Spill the beans ... What's your biggest money blag?

scenicavalon

Well spotted. Just testing to see if anyone noticed my deliberate miscalculation.!!!! (Gulp!!!!) Always sat near the door in Maths class.

Marziepants

Got in a spot of confusion when handling two different phone contracts and racked up an £80 bill by calling with the wrong one. Phoned up Vodafone and got them to drop it, remarkably easily.

Lloyds TSB made a few errors with payments and charges to a credit card (whilst I was using card sensibly and shouldn't have had any charges). After a couple of phone calls ended £100 up and closed that credit card very quickly.

MrsB2100

Years ago, we used to live very close by to the in-laws ... Pa-in-law shares my husbands name, so often, there would be a mix up of post. Lord knows why, we were in a different road! Anyway, we had a loan with one of the Finance houses at the time and somehow they sent my husbands statement to my Pa-in-law! Hubby wrote them a strongly-worded letter (lucky that they were related etc etc). They sent a cheque to him as compensation ... for £750!!! I think the loan we had was only £3000 ...

elm

canderel1 wrote: »

As a student I took out my FREE overdraft - and invested it back in a 3 year bond @ 7% - at the home branch of the same bank... those were the days... ;-D

I took out a student loan and invested it, paid it off at the end and pocketed the interest. Lovely. :beer:

MrChips

A couple of years ago I applied for a credit card which had a 0% balance transfer promotion with no BT fee. I was intending to "stooz" the balance in a savings account for the duration of the promotion to make a couple of hundred pounds. During the activation phone call, the lady in the call centre asked if I wanted to sign up for "lifestyle protection insurance". Normally I say no to these sorts of things but before I had a chance she was running through the benefits, which paid 15% of the outstanding balance on the card in the event of a defined "lifestyle event". I happened to be getting married the following month (one such event) and slightly flippantly said it sounded like a great idea because I could take the insurance, make the claim and then cancel it with a risk free profit of £1,350 (on a £9000 credit limit). To my surprise the lady agreed and encouraged me to do this so I signed up (after going through it for 15 minutes looking for a catch).

I got my wife to apply for the same deal, and hey presto a £2.5k subsidy to our wedding After the wedding we paid off the balance so as not to continue to accrue the monthly 0.79% fee.

Since then we have bought a house (lifestyle event) and had a baby (lifestyle event) - total profit to date is over £7k! Thanks a lot Virgin Money

Now I just keep the card on the off chance that another event crops up. I don't actually use it for day to day spending so as to keep a zero balance and not incur the monthly premium.

Labman20

I managed to get a brand new Ford Focus ST170 in 2002 for £12,800. List price about £17,500. Big part was a generous ford family discount but I managed to haggle a further £1000 or so of discounts, free options, and the obligatory car mats on top.
I sold it 2 years later for £11,250

Many years ago my car insurance company went bust. I'd paid on credit card so using section 75 I got the remainder of the policy back from the card company, about £150. Thought nothing more of it. About 9 months after that I got a check through the post from the receivers for the remaining insurance, another £156. Marvelous, 3 months free car insurance and paid £300, for taking out a £200 policy.

Not quite a blag but huge savings all the same. Switched to a 3year tracker mortgage at 2.74% above base rate in June 2008. We all know what happened in September 2008. Mortage payments plumetted and saved me about £150 a month compared to what I had originally signed up for. Then, in June this year when the deal ended I got switched to the standard mortgage base rate, at 2% above the BoE base rate. I can't lose, its just saved me another £20 a month

Best blag (stroke of luck really) of all was when the national lottery started. I joined a sindicate and as the most organised one there ran it. I opened a basic savings account with A+L to save our winnings, all £30 of it in the first year with a plan to spend it on drinks at Christmas. I droppped out after the first year as it wasn't for me. However I kept the acount open and stuck £100 in there. Shortly after they switched to a bank and issued shares. I got my shares which I sold several years later for close to £1000, they plummeted in value shortly after and never recovered. So I made a nice tidy sum out of the lottery, even if my colleagues didn't. :rotfl:

ag120

I signed up for O2 broadband via quidco last year which included £50 cashback. The online sign-up procedure was so poor that I had to go through the process several times over several days before my order was eventually accepted. Each time I tried to sign-up it still tracked in Quidco. 3 months later I received £350 cashback instead of the £50 I should have received. Serves them right for having such a poorly designed online signup system in my book!

megamezzosoprano

In these torrid times, our bacon has been well and truly saved by an offset mortgage from the Newcastle BS, at just 0.5% above base. (Those were the days!)

I'd like to say this exceptional rate was due to my haggling skills, etc, but in truth it was because when I first rang, the main HQ phone lines were busy, so my call was diverted to a branch. As a result, I got a named advisor, a direct phone line number, and a lady who cared so much that I got the best deal that she rang to tell me that the rate was going up in two days, so I had time to sign up before it did so.

Several years on, we've still got that deal, ported when we moved house, so a big thank you to Nicola for realising that sometimes the best deal is the one we don't need to ask for.

:T

robynprincess

My In Laws were relocated from up north to London about 16 years ago, the company paid for everything but they also arranged a loan from the company for I think about £5k, well the lady who arranged it left as soon as they moved down, the company still havent asked for the money back! Their family were 1 of many, the others all borrowed more than them, some over £10k! They havent been asked for any of it back either.

MJBRoberts

I discovered a fantastic little loophole with credit cards back in 2005. You could deposit, say £10,000 of borrowed money, using a credit card into a gambling account. Then withdraw the £10,000 2 seconds later. On the statement it counted as a spend and a cash payment so I received loyalty points as if I'd spent £10,000 (free supermarket vouchers which could be used on petrol and more). This process was repeated making sure that my balance was always £0 on the statement date. I 'spent' in excess of £150,000 and received hundreds of pounds of vouchers. Unfortunately this loophole was eventually spotted and now you incur charged far more than the loyalty point bonus HOWEVER it is worth noting that it also worked with the Halifax DEBIT card cash back account so may well work with others (obviously you need to have the funds available for this). A cash back debit card account was in Martin's recent e-mail. Open an account with someone like Betfair.com (I'd love to put my referral code here but have resisted!) and try depositing and withdrawing using a debit card (start by using small amounts to test the water) and if it works you'll receive cash back on something you never spent. Simples! I explained this scheme to a Halifax employee in Birmingham and he loved it and, in fact, relayed it to certain customers who also benefited. I hope this helps.