For me, I go on holiday or take a break. Yet more and more people’s email auto-replies over the summer state “I’m on annual leave, will be returning on…”. I’ve never understood the use of what to me is a rather stodgy old-fashioned phrase. If you “go on annual leave”, why?

Comment and Discuss

Rarely are you listened to in your own home. My dad continues to ignore many MoneySaving opportunities and my big sister constantly amazes me by doing almost the opposite of what I suggest. Yet there is a Lewis household hope… Talya, my thirteen year old little sister is perhaps the MoneySaving junior, and was so proud of her supermarket spot I offered to let her blog on it. Here goes:

“I was in Sainsburys when I realised that as I have the Money Saving Expert as a brother, I’d better take advantage and check out the best deals. As the Special K cereal bars in our cupboards have run out, I ran straight towards the aisle which had them. I saw there were two possibilities there, either take the special big box with 12 bars in for £3.78, or take 2 of the 2 for £3 boxes that each had 6 bars in them. I realised by taking two smaller boxes I was saving 78p! I felt so proud of myself and informed Martin straight away! “

I hope you like my little money saving tip.”

Definitely some progress there; we’ll work on the downshift challenge version later!

Comment and Discuss.

There’s much debate about whether budget airline flights can really be cheap. We all know of the ridiculous number of possible additional charges, for checking in, extra baggage or even paying by DEBIT card. Yet even so, if you find a super-low cost or even one-penny flight you can have a holiday break for very little cash.

I’ve just read this great travelblog about a family trip to Weeze which is about 40 miles from Dusseldorf, on a flight found using the FlightChecker.

Comment and Discuss

Today the A-level results are out, and there are familiar scenes:

Lots of delighted and a few despondent teenagers; reports from the government of another record results year; calls that standards are dropping and it’s just due to easier marking; battles about coursework and exam-based assessment.

Whether exams have got easier I don’t know, but with 25% of students getting A grades, they’re certainly less discerning. By this I don’t mean that someone getting a top grade now isn’t as bright as 20 years ago – that’s virtually impossible to prove – but that the mere fact of 25% of students getting A grades makes it more difficult to separate the wheat from the not-quite-as-good wheat.

A simple solution that appeals to me as a numbers nerd is to adopt the US system of marking on the curve in national exams. Thus, from now on the grades are judged compared to your national year peer group, for example (I’m making up the numbers to explain):

A*… the top 3%
A… the next 7%
B… the next 20%
C… the next 20%
D… the next 20%
E… the next 20%
U… the next 10%

For employers and universities alike, this would give a consistent ranking; someone with an A grade would be in the top ten percent of their year group, which is a pretty good way of judging and providing consistency over the years. It also means if a paper or course happens to be easier one year, then marking on the curve smoothes out the problem.

Of course it’s not without problems. If everyone does well, some people who’ve only missed out on a few percentage points would end up with vastly lower grades and that could be demotivating. Yet it seems to me either we have a competitive ranking system of education – which is what A-levels and GCSEs are – or we simply scrap the whole thing and rely on teacher assessment of pupil ability.

Discuss this blog

As regulars will know, one of the key steps in the Cheap Car Insurance guide, is to use comparison sites in the right order. To decide that order we undertake a comparison of the comparison sites. The sheer scale of MSE and the fact the papers often cover the order, means it’s hotly contested.

Recently we’ve seen a little more lobbying and occasional calls too far asking things along the lines of ‘we’ve added Meanothing Insurance, can you change our numbers and move us up the ranking?’. So to help communicate the system better and explain exactly what we’re doing, I’ve just sent out a big e-mail to all the sites, which I also thought’d be useful to blog.

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Dear folks,

The questions have been flowing through to my team and I about the order in our car insurance tables, so I wanted to clear things up. Hopefully it’ll help you help us to get even better comparisons for our users and make all our lives easier.

The logic.

No one comparison site covers the whole of the market, even in combination there are still some missed, yet my aim is to ensure that in the shortest amount of time, by combining sites people can cover the widest range, with accuracy, ease and no hassle. Our order reflects that and it is carefully put together.

How often it’s updated.

I know there’s been confusion on this so I wanted to notify you of the new system. We will do a full survey roughly every three months, and this will then hold firm unless there is a seismic change (or we are doing a full article update) and it needs to be done more radically.

Yet in general small changes to numbers of providers included will NOT be updated during that period. Yet so that our checks can remain random rather than expected, the exact period of the survey will move slightly.

