Rip-Off Rippon should be pensioned off

Loughton_Monkey

Thankfully my television survived after throwing my wife's cushion at it. Should have used something harder!

Can Jenny Bond, Angela Rippon, and the other one really survive any more with this cheap, unsubstantiated, trite NONSENSE.

The 'key' theme was Equitable Life. Flogged to death for years. Their 'key' victim was one who 'lost' £30K in 2000 on her pension value. Now by definition, this puts her as an 'equity' pension contributor. [I was one myself]. All that happened was the well-known Stock Market Crash in which everyone lost roughly the same amount. Equitable's unit-linked business was sold to Halifax without any loss whatsoever. Mine performed as well as any.

As to their other two 'examples' - they explained nothing. One apparently was persuaded to transfer his other pensions into Equitable, and when the proverbial hit the fan he asked to move, but was told that he couldn't because it was being paid already as an 'annuity'. And yet they went on to assert that the annuity had dropped by 60%/70%. Simply doesn't add up. What are they talking about?

I am simply gobsmacked by something that sank even lower in its 'triteness' than did the 'gold' fiasco of last week.

And what else did we learn?

1. When a parking ticket machine says in big letters 'No Change Given', then apparently - according to these fearless investigative presenters - it means.... er.... no change is given. This is surely being ripped off just as much as when I last went into the council office, the door said 'Push'. Believe it or not, you had to 'Push' the door to open, and not pull it like other doors. What a rip off!!!!!

2. Then, apparently, when you change energy company, the actual price of gas (or electricity) doesn't come into it. It is the amount that the company chooses to Direct Debit that is the 'rip off'. For all they knew, this 'poor' guy's energy switch was actually cheaper - and the only differrence was that they have a totally different algorithm to calculate what they recommend as the DD amount. But they didn't bother to investigate or inform us of this. But then again, they are too simple to think about this.

Martin Lewis. A plea. You have (rightly or wrongly) appeared on Watchdog. Never, Never, Never lower yourself to the gutter by appearing on this program.

McKneff

This same, exactly the same, as its a repeat was run on the telly quite a number of years ago and its also been on morning telly, repeated, again and again now its repeated again on a night, the three wise witches are about 6 years older now.

TV has really plumbed the depths of repeats.

Maz123_3

The BBC has slipped into the depths of repeats ... and we are all paying our licence for this!

dacouch

Their top tip was very astute, when you use a pay and display car park always have the right change...

The irony of having Jennie Bond on R.O.B when she fronted Club La Costa advertising

dunstonh

Can Jenny Bond, Angela Rippon, and the other one really survive any more with this cheap, unsubstantiated, trite NONSENSE.

If the worse they can find about pensions is equitable life then that tells you that they dont really know much at all. Eq Life obviously had some losers. However, it was over a decade ago and led to reform that worked mostly as during the credit crunch/recession, no UK insurer failed. If Eq Life had never happened and then chances are there would have been more failures over the last few years (looking at the positive from the negative!). It doesnt help when a dumbed down programme picks up legacy or historic issues to suggest a current issue.

Loughton_Monkey

dunstonh wrote: »

If Eq Life had never happened and then chances are there would have been more failures over the last few years (looking at the positive from the negative!). It doesnt help when a dumbed down programme picks up legacy or historic issues to suggest a current issue.

Agreed.

Would love to see a program about the rich old geezers who just scraped into their annuity on a guaranteed rate before the crash!

Loughton_Monkey

dacouch wrote: »

Their top tip was very astute, when you use a pay and display car park always have the right change...

The irony of having Jennie Bond on R.O.B when she fronted Club La Costa advertising

Indeed. Very sadly, the BBC has, today, been formally sanctioned about 'ageism', and it will therefore try to avoid it in future.

However, these three ancient tarts really should be pensioned off. Let us hope their own pension funds have been 'nicely' invested in Lloyds Bank and BP.

Domain.Rider

Clearly they knocked this up with three ageing over-made-up media grannies to demonstrate to everyone that they are neither ageist or sexist. Well fine, but they really missed every target they aimed at.

I had an Equitable with-profits pension investment that I had to transfer out, and I lost about 7 years worth of interest on it, so I was quite interested to see what they'd discovered... nothing. Some people lost out and partial compensation is on its way. As we already knew.

Ideally, the parking ticket machines should just be set to give a pro-rata ticket for the money paid, so you get exactly what you pay for.

Good advice about the energy suppliers - check your usage and compare the costs at each supplier before switching - well, duh.

Loughton_Monkey

Domain.Rider wrote: »

Good advice about the energy suppliers - check your usage and compare the costs at each supplier before switching - well, duh.

I really don't think the BBC 'researchers' understand the basics in life. Just because someone switched and then their DD amount was put up means nothing. As we all know, the cost (per unit) of energy is different among suppliers and each supplier will change its unit cost from time to time.

It would have been 'almost' worth mentioning if they had said Supplier A put their prices up by 5%, making Company B 3% cheaper. He switched to Company B and a month later, they put their cost up 4% making them 1% more expensive.

But for all we know, the company he switched to remained the cheapest. All that happened was that his first meter reading coincided with a cold-snap when he had loads of fires on, and so they increased his estimated usage and thus Monthly DD cost.

sleepless_saver

Perhaps this thread can be moved to discussion time as it has nothing to do with this board.

coldstar

I was amazed by how BAD this program was. When there are so many issues they might investigate they choose a car park that clearly advertises "no change given" and then rips us all of by not giving any change? What a waste of TV time!

I suspect a huge government conspiracy :cool: designed to pound us all into utter drooling stupidity by constantly exposing us with this sort of pseudo "investigative" TV rubbish