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| We're MSE, so our usual price-focused broadband help is about pouncing on short-lived promos. Yet for some, broadband frustrations result in lost hair or gnashed teeth, so this week we're looking at service too. As broadband availability is postcode dependent, links go via our Broadband Unbundled comparison, which shows if you can get the top deals. They include customer service ratings, but you can't currently sort by service, though we're working to add it.
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| FREE 50p - £10 to spend at Sainsbury's for virtually ALL Nectar users. See Free Nectar points. New. 'I paid £94 extra on a £265 order' - how new post-Brexit delivery charges work. Many shoppers have been caught out by couriers demanding import VAT, customs duty and handling fees, when some are unaware their Amazon/eBay etc order was even from abroad. So we've a new EU parcel charges rights guide. FREE £100 switching to top service bank First Direct or FREE £125 HSBC switch. A reminder that First Direct* newbies can now get a FREE £100 to switch to it, and if needed most get a £250 0% overdraft. It's consistently been first or second in our bank service polls for years - it was 91% 'great' in the most recent. FREE £125: Alternatively you can get more, via a FREE £125 switching to HSBC Advance*. Or a FREE £130 of wine + £50 to charity + 2% interest on up to £1,000 with Virgin Money*. Full details, including crucial ELIGIBILITY info, in Best Bank Accounts. Watch Martin's pensions tax trap warning - it could save you £10,000s. Plus how to get totally free 1-on-1 pensions help and guidance from the official pensions help service. See Martin's pension warning. Get a FREE solicitor-drafted will if you're 55+ (norm £150+). Free Wills Month happens every Mar and Oct. It allows those aged 55+ across much of the UK to get a solicitor-drafted (or updated) will for free, in the hope you'll leave a bequest (something in your will) to one of their partner charities. Bookings open next Mon at 9am, but go quick as they tend to fill up fast. Full details, incl which areas and charities are taking part this time, in Cheap Wills. Rumours the £5,000 Green Homes Grant vchs could be pulled - if you want it, hurry. The Govt's overcomplex, cumbersome but lucrative Green Homes Grant gives up to a free £5,000 towards some home improvements for homeowners in England. We've already warned there'd be less in funding next tax year (from Apr), but now newspaper reports say it may be pulled altogether at the end of this tax year. Whether you can still do it in time if that happens is questionable, but it's still worth investigating if it may be right for you. Full info in Green Homes Grant. |
| Happy birthday to us. Happy birthday to us. This week, 18 years ago, Martin officially launched MoneySavingExpert, meaning we're now truly grown up (sadly the pubs are closed so we can't have a drink there). In truth, there'd been a homepage-type version - the 'black' MSE site - since summer 2002 (see MSE's early history), but the point things got serious was Feb 2003, which we count as its real birth. It started as a one-man band, with a stated aim "to cut your bills without cutting back", with nerdily-detailed, unbiased guides on all areas of consumer finance, so you could give yourself a money makeover and save £1,000s. Yet it was also about finding and exploiting product loopholes, leading to the aggressive motto: "A company's job is to screw you for cash, our job is to screw 'em back". As the site, and Martin (as he says himself), matured, these thoughts merged into our long-standing mission: "Cutting your costs, fighting your corner". In late 2003, the first MSE team member, Brendan, a part-time webmaster, came on board. By 2005, with a team of eight, our first big campaign - reclaiming bank charges - started, including the now-famous template letters. That campaign resulted in more than £1 billion reclaimed from the banks, before a legal quirk kiboshed it. By 2007, there were a million people on the email list. Do take a look at the Internet Archive to see what the site looked like when you joined. Not long after, in 2008, the MSE Charity was set up. And soon we even got big enough to do our own MSE leaders' debates at general elections, something we now do each time. There've been many other campaigns, bigger even than bank charges. It's estimated MSE and Martin together helped people get £12 billion back in PPI alone (while that's now closed, you can still reclaim tax on PPI payouts), and possibly 100,000s have rebanded their council tax thanks to us. In 2012, MSE joined MoneySupermarket Group. Part of the deal was a binding ethical editorial code ensuring users' interests remained the priority ahead of making money. That back-end change substantially boosted our tech abilities, letting us build things such as Pick Me A Tariff on energy, eligibility calcs and more. These days, we even have our own MSE Open University course. Today, more than 15 million emails have been added to our email list (though we now instead talk about sending to 7m+ active accounts). And even though Martin's baby is fully grown, he's still here, in his role as exec chair, one of about 100 people who work on the site - a good few who've been here more than a decade. Together we hope MSE is still fulfilling what it was born to do - cutting your bills, fighting your corner. To celebrate our birthday, we don't want gifts, but we would love to hear your stories of how MSE has impacted your life. |
| HMRC waiving £100 late self-assessment fee if you file by SUN, and delaying 5% fine too. H MRC's already waived £100 fines for people who file returns after the 31 Jan deadline, so long as you do it by 11.59pm this Sun. Now it's said it'll also waive the usual 5% late payment fee it charges in Mar, so long as you pay by 1 Apr. Remember though that's on top of the 2.6% interest it's already charging on outstanding tax, so if you've not paid, at least estimate and pay what you can ASAP. Self-assessment help Cheap school uniform, incl Morrisons, Asda & M&S - items from £2.50 each. With some schools in Scot & Wal going back this week and those in Eng & NI from 8 Mar, we've a school uniform deals round-up. Three and Vodafone to hike prices by up to 4.5% - your rights. Millions of mobile and broadband custs hit. Price hike help 30+ FREEBIES for your birthday, incl Krispy Kreme and Greggs doughnuts, free Body Shop £5. With MSE turning 18 this week, we thought we'd tell you which goodies you can claim on your birthday (and some have extended validity if yours is during lockdown). Birthday freebies Tesco says it's FIXED the double-charging problem we revealed last week - but check your account. After our story that 1,000s may have been affected, Tesco says it's now sorted (but banks may take a few days to process refunds). Tesco overcharging help |