This three-monthly system will be communicated to our users, so they have clear expectation of the survey period. However the section covering specific providers deals (lower down, for cashback offers and things) will be updated weekly.

How we analyse the order.

This is based on a number of factors….

• Number of different insurers/brokers included. This is the lead data, but is only ever one of the factors. However the order is more specifically about “additional insurers” that you add on top of what’s already been used before you.
• Number of quotes returned. We also separately do our own random independent checks on how many actual different competitive quotes are returned for a number of profiles. You will not be told this is happening, this is done as normal users. So a comparison site listing lots of providers but only actually giving results from a few will be downgraded.
• Feedback. We receive huge amounts of feedback both by email and on the forum on providers, and we use these to help (though our own judgment is also used) us assess ease of use, accuracy and overall performance. This does leave newer comparison sites at a disadvantage to older ones, as there’s less feedback, but we consider in such a competitive market “tried and tested” has its advantages, and a good new site will be able to prove itself quickly and soon move up.
• NEW. Follow up phone calls. We’ve had a lot of complaints about these, so wanted to give you advance notice that from our next review we will be including this as a major part of the process. Firstly we will note whether companies offer an ‘opt out’ or ‘opt in’ to follow up phone calls option – the preference obviously being an opt in system. We will also consider the actual feedback of how many phone calls people receive. Quite simply after doing a comparison, people get pee’d off with five or six follow up calls from different insurers.

Of course, some of these factors could be manipulated. For example we know a number of insurers provide identical quotes as they use the same systems, so it’d be easy to deliberately add these to comparisons to bulk up the numbers. To put your minds at rest, don’t worry, if we see any one doing this (or similar tricks), we’ll drop’em like a stone. In fact so much so, for a bit of fun, I’ve asked Richard (one of the MSE team who used to work on the other side – ML) to come up with the tricks he’d play if he wanted to cheat, so we’ve a full list of things to watch for.

As I say, the aim of this note is to give you a legitimate expectation of what we’re looking for, in the hope it will make life easier for all of us, and provide an even better result for MoneySavingExpert.com users.

Kind regards,

Martin

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Comment and Discuss

On Friday’s daytime edition of The Weakest Link, apparently the following question was asked: “Which name is shared by a BBC news presenter and a Money Saving Expert?”

It seems they got it right!

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We received the following e-mail today:

“Hello,

My name is David and I am contacting you on behalf of Name Removed Building Society.

I read your homepage and found your site contains some quality content relating to finance. We would like to request a link from this page, as your users may benefit from access to mortgage offers. While this would benefit us and your customers it would also in no way detract from your website layout as any of the occurrences of the word ‘mortgage’ could be used as a hypertext link (ie to link to the building society’s site – ML). Could you reply to me either way if you are interested in this offer or not?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Name Removed,
Researcher,
Name of Global Search Company removed”

I don’t need to tell any MoneySavers quite how ridiculous sending an e-mail like this to this site is.

When we called up and spoke to the manager, his face apparently paled even on the phone. Quite simply they’d let someone on work experience send out some emails and this was a result.

So as not to haunt him through his career I’ve removed the identifying marks.

Comment and Discuss

I’ve just had one of those mind blank moments. I was doing a recorded interview for James Watt’s late night TalkSport comedy programme this Saturday am. He’s set up the Bum Reading Expert website as a homage to this one, and in the home he can “read bums on TV”. As my dad’s a regular Talk Sport listener, he heard this and them talking about me, and after a wee exchange of emails I thought it’d be fun to do the interview, but I digress…

What do you do other than save people money?

That was the question he asked me, and I must be honest: I blanked. Yes of course I work ridiculous hours (though less than I used to – I do a typical 70-hour week now), yet I simply couldn’t think of anything to say other than “spend time with my fiancé and scrabble.”

Afterwards I thought how bland this made me sound. Of course I like going to the cinema (The Dark Knight; amazing film), eating out, seeing friends, travelling and I’m learning to play golf (again), yet this makes me sound like a losing contestant in Miss World.

So to make myself feel better I pounced on the team here at MSE Towers to see if they had any hobbies (ignoring MSE Richard who’s an extreme sports fanatic and regularly does strange things with a paraglider, and Kate who’s a drummer in a metal band). The answers were sports, reading, cinema & opera; but do these constitute hobbies now as they did in the old days?

Comment and discuss.

Update Note Dec 08. Original this blog was called “Ofgem the regulator is listening: Good Stuff” yet we’ve never heard a peep back so I’ve changed the title.

