Boiler room scams and energy companies who don’t return your cash – as bad as each other?

Two events in today’s news were, in some ways, so very different from each other and in others ways appallingly similar and showed off how badly people are treated when it comes to money matters. In the first event, police arrested over 100 people involved in so called boiler room scams. Their many thousands of victims were tricked into buying worthless shares by slick, slithery con artists with super smooth phone techniques. People have lost millions of pounds to this appalling crime. In a totally unrelated news story, the UK energy regulator, Ofgem, told the big six energy companies to […]

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Our banking standards submission

Money Fight Club has been through a few rounds with the High Street banks as they have invented new ways to part customers from their money over the years. The mis-selling of personal pensions, endowment mortgages, payment protection insurance and interest rate swaps have cost customers billions of pounds and damaged the reputation and the finances of the banks. Now the Banking Standards Review headed up by Sir Richard Lambert, former editor of the Financial Times, has proposed the setting up of an independent body to raise standards and to bring ethics into banking. It does not go far enough, […]

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The great big pensions rip off

We save in a pension fund for years and get a lousy deal on charges and investment performance and then we get to retirement age and get ripped off again. The Financial Conduct Authority has just caught up with one of the scams, which leaves up to 80% of pension savers worse off than they ought to be. The practice currently under scrutiny is the annuity market. When people come to pension age they are offered an annuity – a guaranteed pension for life based on the lump sum they have saved. Currently a 65 year old can expect to […]

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Banking… standards?

The Banking Standards Review from Sir Richard Lambert proposes an independent body that will champion better banking standards. What’s not to like? But before anything can happen it has posed 19 questions on ethics, training, the assessment of a bank’s code of conduct, best practice, competence and much more. Sir Richard wants the body to raise standards of competence and conduct in banking but it is likely to fail abysmally if it becomes a “members organisation for bankers.” How can the markets and more importantly the customers begin to trust banks if their new body is little more than a […]

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Hit by bad weather rail failures? Compensation letter

Record numbers of train journeys have been delayed or cancelled due to floods and strong winds. The problems are getting worse, with more rail failures and more lines affected every day. Network Rail, which runs and maintains Britain’s rail tracks, has agreed a new five year plan to get the trains running on time. But, in the meantime, if you can’t travel it is important that you claim compensation from the rail company who should have got you where you needed to get to. As you might expect each one has a different system. Any other approach would make it […]

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No energy bills direct debit? Then stand still while your energy provider gives you a pounding

Last week we used more gas and electricity in our house than any other week so far this winter. We’ll try to cut our consumption over the remaining winter weeks but we’re also confident that the financial impact will even out out over the year through monthly our direct debits. But for millions of energy consumers there is access to no such ability. And guess what? Energy companies add to the pain by charging these consumers more than the rest of us. If you don’t pay by direct debit the average bill is £100 higher a year than for those […]

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Credit card repayments seem to be down? It’s all an illusion…

February has arrived and the bleakest financial month (January) is behind us. But we still need to be very careful when using and paying off on credit card. The payments required by the card company may appear to be getting smaller even though our spending has not. This is because card companies have been sneakily reducing the minimum amount they require customers to pay each month. The minimum credit card repayment used to average 2.15% of the amount outstanding. This now they are down to 1.53%, according to figures from the TotallyMoney comparison website. This is not good news. While […]

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