The Weekly E-mail: Your suggestions

nicjh

We've just heard that Sainsbury's are doing triple nectar points on gift vouchers and my partner (ever the frugal one!!) suggested we buy one for £100 and then spend it ourselves on Christmas stuff, which we would be doing anyway. Does this sound too easy?

Nic

dtucker1

This may already be on the site somewhere but just in case.

It would be great to have some tips on the site on how to call home cheaply from overseas whilst on holiday for instance.

e are planning to holiday in Barbados next year and would like to call home without paying extortionate charges. I've used calling cards before but most operators seem to assume you want to call the US or Canada.

Any tips?

JanieeDee

This needs checking, but I got stopped in Stansted airport a month ago and offered one of their credit cards. They have an opening offer of spend at least £250 in the next 90 days and get a free European flight. If you keep using your credit card then the following offers apply:

Spend £1500 between a date in December and June or between June and December and get a free flight

Spend £3000 between a date in December and June or between June and December and get a pair of free flights.

Worth checking into I suspect

Peartree

Apologies if this has been suggested before - I didn't come up when I tried a search. Not so much an e-mail suggestion but something that I hope you might consider investigating.

I'm remortgaging and have been looking at the comparison tables and so on. I've been struck by the amount being charged for 'arrangement', 'reservation' or 'completion' fees as they are variously called. Just looking at the details given for the first set of lenders that come up there is a tremendous variation. There doesn't seem to be any logic in how that fee and the others quoted, ie, valuation, legal, etc, break down. For example, one appears not to be charging an arrangement fee but is charging £500 for legal fees.

I'm assuming that the costs for 'arrangement', 'valuation' and 'legal' are pretty much the same for each lender and would like to know why there are such variations. Even my current lender's website indicates that I might have to pay the arrangement fee on a new product if I stay with them and change my deal. That looks like several hundred pounds. How do they justify that? Is the Chairman personally spending a few hours on it?!

Anyway, sorry if it is in the wrong place but I thought it might be worth looking at.

slap1964

http://www.alchemyworx.com/spirit_group/gpr/solus/nov07/index_email.htm

cowley

All forms of investmenns are mentioned, but rarely Corporate Bonds as issued by say Halifax.
A person is told that it would be as well to hold on for better times ahead.

There seems to be a shortage of Credit sources at the moment. This being the case why are these Bomd investments losing value?

jamtart6

Feel free to change but we are in this situation and can imagine it would apply to a fair few people. I'd still be really interested in other people's views on this and I have read the student loan article, but still find ourselves in this pickle.

Fred and Wilma are both graduates. Fred has a loan, Wilma doesn't. Fred doesn't earn over £15'000 for 2 years after graduating, so doesn't pay anything back during that time. His loan has been growing at an interest rate of 2.1% during these 2 years but he's not too worried as it is a very cheap loan. He then gets a good job and pays off the minimum the company take off each month at the greater rate of 4.2%. Does he use his savings to pay off the debt or use his savings to put a deposit down on a cave that he and Wilma wish to buy? The debt will grow and grow, and cave prices will rise and rise....What should Fred do?

Mij

I can't believe that you haven't featured the cycle scheme on your website yet.

A great way to save up to 50% off the cost of buying a bike, plus it is a plus for the environment and for health!!!!

http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/

Mij

pkempc

Hi Martin & team,

I need to get my Toyota Yaris D4D its 60,000 mile service done so I went to Toyota UK website for a list of main dealers within approx 50 miles. Emailed all of them asking for a quote for the service and a courtesy car. Only two bothered to reply quickly - my local dealer @ £250 and one 35 miles away @ £203 (Yaris does 55 mpg so factor in about £ 5 extra for the fuel). Waited a week for any more replies - nothing. Was just about to go ahead and book with cheapest quote when my local dealer phoned me to ask if their (more expensive) price was ok and did I want to confirm booking?!?! I said no thanks I had a much cheaper quote from rival dealership - brief pause - okay we'll beat their price by a £1. Result! :beer:

Okay I know there are other independent garages that can do the same job for much, much less and Nationwide accept Tesco 4x deals, etc. However, Toyota have always provided a first class product with superb after care and I have received excellent service from their dealers plus a £ 50 saving means I'm happy to stay loyal - this time!:T

Patrick_Harvey

Thought this might be of interest as you get 20gb of space instead of the usual 2gb or so.

I saved money on online backup by getting 15% discount using the link below and saved more than the £5 from cashback sites.

My son's at university and I was worried he might lose all his work and photos if his laptop was stolen (several houses in his street have been burgled). I thought I'd get him online backup and found a UK company that does it for £6.79 a month for 20gb of data using this link:

http://www.zuumedia.com/friendsandfamily

All I can say is they were very helpful setting it up and my son says it backs up automatically every week or so.

Hope this helps others.