Black Friday 2014 falls on November 28. If there’s anything black about it’s the feeling your liable to get when you look at next month’s bank statement and discover that your desire to bag a bargain has put you in the red. We imported Black Friday from the US. It always takes place on the last Friday in November, which has long been the start of Christmas shopping on the other side of the Atlantic and follows on from the spending and consumption that surrounds Thanksgiving. Black Friday 2014 is a tricksy little marketing device. Under the guise of ‘bargains’ […]
Full competition inquiry into banking
Don’t wait for the verdict on banks, energy companies and supermarkets. Treat them as guilty if you want to look after your money. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) today announced it will carry out a ‘full competition inquiry’ into current account and small business banking markets. In its cross hairs are ‘the big 4′ – Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Lloyds and HSBC, who together control around 75% of the current account market. It has widened the scope of its inquiry into banking first announced in July. Only last week the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) announced an investigation into […]
Do rich people think differently?
Or does thinking differently make you rich? Okay, here’s a thing… At Money Fight Club, we’ve long been interested in whether people who are wealthy, or who become wealthy, are psychologically different to the rest of us? Articles and documentaries abound showing us how self-made billionaires work 36 hours a day, never sleep or take holidays and have a singularity of purpose and an appetite for risk that makes the rest of us look like lightweights. Do we humble, not so wealthy mortals want to endure the pain that comes with the gain? Yes, it would be nice to be […]
Save money on your supermarket shop
Okay, I know we bang on and on about how to save money on food in the supermarket; the importance of checking what you already have in your fridge and cupboards and making a list so you don’t get smoozed by all that supermarket marketing. But it really does make a difference to the cost of your shop. Whether you shop at Aldi, Lidl, Asda, Sainsbury’s or the Harrods food hall, shed loads of your dosh goes on baked beans and aubergines (sometime mouldy aubergines, found rank and disgusting at the bottom of the veg chiller two weeks later ‘cos […]
Bank interest rates – will they never learn
Just when we in the Money Fight Club dojo think the banks cannot get any worse, Barclays does its best to prove us wrong. Way to go Barclays. The bank has announced it’s moving 2.3 million savers (that’s you folks) into new tax-free individual savings accounts (ISAs) from November. Two thirds of them will be getting a worse interest rates than the one they are at the moment. Worse interest rate? Now. Surely some mistake? The best rates at the moment are over 2% but from November the best rates on accounts holding up to £14,999 will be 1.39%. Yet, […]
Gas doesn’t just come out of pipes
Centrica, who own British Gas, have just announced operating profits for the first half of the year down 35%. It blames warmer weather. Yeah. Right. It was soooooooooooooo warm in January, February, March… (The figures cover the six months to June). Positively balmy. Or do we mean barmy? If people were spending less on fuel it reflects only one thing – that the cost of heating our homes has risen ridiculously. People would rather be cold than face sky high bills. The only people feeling comfortably cozy are the energy firms. Energy regulator Ofgem is reported as estimating that ‘the […]
Foot soldiers in the supermarket price war
As the grocery discounters make greater headway in to our food spend the Big Four supermarkets continue to tell us that they are cutting prices lower than ever before. A veritable snow storm red tickets on the heavily stacked shelves desperately try and persuade us that the prices we are seeing are all seriously reduced (honest). But as last night’s “Dispatches” on Channel 4 (and Money Fight Club’s regular research) shows, this is all a load of hokum. Shareholders are still the priority. Supermarket customers are just cannon fodder. We all need to teach them a lesson and boycott their […]
Dear Mr. Lewis, as Tesco boss in waiting…
Dear Mr. Dave Lewis, Congratulations on your new job as boss of Tesco. You don’t take over your new role until October, so, over the coming months we’d like you to think about a few things that should make your job easier and more rewarding. Here’s a heads up… Current chief executive Philip Clarke is leaving in the wake of what businesses like to call “challenging trading conditions”. From where we sit it looks like shoppers have simply turned their backs (in increasing numbers) on food retailers who who use words like ‘offer’ and ‘bargain’ as marketing weapons and have […]
Getting train ticket refunds and compensation – don’t let them railroad you
It was the journey from hell. The train did not stop where it was supposed to and we ended up around 40 miles from our destination and an important family lunch. The assistance promised by the rail company didn’t materialise and we ended up taking a £70 taxi ride and having to race off early to get our train home, as the tickets we booked (not knowing how late we were going to arrive) specified that we took a particular train. Okay… gloves on: BISH! I wrote a clear letter detailing the specific failings of the rail company and attached […]
Don’t get burned by travel & home insurance rules
If you have your bag or wallet stolen while in this country or abroad you may lose out if you have not kept the cash machine or bank counter receipt from when you withdrew the money. Insurers are increasingly asking for proof from policyholders that they had the cash they say has been stolen and are refusing to pay out if you do not have the proof. If the money is snatched soon after you leave the bank or machine there should be no dispute but to be absolutely sure you may also need to keep all the receipts for […]