Martin’s Blog…

This isn’t my first mention of Ian, the head of public relations for Barclaycard, here. Then again that’s because he’s a savvy operator who’s learned that PR is more than about ‘what’s written in the papers’. This blog is prompted by his response to a post in the forum, by a woman, who’s suffering from a brain trauma and is struggling to deal with Barclaycard afterwards. Ian read the post, and reacted without asking to make sure the situation was dealt with properly. It’s an action to be applauded.

Now, one could be cynical and say that now the forum reaches 500,000 people and the site as a whole 2 million a month; Ian’s realised that the message spreads to more people than many of the traditional media. You could also say that as I’d already replied in the thread, it was obvious I was going to make a call and there was a potential story.

And perhaps a touch of that cynicism is correct; yet more importantly though is the fact I know Ian regularly reads the forums, monitors his company’s reputation and, where he can, tried to both protect that reputation and help people. Bravo Sir.

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If you watched Dancing on Ice on ITV1 on Saturday night, you may’ve seen Kay Burley as one of the celebrity contestants. For any of you that don’t know her, she’s a presenter on Sky News. Yet more importantly she’s a MoneySaver, and has told me in the past the site is her home page. Go Kay!

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Wow. What an incredible last week it has been due to the Council Tax Cashback system. The site has seen more traffic than ever before, more people have added themselves to the weekly email distribution list than ever before (in the last week 35,000 people started receiving the email, the site’s had over a million unique users, and it’s been the subject of newspaper front pages, and a prime time TV programme focusing on its results).

The inspiration came from a post on the forum

As such I wanted to explain the genesis of this. I think it’s both a triumph and an interesting case study for consumer activism. Last August, a Forum post (from memory by MoneySaver Maisie) was written about rebanding; it looked interesting so I included it as a quick note in the weekly email, and it proved very popular.

Then there was a detailed researched article

This spurred me to do detailed research into the 1991 banding situation, the more of which I looked at, the more farcical and error prone it turned out to be. The consequence of this was a dawning realisation of the sheer impact that this could have, so I then took a very serious look at how to reband, and tried to develop an easy system to allow people to do a quick check of whether they were in the correct band. Luckily, the wealth and access to free data on the internet means this is easily possible

Thus last October I published an article on how to check your banding to see if you’re in the correct band and appeal if not. This went out at the top of the weekly email (at that point it was going to around 800,000 people).

Next it seemed ripe for a TV documentary

Gradually after that, I started to get serious feedback on many people succeeding and getting payouts backdated to 1993 too. So then a month ago I proposed this as a programme to Mike Lewis (no relation), the editor of Tonight with Trevor (for whom I present episodes of on a regular basis). He liked it and I put a note in the email asking for case studies.

I was shocked by literally hundreds of people who’d succeeded, replying they would be happy to take part in the programme (likely to be just the tip of the iceberg as usually only a fraction of the people who did something respond). It’s more incredible when you consider the time periods involved; rebanding cases aren’t quick, and the time period since publication included the Christmas period.

The programme was a dream to film; Lesley, Tom and Rebecca are a very professional and fun team, and in many ways this was an easy and straightforward story to tell (even better for me as I tend to look at people with some form of money issue, all this was good news, so I was able to present without a frown on occasion).

Then we did the ‘council tax savings school’ as part of it. Seven people picked at random, who I showed how to check their banding. We had no clue if any of them would be remotely relevant to the story; it just seemed a better bit of telly than me explaining what to do than just sitting at a computer.

Yet the results were shocking; one looks a definite case for rebanding, one a possible, and one had neighbours who may be due a rebanding. While picked at random, seven is a tiny sample, but it shows the sheer breadth of the misbanding problems.

Which produced a wide scale national news story.

Then last Tuesday I put out a press release, embargo’d for the Thursday, knowing full well this was likely to be a big story. Yet it was even bigger than predicted; the front page of the Express and Metro and in the pages of almost every other national paper (rather than in the money pages ghetto) and spread throughout the web (take a look at the Google News search for some examples)

At this point the Valuation Office website, a core part of the system, crashed and it has been down ever since. On Friday the programme went out and the numbers of people trying this went ballistic. From Thursday to Sunday night, at a rough estimate 650,000 people have read through the system, even more than Bank Charge Reclaiming has throughout the whole of January. Stunning!

