Martin’s Blog…

I’ve just got back from Watchdog. And yes I did say ’silly buggers’ on air - Julia was kicking me (the age old TV signal that you have to wind up what you’re saying - though when it’s Julia it’s never so bad, we’re buddies, and she’s er… well…. chaps if you’ve watched you understand!) and so I was saying “it’s easy to switch unless the providers play silly…” then I’m struggling to find a word - devils didn’t come, beggars didn’t come, buggers did!

Hopefully it’s not too bad. I apologised to the editor immediately, and they weren’t too bothered. I was mortified. When groping for a word sometimes that happens, just not normally in front of six million people!

Otherwise the programme was great. Sadly the film I’d done had to be cut short at the last minute due to over-running - so my explanation of Staywarm (see Gas & Elec Article) was cut out.

Overall though I think I got the message across and hopefully those who should switch provider will, and those who shouldn’t won’t.

Also I was allowed to say “cashback providers are on my site” by the editor beforehand - as there wasn’t going to be enough time to get it in, and the info simply doesn’t exist anywhere else.

Enough. I’m rambling and going to go and try to have something of an evening!

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I’ve just come back from the editing suite for BBC1’s Watchdog. I’m presenting a 5 minute package tomorrow (Tues) followed by a short interview in the studio.

This is a rare exception for Watchdog. The piece is about how to switch to cheaper gas and electricity on the back of the British Gas price rise. It’s actually quite revolutionary. As you know I’m a ‘preventative’ journalist – I talk about how to do things cheapest and best - whereas Watchdog is a curative programme - solving problems, so this is a very unique first, and rather exciting for me.

Yet having just seen the producers’ cut, the info is very simple. Most MoneySavers will find it unextraordinary. Some may even accuse it of being dumbed down (see the gas & elec article for the full story). Very simply in the end the piece just shows me taking the case study, Suzie, through how to do a price comparison then talking to her mum about Staywarm. It’s a difficult judgement for me.

Of course I’d like to talk about cashback comparison sites, the way the sites work, how they make their money and much more, yet the programme producers say “50% of people have still never switched, it’s more important to slowly go through the raw essentials”.

In the end I think it’s a nice piece, and cutely uses Suzy’s 12 year old daughters to make it more fun. I have roughly 1 and a half minutes afterwards in the live studio interview to try and mention cashback sites, the fact that if you have switched you shouldn’t now (though if you haven’t you should), capped tariffs and a bit more…. it’ll be interesting.

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As I noted in a previous blog, someone rather bizarrely decided to complain to the Advertising Standards Association about the use of the phrase ‘UK’s only professional Money Saving Expert’ in my publisher’s ad for my book (Read that blog).

It was such an absurd complaint, that after chatting with my publisher, we decided we couldn’t be bothered to spend the time contesting it (I’ve got more than my hands full focusing on saving people money). Though we did of course use the right to reply. However in it we noted we wouldn’t use the phrase any more as it really makes very little difference.

My publisher’s just had a reply back from the ASA stating “we are satisfied that you have backed up the claims” and that it understands the “difference between the idea of Martin Lewis as a Money Saving Expert (using his specific philosophy and techniques) and the merely descriptive use of the term ‘money-saving’. To reiterate, we are happy at this stage that, in our opinion, the advertisement is unlikely to mislead for the reasons that the complainant suggests.”

While of course I’m not happy a complaint was made it’s great to see MoneySaving as a unique discipline being accepted by such a body.

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I’ve just come back from a quick weekend away. As you can see I was shocked to see that the MoneySaving effect is spreading

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On The Wright Stuff on Thursday we were discussing whether there was merit in broadcasting the new pictures of the torture by Americans in Iraq. These were more of the same and those responsible had already been prosecuted. I argued it was right as we learned more than we knew before and it helped educate us as there was a substantive difference.

When doing the programme one has to take a view and a line, and you make the decision quickly. Much like a politician does, you simply have to make a call and argue it.

