Martin’s Blog…

The MSG and I have just returned from our Summer hols in the Costa del Sol. Whilst there we took a trip to Gibraltar and fell prey to some thieving monkeys. Luckily in this case they were literally of the furry variety. At the top of the rock, preparing to see the cage, we bought an ice-lolly for the MSG and a packet of crisps for me!

Within a second of walking out of the shop one monkey jumped on the MSG, snatched the ice lolly out of her hand (scratching her arm in the process), then jumped on the roof and nonchalantly ate it just out of reach; seconds later another snatched my crisps and sat there dipping into the packet.

The sign says “don’t feed the monkeys…” they didn’t seem to need much help to me.

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I cycle to work; and since my old clapped out bike is on its last legs (or wheels) it’s time to go and get a new one. As I work in Shepherds Bush where bike security isn’t the best, I tend to buy the cheapest I can. My journey is short and simple, so a cheap functional bike and acceptance that it may be nicked seems to be the best option.

Yet thinking about this reminds me of my worst ever experience of having my bike nicked, which shows up the benefit of purchase protection insurance. However, it happened about five or six years ago, so I’m doing it from memory.

The Credit Cycle

Two months after I’d bought a new bike it was stolen from outside my front door. They’d somehow detached it from the steel brace it was locked to. So I took a trip to my local bike shop and got myself kitted out all over again. Thankfully I’d bought the bike on a credit card which had ‘Purchase Protection’; a free policy some cards give which means if things are stolen or broken within 90 days of buying them you can get your money back.

This meant having got this bike, I could now cycle to the police station to report the theft, get a crime number, and get the money back using the purchase protection policy.

They nicked my bike from the police station as I reported a bike theft!

I cycled to the police station, locked the bike and went in to report the theft. As I came out, my new bike, which I’d D-locked to the police station lamp post was gone, in just five minutes. So I shot back in and told the Duty Officer my bike’d been nicked.

The police were furious with them for such audacidity and put out a bulletin; leaving a number of bikes stopped within fifteen minutes. Yet none were mine. Then I had to fill out a second crime form; the only difference being that on this one, when asked “have you been a victim of crime in the last year?” I answered yes!

The one bright spark though was that about three weeks later they recoved my new bike having made a major effort to get it back. Sadly by then I’d already bought another one.

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That’s it. How many times will I get to blog saying that? Nuff said.

Martin

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It never ceases to amaze me the weight of human kindness that’s possible in the forum. Having blogged on it in the past, (see Kindness of Strangers ) I’ve just heard of another example, though I need to keep it deliberately vague on request.

A soon to be mum, who’s been having a financially difficult time, was regularly talking in the Forum with other mums, when she asked about buying a cot. One of them sourced a cheap cot that was going on sale via eBay & another had access to a tool which automatically does the correct bidding for you so they could ensure she got it; but at the right price and at the right time.

Then the rest of the thread were moved to club together and buy the cot for the soon to be mum. Simply lovely.

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The web has lots of powerful tools you can put to use in ways you mightn’t think. One of those we use here is Google Trends which allows you to map the volume of searches done on specific terms against each other.

For example when naming the PPI reclaiming article – I wasn’t sure if people would know what PPI was compared to loan insurance – so I mapped to two terms out and saw that PPI was more commonly searched, thus indicating people would know and it was correct to call it that.

Yet there’s a rather fun by-product to this technology. You can map different celebrities against each other and see who’s most commonly searched.

How to do it

To do it, separate the terms by commas e.g. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown. The resultant graph shows you the relative amounts they’ve been searched over time. Though do ensure you check whether you’re just comparing it in the UK or across the world - it makes a big difference.

Therefore you can put in two (or three or four or five) names and map them out. It’s worth noting Google tends to update its trends system in chunks, so the last date searched may be a month or two out of date.

Some of you may remember the Google Fight website which is a fun tool that does something similar, mapping out the number of times a phrase is mentioned on the web. Yet this one is for searches and moves over time, making it more accurate and relevant.

Do try it and report any fun discoveries or searches you’ve done

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Apart from ‘Money Saving Expert’, when asked, it’s becoming quite tough to define what I do. While the core route and skill is journalism, more specifically it’s specialised investigation into consumer finance product and campaigning journalism. As this site has grown over the last four years, I think I need to look at its definition; less of an arcane point of navel gazing; but more deliberately so users of the site can understand what the beast they’re looking at is and what I do.

MoneySavingExpert.com is now massive; the stats show more than one in 10 UK adult webusers use it each month. In scale, for UK users, it’s not far from Lastminute.com and Friendsreunited. The impact has also been huge too, with hopefully millions saving cash, getting better deals, and millions more reclaiming things like bank charges, mortgage fees and council tax. And for me personally too, it’s been life changing. While I’m not quite Richard Branson, it’s meant I earn more money now than I’d ever envisaged; and on that scale can compete with City folk or top media performers.

Yet this site’s aim, as it’s always been, is to help put more money in consumers’ pockets; battle debt and cut through corporate marketing. So how is it, and am I, categorised? Having searched for definitions, the nearest I’ve come to is social entrepreneurship.

What is a social entrepreneur?