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| £18 Nails Inc face mask and feet pamper set (norm £39). MSE Blagged. Incl five different face masks, a foot peel and an under-eye mask. 2,000 avail HAGGLING SUCCESS OF THE WEEK: Heads up: we use tracking pixels in this email - but not to track you. Recent news reports have warned of 'spy pixels' in emails. So we wanted to be transparent about what we do. The firms we use to send the email use two tracking pixels that let us know if the email's been opened, reading time & device type used. This helps us spot if email clients are blocking us, so we can try to ensure you get your email, and it helps tell us if email addresses are no longer valid, so we stop sending to them. None of this is about finding out more about you. As with all data, our binding editorial code ensures it will NEVER be shared with third parties, or even other parts of the group that we're in (eg, MoneySupermarket). |
| THIS WEEK'S POLL Should the contactless spending limit be increased? The financial regulator's consulting on plans to raise the maximum amount you can spend using contactless from £45 to £100 per transaction (there'd still be a separate cap on the amount you're liable for if someone takes your card). But where do you think the limit should be set? Zen takes the crown for broadband customer service. In last week's poll, small firm Zen came top among providers with 75+ votes, with 91% of its customers rating it 'great'. BT was best of the biggies, with 52% saying it's 'great'. Shell Energy took the wooden spoon - just 28% said it was 'great', while 46% said it was 'poor'. See full broadband poll results. |
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| MONEY MORAL DILEMMA I've tried to return the printer sent to me in error, but I can't - should I now sell it? I received a parcel containing a wireless printer - it was addressed to me, but I hadn't ordered it. It seemed to have come via an online marketplace, so I contacted it and was told to keep the printer or dispose of it if I didn't hear anything within a week. This didn't sound right to me, and the sender's address was on the parcel, so I wrote to them. I haven't heard anything and it's been about a month. I've looked the printer up and it's worth about £50 second-hand. Given I've done what I can to try to sort this mistake out, is it OK for me to sell it? Enter the Money Moral Maze: Should I sell the printer sent to me in error? | Suggest an MMD | View past MMDs |
| MARTIN'S APPEARANCES (WED 24 FEB ONWARDS) Wed 24 Feb - Ask Martin Lewis, BBC Radio 5 Live, 1pm. Listen again MSE TEAM APPEARANCES (SUBJECTS TBC) Sun 28 Feb - BBC Radio Leicester, Mid-morning with Summaya Mughal, from 10am |
| 'WHEN I WAS A KID, I DREAMED OF EARNING MONEY SO I COULD BUY A VACUUM CLEANER' That's all for this week, but before we go... last week MSE Becca revealed that as a kid she couldn't wait to have an income so she had the cash to buy a vacuum cleaner. So we wanted to ask, when you were little what things did you dream of owning as a grown-up, or that you started saving for as a child. One MoneySaver wanted a Mr Frosty drinks machine, others saved up for the next Beatles record, a pony and even a hostess trolley. Though serious MoneySaving kudos goes to the people who put their pocket money away to save for their own home. Share your stories in our childhood dreams Facebook post. We hope you save some money, stay safe, |
Important. Please read how MoneySavingExpert.com worksWe think it's important you understand the strengths and limitations of this email and the site. We're a journalistic website, and aim to provide the best MoneySaving guides, tips, tools and techniques - but can't promise to be perfect, so do note you use the information at your own risk and we can't accept liability if things go wrong. What you need to know This info does not constitute financial advice, always do your own research on top to ensure it's right for your specific circumstances - and remember we focus on rates not service. We don't as a general policy investigate the solvency of companies mentioned, how likely they are to go bust, but there is a risk any company can struggle and it's rarely made public until it's too late (see the Section 75 guide for protection tips). We often link to other websites, but can't be responsible for their content. Always remember anyone can post on the MSE forums, so it can be very different from our opinion. Please read the Full Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, How This Site is Financed and Editorial Code. Martin Lewis is a registered trade mark belonging to Martin S Lewis. More about MoneySavingExpert and Martin Lewis What is MoneySavingExpert.com? Who is Martin Lewis? What do the links with an * mean?Any links with an * by them are affiliated, which means get a product via this link and a contribution may be made to MoneySavingExpert.com, which helps it stay free to use. You shouldn't notice any difference; the links don't impact the products at all and the editorial line (the things we write) isn't changed due to them. If it isn't possible to get an affiliate link for the best product, it's still included in the same way. More info: See How This Site is Financed. As we believe transparency is important, we're including the following 'un-affiliated' web-addresses for content too: Unaffiliated web-addresses for links in this email firstdirect.com, hsbc.co.uk, mobilephonesdirect.co.uk, sainsburysbank.co.uk, santander.co.uk, moneysupermarket.com, confused.com, comparethemarket.com, gocompare.com, ratesetter.com, cahoot.com, tsb.co.uk Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Note MoneySupermarket.com Financial Group Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN: 303190). MoneySavingExpert.com Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales. Company Registration Number: 8021764. Registered office: One Dean Street, London, W1D 3RB. MoneySavingExpert.com Limited is an appointed representative of MoneySupermarket.com Financial Group Limited. To change your email or stop receiving the weekly tips (unsubscribe): Go to: www.moneysavingexpert.com/tips. |