Yet afterwards, when mulling it over, I realised I’d changed my mind. There is still a war on and our troops are still out there. It does them no good to have these published and as justice has been served (I am still in favour of their original publishing) it’s best to protect our troops in Iraq.

So I’ve changed my mind. I’m not a politician. I can admit it. Yet can they ever? Wouldn’t it then be called a U-turn? It’s a shame we do this. Surely we should welcome mind changing? It actually means things have been considered!

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My dad’s just phoned me after talking to my grandma. As those who read yesterday’s blog will know I had a confrontation with George Galloway on The Wright Stuff yesterday. My email in-box has been swamped since then - it seems to have caused a wee stir. Thankfully all the emails are supportive.

Anyway I digress. Apparently dad asked grandma “did you see Martin on The Wright Stuff with George Galloway yesterday?” And Grandma’s answer? “Yes, he looked very handsome and was wearing a lovely shirt!”

See, my gran knows what’s important! For more of this type of wisdom from my gran, if you’ve got the Money Diet see page 68.

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I’ve literally just come off air at the Wright Stuff. Today’s guest panellist (I’m on for the week) was George Galloway MP. The final discussion part of the show was “Was George Galloway right to go on Big Brother?” My view is he was totally irresponsible and let down the political process for doing so. Throughout the programme I debated how harshly I was going to say it.

When it came - I let go full steam saying “irresponsible, depressing, disappointing. Like Neil Hamilton you made me lose faith in the political process” and much more. I must admit my heart was beating double speed. While I’m very used to having a rant on TV, to have a rant “about someone” directly to their face is a difficult thing to do and I find it unpleasant. However sometimes you get the chance to say what you think, and as someone who believes in the UK democracy - and the political process - and that MPs are there to represent us and our vote while Parliament is in session, I thought it was time to say something.

Interestingly the audience and callers were of the same view. The first caller said “I think it’s great you went in the BB house. I’ve never learnt so much about a politician. What a manipulative, duplicitous person you are.” Then a lady who voted for George as she lives in Bethnal Green spoke, saying how he’d embarrassed himself and that she wouldn’t even have a cup of coffee with him. As she was speaking at one point she looked at me for support. I gave her a nod (off camera) and she carried on. An interesting day indeed. Now I need a coffee!

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I’ve just come off air at The Wright Stuff on Five (I’m on the panel all this week; it’s quite a change for me as I’m talking ‘non-money’ for most of it). In the third part of the programme there was a new Valentine’s card Asda’s launched at just 8p. Now you may expect them to be on horrid flimsy card, but actually they were reasonable quality. Now of course my view is cheap cards are great, I love value, and the programme was asking “surely you should pay more?â€?

However as many on this site are aware, some people have millions, others have only pennies to spend, and for those with just pennies getting a card at 8p is great - thus the ability to get a card for cheap is great. The problem is Asda for some bizarre reason has actually branded “ASDA Smart Price�, on the front of the card itself. Thus even for me that defeats the whole point. No one wants a card that champions its cheapness. MoneySaving is about getting great value not poor products, yet the branding ruins it.

Sadly I don’t have a picture to show you or it’d become evident. I would love to say this is a wasted opportunity by Asda, though when I think about it, perhaps it was more of a publicity stunt to get some coverage on the telly - and if that was the point - it succeeded. Or perhaps it is literally doing it as a bit of comedy or a good one for kids?

At the end we were all asked “would you be happy to receive an 8p Valentine’s card?� My answer? “Yes of course, as long as it comes with a kiss from the right woman�. However, if the MSG’s reading this…. don’t take the message too literally.

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I’ve just got home having done my last appearance on the ITV1 Richard Hammond 5 o’clock show (the series has ended). I had a nightmare. As some of you will know I have a slight predilection for tapered stripy shirts. Along with flared jeans they’re my TV uniform (and to be fair I wear them off screen most of the time too). As normal today I went into the show, handed my blue with white striped shirts in to the wardrobe team to be steamed (it needs to be crisp as studio lights show up any poor ironing) and went on screen for the rehearsal.

