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

rev_henry

Once got £50 quidco from vodafone for signing up for a contract but, erm, not finishing the sign up process.

£25 and £50 from (different) banks for making various errors - getting my address wrong and cancelling my card for no reason respectively.

£50 from aviva when I tried to claim for a stolen bike which I was fairly sure wasn't covered, but decided to call just to check. I was told it was, then when they were on the point of giving me a new bike changed their mind (surprise surprise). I said this wasn't good enough and I wanted to follow the complaints procedure. Had a letter of apology and £50 compo which went nicely towards my new secondhand bike.

I'm sure I've had several other similar things happen over the years but can't remember them. When I was about 12 or so I was REALLY into writing stroppy complaint letters.

John_Pierpoint

the_farmer wrote: »

This is REAL biggy. Eighteen years ago when I built our new house I had several quotes for installing the new windows, doors and a large Victorian conservatory. This was a large house and the quotes coming back were all around the £30k + mark.

Not every company who had quoted on our windows was an actual manufacturer ... however a local manufacture had quoted a few times for our job so he came to see me to ask if i was interested in doing a deal directly with him and cutting out the middle-man.

We were in no rush for our windows and doors because this was new-build and so he asked us if we could wait until the first week of January after his workforce started back from the Christmas / New year holiday break. According to him this was the time that no one is interested in putting any firm orders in regarding domestic window and door work and this job of ours was sufficiently big to keep all his men in employment for a good three weeks.

If we agreed to this time-scale .... which insidently suited us down to the ground ... then he was willing to do the whole job for cost price as it meant it kept his men in employment over this lean period.

So, after several quotes in the beginning for thirty thousand pounds plus ..... the whole lot (including the large 20' x 16' conservatory) eventually came to .... drum roll please .... eight thousand pounds.

A saving of well over TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND pounds for cutting out the middle man :T Not bad eh.

How much of an up front deposit did the manufacturer require?
Did you pay by credit card?
Were you taking something of a risk that the manufacturer could have gone in to liquidation half way through your order?
Did you try to do any sort of credit check?

All deals are risky, you might have taken a risk and been rewarded with a solid risk premium.

But well done it worked for you.

BognorBoy

eribar wrote: »

Not sure how £161.95 less £30 comes to £111.95?

It doesn't but his orginal post didn't say £111.95! It said the correct figure of £131.95!!!!

If you quote his orginal post I dont know how his figure would have changed unless you changed it yourself?!

cptncanary

Not quite a blag, but several years ago, my credit card details were stolen and used to subscribe to a *ahem* gentlemen's website I called the phone number of my statement, and got through to the US-based clearing bank. As I hadn't made the subscription (honestly!) they refunded me the £30.
I then called my credit card company to advise of the mis-use of my details, and THEY refunded me the £30 too! Who says crime doesn't pay!! :T

Lexis200

About 5 years ago we used our our £150 of Tesco vouchers to pay for a family holiday (long weekend) to Disneyland Paris totalling just over£600.

I sent off the vouchers to exchange for the tokens, but they never arrived. I phoned, gave them the Special delivery code to prove I'd sent them and was told the tokens had been sent but must have been lost on their way to me, and new ones would be in the post.

We got the tokens a few days later, and a few days after that received a letter stating how they were sorry we didn't need them anymore, and that the vouchers had been refunded to the clubcard account. I phoned and explained what had happened (too honest and chicken to just take it:)), and was told they'd sort it out. Checked a few days later by phone to make sure they'd been taken off, but they were still there. I explained again what had happened and was again told they'd remove them but it never happened.

I figured after telling them outright twice that we'd had the tokens that was enough, so we ended up paying about £15 for a four day holiday for four. Lovely:)

We also had a free £175 coffee maker after our old one (costing about £120) broke within the guarantee period. We were offered a more expensive one as a replacement as ours was discontinued, but they were a nightmare sending it through and I had to phone several times to chase it. After a couple of months they eventually sent it, and then less than a week later sent another - I guess they'd got themselves confused with all my nagging calls! Again, I phoned to point out the mistake, but they never picked it up. That went on ebay several months later and sold for £150:)

WillyP_2

I lost my skydiving audible altimeter (a little box that beeps at you to remind you it's time to open your parachute) as it had been cable-tied to the ear-vent of my helmet. Seems like it had got ripped off as my parachute opened.

A couple of begging emails later, I had a free replacement (a ProTrack for those in the know, worth £180+) and a free cover and ear-vent mount from the helmet manufacturer so that I could attach it properly this time..

I've also had a free MOT (I'd had to get something fixed and come back a couple of times - in the end the guy at the garage couldn't remember if I'd paid or not and had no way of checking so he let me off)

Confusion also got me out of a parking ticket - I emailed them and claimed there was never a ticket on my car and asked for the initial, discounted rate. They said yes, if I paid within two weeks. I then forgot about it for over two weeks. I then emailed them again, claiming not to have had a response to my original email. Again, they said I could pay the discounted amount. After more delay I called them to pay and they had no record of any outstanding tickets

[Deleted User]

I got paid £1000 extra in work one month for referral fee. There was a guy with the same name as me so I phoned him.

He said he'd been hassling payroll to pay his £1000 for referring a new employee for months and they'd only just paid it.

I phoned payroll to tell them they'd paid me as well but next month they didnt take it back. Phoned them again. Same thing. So I gave up and kept the money.

Left the company now so no chance of them getting it back....

iggy12a

Last year I was made redundant, and received a reasonable lump sum. As we have an offset mortgage this was put in the linked account, meaning the money was to hand, but we were receiving no interest on it. I took a low paid job in a call centre rather than claiming benefits. I applied for tax credits, and to my surprise was told I was entitled to something like £100 for the year. A good rule of thumb is that, for each additional £1000 in income, tax credits are reduced by £400. I realized that the converse was true. So I put as much into my personal pension as I could and effectively lived off the redundancy money in the offset account. For each £800 I put into the pension, I automatically get the £200 tax relief. This means in the tax credit calculation my income has gone down by £1000, and I receive an additional £400 in credits. So I am getting 60% tax relief on my pension contributions.

havyn12

When we were looking to move to a new house about three years ago, we saw one we weren't too sure about. The developer rung me up and asked what we thought of the show house etc. I said it was quite nice, but a bit out of price range (which it was) and he took 80K off the price there and then! We didn't go for that one in the end, moved to Basingstoke instead (the other one was in Redhill.)

Anyway, my husband is a bit of a haggler so as this was also a brand new house he asked the developer what they could do for us as we could move fairly quickly. We had sold ours, mortgage etc. in place. We managed to get the stamp duty cut in half, all the floors done out in wood laminate and carpets for no extra charge. Tiles were already included in the asking price, you just picked the ones you wanted.

The downstairs wc also led to the understairs cupboard, but they had only tiled the wc, not the cupboard, but in the the showhouse the cupboard was tiled and we were told our house would be the exact same spec. So off hubby goes to complain and we got the cupboard tiled in ceramic too

tjhughes100

I was staying in a hotel on Friday night. One of the lights in the bathroom was out (annoyingly the one above the mirror) along with two more in the room. On checking out, mentioned it to the receptionist and she took the drinks off our bill