It proves the power behind this site and collectivist adversarial consumerism.

For me this proves the power and idea behind the site. If you forgive me de-personalising an analysis – it’s the combination of collective consumer power and mainstream, connective, detailed journalistic research at the front which allows a speedy, reactive, powerful campaigning impact. Thanks to all who contributed feedback and ideas from the beginning.

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Following my earlier blog on the scary fight for equipment at Body Pump, I’ve now managed the class twice. Justin (my friend) and I have been, standing at the back, lifting and hoisting the weights to the beat. Two days after the first lesson, I must admit I did struggle to walk for a while, and even once that got better, going down steps was a little hassle. The second lesson wasn’t so bad; only the steps hurt!

Yet even within the class it’s still a bit intimidating. I’ve a huge respect for some of the class members who are half my body mass, lifting twice the weight. And it reminds me that my sister, who is an aerobics instructor, has just done a ‘Body Pump’ teachers’ course, and was the only person there to get the ‘distinction in teaching’. Even though she’s older, only 5′1”, she is using four times the weight I am. Respect!

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Ouch, watching Big Brother is too painful. Not just the sniping backstabbing, but I’m watching the division of a shopping list. £45 for nine people, and instead of getting economies of scale by bulk buying bigger packs, they are now trying to divide it into £5 each. I find such ignorance painful to watch.

It takes me back to one of the greatest lessons I was ever taught, by a combined class of Mr. Hallis’s and Mr. Hutton’s in A level economics. We were set a task as a class that to survive we had to provide “shelter, food and clothing”. Each item was represented by a piece of paper that needed to be made to set specifications.

There were a limited number of scissors, paper and staples. First time round everyone tried to make their own three requirements in the set time, fighting for the scissors and the paper and the rest - yet it was impossible. No one did it. Second time around, the failure was almost the same. After three failures the teachers told us we were the worst class they’d ever seen.

What no one had realised (or actually many of us, i suspect thought it, but no one showed the leadership) was there was only one way to do it. We were then told and set up a production chain with some making each piece of work, others collating, others delivering paper and it worked first time.

The lesson for the Celeb Big Brother contestants is that with the limited resources, bulk buying the large food items (e.g large rice bags) and then only personalising it at the boundaries.

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I’ve been going to the gym for over a year, now at least twice a week when I can (ps do read the £400 Gym loophole and Gym Cost Cutting articles) and one of my resolutions is to try going to classes. Thus I arranged to go with my mate Justin last night and try out a ‘Body Pump’ class. Sadly earlier in the day, he wimped out, leaving me going alone.

The class was first come first served; I turned up five minutes before hand to be met by a mass hoard, of mainly women, waiting. The doors opened and the scramble started. Lots of small sweaty bodies grasping for the weights bar needed for the class. There were four other men there, we stood back, the melee of nails and pulling and digging too much. Finally having got to the weights area, all the equipment was gone, and all the men trudged out. For me, it was back to the safety of the treadmill and weights. Not sure I’ll try again!

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We’re in the process of filming a Tonight with Trevor for 26 January on Council Tax; specifically following the Council Tax Cashback: How to save thousands article. It’s a massive issue; I suspect the number of people this impacts is in the high 100,000s or possibly even over 1,000,000. Yet we’re having a funny little problem with it…. who do you interview?

There are the case studies of course, but they’ve all come from here; the system of people getting rebates and rebands without a change in use, isn’t written about anywhere else (as far as I know), and as the article was the headline of the email (which goes to 830,000 people) about four months ago, there’ve already been a hundreds of successes and many more are in the pipeline. Yet as the producer said “there’s not much point you interviewing people asking them how to do it, when they found out how, by reading your system from the article.”

Of course, we could interview the valuations office, but there’s not much to say. We will speak to the estate agents who did the initial valuations, to add some context. Yet ultimately who should be held to account for these errors – the 1991 Major cabinet? The current government? Neither seem quite right. It’s an interesting conundrum, luckily the core of this programme is the savings people have made and how to do it – and I think the producers will come up with a good vehicle to make that watchable and informative.

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A friend e-mailed me my entry on IMDB, the movies database. I’m a bit shocked to discover I’ve an entry there, it’s supposed to list all your ‘performances’ and for me has the most bizarre list of things - I’ve no idea why some things are included and others aren’t.