Noooooooo. Sadly once tried on camera, the shirt strobed. This is the effect you see when it looks like someones’ clothes are moving alone on TV. Tight stripes or checks make it happen most of all. Well my shirt was a strober - it’s worked on telly before but never been worn in a studio setting. So it was downstairs to wardrobe to try on what they had. Not good. Not good at all. Most were neither striped nor tapered nor designed to be worn without a suit. The only options were Richard’s shirts, but to be honest they were so obviously Richard’s that wasn’t going to work (and I think they’d be too small too).

So it was the polo shirt I’d worn to the studio I had to don. Worse still the stripes were horizontal not vertical. There I was, on TV in just a T-shirt, arms bare to the world. I felt positively naked!!!

After I’d left the set, I heard the audience warm-up comedian comment on how I uncannily looked like a bar code….. Thankfully though the MSG called up after seeing the show and her first comment was ‘loved the T-shirt’.

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I’ve just had a rather laughable call from my publisher. It seems someone has complained to the advertising standards association about its use of the phrase ‘only professional Money Saving Expert’ in its poster advert for my book (see the poster itself here). I wasn’t surprised as I’d read someone was planning to do this in a small discussion by about two people on another money website’s chat forum, berating me for using the term ‘only professional’.

As it happens others in that discussion then soundly berated them for such ridiculous small mindedness and if the recommendation system of that site is anything to go by the vast majority agreed.

However the complaint’s prompted me to write on the genesis of the term. It actually happened while I worked at Simply Money TV back in 2000. We tried to come up with a term that encompassed the philosophy of the info I was delivering which was purely a “cutting bills without cutting back, a pure best value� idea. It’s not thrift, that’s something different, and so MoneySaving was the term. At the time we checked it was unused elsewhere and this remained largely so until perhaps a couple of years ago.

Since the huge growth of this website, and as my personal media profile has increased, that’s changed. In the last year websites such as the Motley Fool and This is Money have started Money Saving sections and it’s started to become used in newspapers too. Then again as imitation is the best form of flattery, I take it as a nice compliment.

Recently when reading through my own biog I actually deleted the “only professionalâ€? from this website. I doubt even one person actually bought the book because of the word “onlyâ€?. Hopefully they did it because it’ll help them save cash. So I’ve said to my publisher, don’t bother arguing, it really isn’t an issue, the advert’s ended anyway, and we’ve all got better things to do with our time.

It’s funny how names always cause a problem. I often have it with TV programmes; I like to be introduced as Martin Lewis, Creator of MoneySavingExpert.com for obvious reasons. Yet if you’re contracted to a programme this can’t happen - and they always make up their own terms (some use UK’s only Money Saving Expert too), however I have about as much power over this as Frankie Detorri does over Frank Bruno.

Often I still get called a “Financial Adviser� something I most definitely am not, and would never want to claim to be. This can happen even after prior agreement of title. It’s often because the people in the graphics department make assumptions and change the title for homogeneity - this has happened on Watchdog and ITV News amongst others - misunderstanding that I’m a journalist and not an adviser. However once you’re on air, it’s too late (I sit there and quietly seethe).

Yet while I smile at the bizarre nature of the complaint, what saddens me is that someone decided to make a complaint in itself. I perhaps shouldn’t write this, but then again it’s my blog and my chance to be honest. My aim is to try and build the research and collectivist resources that companies take for granted, but this time on the side of consumers. To do this I set this site up and have unabashedly ensured it is free of advertising and totally free to use and that the editorial is never compromised in any way by financial considerations.