Wikipedia defines a social entrepreneur as follows: “A social entrepreneur is someone who recognises a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organise, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas business entrepreneurs typically measure performance in profit and return, social entrepreneurs assess their success in terms of the impact they have on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors.”

This site is very much in the private sector; and whilst I didn’t envisage that when I set it up, I’m glad of it. Originally I was on my own and the site had no way to generate revenue, but then the server costs got too big for me and I had to come up with a way to raise money which didn’t compromise the site’s integrity. A much bigger version of that system of ‘affiliate linking’ where possible to top products, is still what funds the site (see how this site is financed for an explanation).

Yet that’s not a problem, the scale means we can do so much more. I deliberately use the term ‘we’ as these days there are 14 full time members of the team; both in technical, administrative and editorial groups and the overall site annual cost base including staff, servers, technical, legal, professional and more is now very substantial.

Yet thankfully it’s produced results, the scale means the main articles are now constantly updated; my new push is to fund the building of lots of free tools which will help people; e.g. the Travel Money Maximiser, Premium Bond Calculator plus to come are a big upgrade to the FlightChecker, loads of new calculators, the new Demotivator (all will be revealed!), a VoipChecker and more. Plus of course there’s the charity fund which is booming. There’s nearly £170,000 so far in the last year, much of it waiting to go to the new site charity and it’s enabled me to put £50,000 towards the Bank Charges Fighting Fund.

So overall I don’t think the term ‘social entrepreneur’ is unreasonable. As such I’ve decided to add it into the how this site is financed article. Changing the existing sentence:

“I don’t want to hide the fact the site is a very substantial part of my income; and I make an extremely good living. In fact I’d love it to make me a billionaire, providing it never compromises my ethics and recommendations or cost any users a penny!”

to

“I don’t want to hide the fact the site is a very substantial part of my income; and I make an extremely good living. I consider what I’m doing to be ’social entrepreneurship’ and while the prime purpose is benefiting consumers, at the same time, without compromising that, I hope the site makes very decent money, like any business. In fact I’d love it to make me a billionaire, providing it never compromises my ethics and recommendations or cost any users a penny!”

What do you think?

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Last weekend the MSG and I went to visit two pairs of our good friends who’ve both just had their first babies, and I wanted to note down a quick hello and congratulations. First Geoff and Leonie, who are rightly cooing over lovely little Ruby born about four weeks ago; and Ceri and Mark who had gorgeous Eve a fortnight ago.

We spent the weekend holding the babies; and no, I’m not going to say whether I’m getting clucky. I was almost moved to tears when Ceri, (those in the BBC South East region may know her as she presents the breakfast news there) who’s been one of my best friends since we met at journalism school ten years ago, asked me to be Eve’s godfather.

When I asked what the job entailed the answer from hubby Mark was succinct: be there for her with advice as she grows up, and intercede with her parents if she has rows when she’s a teenager. I must admit it’s tough to imagine the tiny little bundle she is now throwing a strop in future, but I shall do my best. Of course they also said: “and when she needs advice over money….”

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I just got a shock. My old University, the LSE, have sent me a couple of old articles I wrote for the University magazine when I was Gen Sec (President) of the Students Union there. One I’d already seen, recording my big claim to fame, when I got to present Mick Jagger with his Honorary SU Presidency (see The Day I Met Mick Jagger blog).

The other was a piece I’d written for the University’s centenary, entitled “A Brave New World”. I’d been asked to predict my view of the Uni in 100 years time. Frankly reading it was depressing; and I don’t just mean because of my dodgy hairstyle in the by-line picture.

I remember being very proud of how clever it all sounded, yet now frankly I find it pompous, boring, unnecessarily using lots of long words and totally devoid of all content and style. Any students out there, here’s a tip. At University they like essays to be structured and clever – have a beginning, middle and an end. Yet in journalism you throw your whole story up-front, with punchy words. Good communication is about getting the message across, without making the reader work to have to understand it. I just wish someone had told me that!

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Last night I took the MoneySaving Towers team out for our 1,000,000 dinner; to celebrate the fact that we’d hit that many people on the e-mail list. Actually this happened back in February and there are well over 1,370,000 receiving the weekly e-mail now. Yet we’ve been so busy, this is the first time everyone could get together.

Last night was to thank the team.

Sitting there and seeing the 13 faces of the team, each of them talented and dedicated, was a real pleasure. They’ve gone from strength to strength, building knowledge, skills and specialties which mean it’s far more of a group effort than it used to be; most were fresh graduates when they started but are now skilled MoneySaving or technical professionals. And don’t worry, for once I didn’t celebrate in MoneySaving style, it was the works, posh nosh and champagne. After all a million people is quite an achievement.

And I want to thank you too.

I made a little speech last night to the team; explaining how proud I was of what we’ve collectively achieved. And I think it’s important to relay this wider message to regular forum contributors and board guides. The posts aren’t just helpful, educated and intuitive, adding to the collective pot of MoneySaving wisdom, but more so they show endless care and compassion to others in difficultly and the real attempts to help, often almost viscera.