Yet considerably more strange than most is that I have a filmography entry, “Reservoir Guide Dogs”. At first I thought it was a mistake, then I had a dreadful, dawning realisation…. at University, after I’d finished my sabbatical as President of the Students Union, I remember hanging about with a group, one of whom, Neil Andrews, wanted to make a film. So he wrote a script, an awful (sorry Neil) parody of Reservoir Dogs and we all abysmally acted in it. It was a farce in more ways than one; and I dread to think what lines in that script I actually said (I desperately hope it never comes to light) probably quite a few things that with age I’d regret. Yet the ‘wonder of the web’ means the history is recorded for all to see

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It’s 7.45pm Friday night, in 15 mins my Tonight with Trevor ‘Loanbuster’ programme is on. This is always a nervous time, especially when, like today I haven’t actually seen it. As it was being produced from the Manchester Tonight office, I wasn’t able to watch the programme before recording the voice, I just had to read the script (which I had been through in detail to add my thoughts, edit and ‘martin-ify’ the night before, using transcripts). This makes it much more difficult to do the voice, and try and respond to what the pictures show.

As presenter in a programme people think the programme is all yours. Actually there’s a producer who is much more in control. My job is always slightly different as I’m presenter and expert, which means I get, perhaps a good deal more say than some, but still not the final word. Often it’s a compromise, the producers want to tell a story and have exciting ‘pictures’, I always tend to be a bit focused on the ’saving people money bits’. For example in this film the first seven minutes are about unpaid claims and problems with Loan insurance, I would’ve preferred to go straight into how to save on it. Yet in other areas I do get my way, and Rick who’s producing this is a superb producer and has turned a rather dry subject into a watchable programme.

Well it seemed that way on paper… I’m about to find out whether it does in reality.

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I’m in the middle of filming a Tonight with Trevor on Payment Protection Insurance for loans. Historically many have got this insurance without realising it, because they’ve no idea how much a loan should actually cost, and it adds thousands to loan costs (see cheapest loans article). It’s not surprising really as it is hugely difficult to work out, even with a calculator, hence when I’m doing it (especially if it’s live on telly) I have an easy method to make a rough estimate. It occurred to me some people may find it useful, so here you go.

How to do it

Take the example of a £10,000 loan over 5 years at 8% APR interest (see how interest rates work article for an explanation of APRs).

Step 1. Estimate the average debt over the life of the loan.

Remember you only pay interest on the outstanding debt, and with a loan you make fixed monthly repayments, so over the five years the amount of interest you’re paying decreases. Therefore I always simply halve the total debt and consider this to be the rough average debt over the life of the loan. E.g. half £10,000 is £5,000

Step 2. Work out the annual interest on the average debt.

Now work out one year’s interest on that debt. E.g. 8% of £5,000 is £400

Step 3. Work out the total interest on the average debt.

Simply multiply the average interest by the number of years. E.g. £400 x 5 years = £2,000 interest

Step 4. Factor in compound interest.

It all works well up to here, the simple interest is roughly £2,000. Yet the rough average debt figure from earlier is of course too low, because the interest cost compounds (read an explanation of compound interest) meaning we haven’t factored in paying interest on the interest. Therefore to make it more accurate, we need to guesstimate a bit on top for compound interest - the longer the loan and the higher the interest rate the more you should add.

In this case I’m going to guess about £200 worth of extra interest - bringing the sum to £2,200 (if you want to get good, go to a web loan calculator (e.g. the Guardians) and practice with a few examples to get the estimates working).

In actual fact the real interest, is £2,165 - so that’s pretty close. I hope this is useful (if you’ve any other quick money calculation tips, please add them to the discussion link below).

Still Not Sure? Watch a mini video I’ve done explaining this {how to do loan interest video}

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It’s Friday night at 8.10pm, I’ve been filming all day and just made a very embarassing mistake. I was sitting here catching up on the days emails when my mobile rang; the MSG is at a screening, and as it was due to finish I was expecting a call. So when the phone rang, I naturally assumed it was her, picked up the phone without looking and said “Hello angel”.