I believe this site is having an impact. Over 1,000,000 people visited it last month, and 470,000 receive the weekly email. I know some company product managers and press officers now take into account the MoneySaving reaction on how to consider consumer behaviour. And you know what? I’m hugely proud of it. Yet even though it’s doing good work, because of that publicity and as my profile increases, someone has decided it is time to ‘have a go’ and ‘bring him down to size’. It’s exasperating and slightly depressing. Maybe they would like me to go commercial, and start doing adverts to secured loan companies - then they’ll have something to complain about.

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So we’ve all seen the coverage that British Gas is due to raise prices by 25% this month, and panic and press has ensued. Will it happen? I doubt it. My suspicion is these rises have been rather cleverly leaked, so that when an actual price rise does happen this month, say of 15%, everyone breathes a sigh of relief “phew it wasn’t as bad as we thought”. It will be interesting to see whether this classic political spin is starting to happen in big company pricing too.

Read Cheapest Gas & Electricity Article for details on what to do.

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If you were listening to my monthly phone in on Radio 2’s Vine programme today, you’d have heard mention of the Money joke competition on the site (i.e. £100 for the best joke about money see here). As we were talking banking today, I asked Jeremy and Phil, the Editor, if I could tell a banking joke I’d read on the air.

“Why did the Irish call their currency the punt….. because it rhymes with bank manager”

Can’t understand why they said no

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I can’t work out whether to applaud or cry at Alliance & Leicester. It has done the single most despicable piece of financial manipulation ever on its MoneyBack Loan. Its loan is the market’s cheapest at 5.5% so of course it’s worth getting, but the payment protection insurance it tries to flog with it is expensive, so I say don’t touch it with a barge pole (see Cheapest Personal Loans for details).

Yet this is far more insidious. It has deliberately manipulated its loan rates for the newspaper best buy tables. These are done by Moneyfacts, and as well as listing the rate it makes a comparison based on borrowing £5,000 over three years. In Moneyfacts the Moneyback loan looks very cheap for this. And it’s no wonder let’s look at the facts, gleaned from A&L’s own website.

Borrow £4,999. Monthly repayment £169.97 Total Repayment £6,119
Borrow £5,000. Monthly repayment £164.48 Total Repayment £5,921
Borrow £5,001. Monthly repayment £170.04 Total Repayment £6,121

In other words, if you borrow EXACTLY £5,000 over EXACTLY 3 years you get a £200 cheaper loan with insurance.

Why? It can’t be a coincidence that this is the amount that Moneyfacts uses to compare on and supply the newspapers (amongst others) best buy tables. This is the most extraordinary attempt by the financial services community to pull the wool over peoples’ eye’s I’ve ever seen. It’s why we should never trust them. It’s a disgusting, despicable, anti-consumer piece of genius.

UPDATED INFORMATION: It gets even worse… 6 Feb 2006

After writing this blog, I called the Editor of the Guardian Money Section where I have my column and gave it the story (read it here). In it A&L’s comment is as follows:

“Moneyback Bank loans are tiered in common with most other lenders - these tiers reflect the most common loan amounts that our customers wish to borrow, and the risk associated with these amounts.

The tiers reflect the fact that those customers approved to borrow more are more likely to repay, making them lower risk. Those approved to borrow less tend to be in the higher-risk category.”

Today it called me and changed its mind

This morning I get a phone call telling me that the quote given to the Guardian wasn’t right and actually it was an anomaly,… in fact here’s its statement:

“The monthly repayment rate, at £5,000 over three years with Moneyback Bank, was an anomaly, one that as soon as it was drawn to our attention, and the attention of a senior decision maker in the bank, was recognised as such and changed as soon as we could.

It was brought to our attention on Thursday afternoon, and changed on our website on Friday afternoon”

I am totally unconvinced

So here we are with a major bank claiming that this was a pricing anomaly. It wasn’t deliberate manipulation, it was a pure accident that the insurance charge was different at the exact specification of loan that is used in the best buy tables, not a pound more or less, not a month more or less. Come on A&L hold your hands up and admit it! It was clever! It was devious and manipulative! But clever none the less….

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