, alongside the publicity generated from their actions, will make it clear to the industry that this type of behaviour is no longer acceptable.

People have a right to fair and transparent products – to know exactly what they’re signing up for – and it’s about time the financial services industry delivered that.

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