About ten days ago, by coincidence just before the mass of energy price hike news (which is why it’s taken me so long to blog this), I was delighted that three representatives from Ofgem came to MSE Towers to gather info on the energy market and our perspective on it.

As it’s rare for regulators to step outside their ivory towers, it was lovely to have a meet, and especially one instigated by them. They’re meeting a lot of relevant parties for feedback on the ease & experience of switching providers, and the problems people are having.

MSE Archna, who works on gas & elec with me, and I saw it as an opportunity to raise the points we constantly see through e-mails and in the forum as well as to explain some of the problems we have when trying to help people via the cheap gas and electricity guide.

Of course, I also started a special forum thread to ask what MoneySavers wanted to say too. So I thought you’d be interested in what we said.

The Big points

• Direct Debit problems.

  Many people’s Direct Debits are too high, or too low. So they’re either paying too much or having to fork out for occasional big bills. As Direct Debit is 10% cheaper than other payment methods this is something we want to encourage, yet there are many issues.

  The biggest is the fact you don’t have a right to get it altered. My suggestion was a customer rights charter which includes “your direct debit should be reasonable and proportionate to the likely charge, and if it isn’t the company on request should amend it within a set time period.”

  This is the biggest issue we see, yet interestingly they said it was something they rarely hear about.

• Independent Gas Transporter Problems.

  Some people have homes which were new builds and aren’t supplied by Transco, meaning the energy provider has to pay two companies to supply energy to them. Thus when they switch, even though it says they’ll save, they’re soon told they’ll need to pay more because of this.

  As most people have no clue they’re supplied by IGTs, some form of clear system is needed to give people legitimate switching expectations.

• Prepayment meters costing more.

  This is a true injustice as far as I’m concerned. Many of the poorest in society have no choice but to be on a prepayment meter, and yet in doing so they’re also the ones who pay more. This simply doesn’t seem right.

  Plus there are some people who use prepay meters, then get big bills. The reason is their meters haven’t been upgraded, so are stuck on old tariffs. According to energy companies’ logic they put “50p in but get 70p worth of energy” and hence they have to make it up later.

  Yet for me this is just wrong. There is currently a big push to update all meters, yet I think in the meantime the energy companies should take the hit, if they haven’t updated it.

• Switching sites inconsistency.

  I never go too public on the fact that try three switching sites, even using kilowatt hours, and you can sometimes get different answers. This is very damaging for their credibility and puts some people who’ve checked off switching. For me the regulator needs to clear up why this is happening.

  On a secondary note, as evidenced since the meeting, it’s also a problem that suppliers will sometimes ‘demand tariffs come off switching sites’ but still sell them direct. In the last few days both Scottish Power and Eon have done this. Surely when this happens, it negates the whole point of having switching sites?

  If you’re wondering why I don’t go large on these issues publicly, it’s simply because switching sites are the best way to compare and switch (unless you’re willing to spend hours on a spreadsheet yourself), and to diminish their reputation for these small issues would leave people not switching at all, yet stuck on horrible tariffs. So I choose the least worst route.

So those were the biggies, here are some of the others:

Provider Practices.

• Selling cheaper Direct Debits as a cheaper product. Door-to-door sales people offering to cut direct debits from £50 to £40 – this doesn’t mean you’re on a cheaper rate, just means they’ve cut the Direct Debit – so it isn’t cheaper at all.
• General confusion when it comes to billing. Tier structures and ‘sculptured’ tariffs are now so complex it’s a nightmare for people to understand the bills.
• Dropping discounts in the last month of a tariff. Some people are given discounts for signing up, but when they say they’re switching to another provider, these discounts are withdrawn. This is effectively just a penalty for switching.

LPG/Oil

• Who do you go to? This is not regulated by Ofgem, and we see lots of complaints about it. We’ve asked for help to find out who’s in charge of regulating it.

Comparison sites.

• Transparency of prices and what is being compared on comparisons. When prices go up are you comparing the old tariff or the new tariff?
• Some kind of structured to process to ensure comparisons are being updated efficiently. Eg a notice from Ofgem with price changes and a deadline for being updated.
• Ofgem should help push the message that the comparison sites are available by the phone. As it’s often the older generation who have less web access who are most at risk of fuel poverty.
• All products should be included, such as Staywarm, which isn’t on the vast majority of sites.

Stop encouraging people to ‘switch’ at any time.

• The regulator tends to have a compare and switch message. Yet sometimes (like now) you can’t do this, as the playing field isn’t level and by comparing and switching you’ll just be moving to a provider whose price will jump up and could be more expensive.

Comment and discuss.