You may be surprised that the thing I believe that’s most revolutionary about what the site’s done, isn’t bank charges or council tax reclaiming. It’s the slow burn underneath it, the ongoing change of attitudes that people have. The march away from debt, towards stable finances, that leads to a less stressful life and the ability to have more from your money. To highlight that, I told the team last night about an e-mail we’d received, one of countless similar that are the reason we come to work every day… and I thought I should share it as part of my thanks to you.

“Thank you so much in advance for your help with this and indeed for everything your website and the people who service it have done for me and so many thousands of people like me. I was no more than a few days from taking my own life a couple of months ago, because of the serious money problems I was experiencing, but your website gave me hope and after reading virtually every article on money saving and debt management, and since receiving a refund from my bank, I am pleased to say I am much better. I can see the light and although I still have about £40k to pay off, I now know that suicide is not the answer(especially as I didn’t have life insurance, so my girlfriend would have killed me! See? I can kind of laugh about it now).”

There are many in the forum who deal with kindness to these circumstances every day, the Debt-Free Wannabee section is packed with it. And every other board, from those who dedicate themselves to helping others unlock mobile phones or deal with travel queries, adds to the wider collective gain.

Thank you.

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STOP PRESS 17 FEB 2008
This is now settled, find out how to get compensation in the Virgin BA Compensation update blog. 

Yesterday British Airways was fined £200 million plus for colluding with Virgin Atlantic over fuel surcharges (of between £5 and £60) on tickets between 2004 and 2006. Virgin only escaped as it dobbed itself and BA in, in the first place.

This is an enormous fine, and shows the severity with which the regulators both here and in the US treated the offence. My phone went hot yesterday with journalists asking, “are you going to do a reclaiming campaign like bank charges?” (e.g. read this Scotsman article).

Is it right to reclaim?

In many ways it’s an interesting debate whether you should reclaim. I always separate out reclaim culture from compensation culture; reclaiming being taking money back from big companies who unfairly took it from you. So first we need look at whether that happened here…

Technically the fine is about collusion to set prices, not about the price itself being actually overcharged. Thus it’s arguable (and indeed the BA Chief Exec was doing so yesterday) that customers haven’t overpaid; it was more a procedural crime.

However the counter-argument is that the two airlines both rode roughshod over the market in an anti-competitive act; which means if you are reclaiming I would go for Virgin just as much as for BA. The fact it owned up doesn’t mean it didn’t impact customer ticket prices.

In the US, where class actions are possible, a reclaim of that style is already gathering pace.

How to reclaim?

Assuming you decide it’s appropriate to get your money back if you paid the surcharge; then how do you go about it? As this isn’t such a huge amount of money I’m not going to write a big article on it. I’ll just illustrate that the approach should follow the other main reclaims (see the Reclaim section).

The basic argument to either airline is simple: “the regulator has penalised you for anti-competitive prices; I suffered due to your price fixing and I want my money back.” So, total up what you paid and it’s time to write some letters.

Brief step-by-step reclaiming fuel duty from BA / Virgin guide

1. Write a letter asking for your money back.
Write a letter detailing the flight(s) you took and the cost of the fuel duty. Then explain you believe that in the light of the US and OFT ruling you think this charge was unfair; then ask for your money back. Use the reclaiming template letters in the Bank Charges article if it helps.

2. Assuming it says no, write back with a more militant approach.

It will probably write back saying it doesn’t think that’s appropriate. At this point it’s time to consider getting a little more militant. Write back saying that you believe this is unfair and unacceptable as you were mistreated as a regular customer. Also indicate you are considering taking action in the small claims court.

If you’re writing to BA, it’s worth noting that you’re aware of a class action being launched in the US, and you hope it will be as fair to British Consumers as it may be forced to be to US ones.

Again the more militant Bank Charges templates should help.

3. Cross your fingers.

Beyond this point we’re in new territory. My hope is the airlines will at this point pay out; if they do it’s very likely it’ll just be a ‘goodwill gesture’ without any admittance of liability.

If not, then it’s up to you whether you take it further. There is always the small claims system of the courts. Yet it’s worth noting that while you can’t be charged costs, you need to pay a fee to do that (it’s quite cheap online) and you only get it back if you win.

The argument would be that the fuel duty fee was unlawful as it was set by collusion. This is probably worth doing only if you flew a number of times or the court fee may dwarf the reclaimed cash. If you are going to do it, then yet again, see the small claims section of the Bank Charges article.

4.Please feedback how you do

If you do follow this procedure, do feedback any success or failure via the link below:

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The winner of the Debt Dieter contest has just been in the office to have photos taken with me, as the story is going to go in a national newspaper. As such I don’t want to give too much away. Yet I just wanted to say the real joy is not just that she’s reduced her debts by a huge amount in a tiny space of time, but that she has also helped everybody she knows to save money. Where she works over 20 people have got their bank charges back with her help, and she’s a great evangelist for MoneySaving.

When I sit here in MoneySaving towers it’s easy to see the concepts we work on in the abstract; more as theoretical challenges to save money, forgetting the massive practical impact it has. While I read about people’s huge savings on the forums, to meet and chat with someone who’s been through the process and had real life change from it is really invigorating.

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