All I heard was a deep male voice laughing…. it was David Budworth, deputy personal finance editor of the Sunday Times, for whom I’m now writing an irregularly regular column. I blushed a deep shade of crimson. ‘Nuff said.

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Been filming for Tonight with Trev today for next Friday’s programme on payment protection insurance. As part of it Tonight asked me to do an open ‘Loanbuster’ clinic, based at the Plaza shopping centre in London. Yet as it was meant to be me meeting people who wanted help, it was a bit of surprise that there we were setting up, when the first person to arrive was James Alexander, the Chief Executive of Zopa. Zopa is a company which matches people who want to lend money with people who want to borrow it, and it can be very cheap in certain circumstances; see cheapest loans article.

It seems he’d read the note on the website announcing it and his office is nearby so he thought he’d come along. On the programme we say he got one of the leaflets about it (they were being handed out around the plaza), as due to Ofcom rules, when I’m presenting I can’t mention the site.

Now of course I couldn’t help asking him, “how can I help you with your loan and insurance?”. Unsurprisingly he wasn’t there to get some info, but because he wanted to add his voice to worry about the sales of loan insurance (see cut loan insurance costs article) and ask if I was planning to launch a campaign similar to bank charges on it (see bank charges: reclaim up to six years worth article). In fact I think this is more an important ’saving money’ piece than a campaign; many people have PPI without realising it, or at least without realising how much they’re paying for it - and the aim is to ensure they understand exactly what they’re doing.

Then it was time to get on with meeting some real people, until a journalist from Mortgage Strategy magazine (a mortgage industry trade publication) turned up, again unannounced to ask me some questions about my views on PPI. Thankfully we got through the people who wanted to talked, saved some money and then carried on an arduous days filming; lots of pieces in a short space of time.

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It’s 7.20am, which regular readers of the blog will know isn’t a time I’m usually awake. I’m a night person. I’m sitting in my living room, with the ITV overnight team broadcast truck crew and the Ashes on the TV. Yesterday I got a call from GMTV asking if I’d go in to talk about the cost of mobile phones. They wanted a 6.45 and 8.10; yet since having returned from holiday, I’ve got some bug and have a throat that feels like I’ve been gargling glass shards. So I said I could go in for the later slot, but not the earlier one (it’d mean leaving home at 5.45).

Then, surprisingly they offered to send the truck, which is quite difficult to find an excuse to say no to and stay in bed. Hence here I am. I’ve already done the first interview and we’re waiting here. Annoyingly I couldn’t sleep last night (usual thing, worried about not waking up, finally got to sleep at 5.45, then ten minutes later the phone rang to say the crew were outside. So I got up, let them in, and went back to bed for 20 minutes. Then a shower and shave and back to the interview.

Afterwards, I went back to bed, where the MSG was still sleeping (sadly she’s feeling as ropey as I am), but it didn’t work, still couldn’t sleep. So back to the living room, to have breakfast and write this blog!

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Flying back from holiday, three girls sitting next to and behind us on the plane were talking. One was joking about how awful her credit card debts were now after the holidays and that she never seemed to get anywhere paying of her debts. Wonderfully, the other two, instantly said “you need to do a balance transfer, go get yourself a 0% card for 12 months if you can”. The MSG and I looked at each other and smiled. The indebted girl then replied, “wow I’ve never heard of that, can you really do it? Don’t know if I’d remember”. The other two carried on recommending 0% cards, and even named a couple.

This caused me a little bit of a conundrum, my problem was the two cards they mentioned both don’t have long term 0% deals and have high balance transfer fees. Plus as she was obviously a beginner and unsure of remembering, she’d be much better with a life of balance transfer card (see best balance transfers article for full explanation).

So to interfere or not? It wasn’t my conversation… yet it’d be so easy to give her the right solution. Plus I’d already been spotted by someone else on the flight (a poor girl was struggling to carry her two children during the stopover, so I offered to carry her bag, once I get it her back she did a “it’s you off the telly isn’t it?”). It may seem natural to say of course I should give the right answer. Then again, these girls mightn’t know me from Adam, so how could they know if my info was right, and I don’t look like some interfering know-it all?

So what did I do? Couldn’t resist it could I, I suggested she get the M&S card at 3.9% life of balance (again see best balance transfers )and explained what it meant…. no idea if she’ll listen.

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