A frugal life is an easy life!

We see it everywhere we look, on every sign, on every piece of promotional bumph, included to refer us to some small print that we hardly ever read, until it is too late.

The dreaded asterix *

The sprog came home from college today, prevented from printing his assignment off, because the establishment have changed their policy on printing for students.
Not content with charging £3500 per year for his course (An increase from £1800 it was three years ago) but now they are demanding a payment be made in advance for using the college's print services.

A minimum payment of £5 must be made by debit or credit card and each page printed will cost 6p and this will be taken from the £5 deposited.
I asked sprog1 where on the course paperwork was the asterix? Where is the *?

Of course there isn't one, but it is going the same way as everything else that business tries to sell us.
Flights are a prime example, you click to buy a flight only to find that airport taxes, baggage allowances, etc, have an * after them and they bump the price up to nothing like what you were clearly led to believe in the advertising on the website or in the newspaper or shop.
"Upto 70% off sale *" - This is a common one, the * normally means that it's only applicable to new customers (you being an existing customer of course) or you cannot use it to buy certain products (almost always the product that you wanted) or to get the benefit of the offer to which the * is attached to, you have to pay more than you would normally for the product or service, in which case you are not really benefitting.

There of course is the other type of * the invisible one!

Ever bought car insurance?
I have had the same policy with the same company for 14 years now.
Until 3 years ago, my "Fully comprehensive policy" used to have a courtesy car within that package.
Until they applied the invisible * - now I have no courtesy car as well as a higher price each year.
The same invisible * applies to my excess fee, payable by me incase of an accident, even if it is not my fault. It seems to keep on rising but the price of my insurance never reduces when each quote comes in to renew.
What about "gap" insurance, where your car that is worth £10,000 on a fully comp policy, if it is written off a year later, if you don't pay for the extra for the "gap insurance" the fully comprehensive policy only pays part of the £10,000 value of your car. How fantastic is that!

Becareful out there gang, until someone high up comes along and stops these misleading practices, then it is down to us and only us, to stop it being applied to us!

In the snow, it is easy to clear the windscreen and side windows off, then you open your car door and whoosh!

The snow around the edge of your door gets sucked into the car and all over your seat.
You probably try in vane to dust it off and just like me, you end up getting more snow on the seat than was there in the first place!

Great, now not only are you having to dig the car out and freeze whilst you do it, now you get a wet seat of your pants to add to the fun... not anymore!

When leaving your car after you park up, leave your front seats tilted forward, as if someone is getting out of the back.
When you next come to get in your snow covered car, the magic suction created by opening the door will suck the snow in and place it on the back of your front seat, pull your seat back into the upright position, hey presto... a nice dry, snow free seat to sit on!

A much better option that purchasing a top of the range car with heated front seats.

A credit card is an unsecured debt. These are being used more and more to meet monthly payments on people's mortgages.
The idea being, is that people will not fall behind with their mortgage, if they cannot keep up the payments on their credit card, they will not lose their home, as the debt is "unsecured."

A report out today, shows that charging orders - where an unsecured debt is secured against your home - are on the increase, by 722%

Once in place, a court can be asked to action the charging order by the company who request it be placed on the home.
If the court grant the action, then the home would be sold and before any funds are passed to the former owner, any charging orders on the property must be paid.
In one case that I helped with, a high street bank made out that the charging order was just a "formality."
Once in front of the local magistrate, for a debt less than £4000, the solicitor instructed the magistrate that he would be seeking to enforce the charging order in full, ie, forcing the owner to sell their property to pay the company he represented off!

We have already covered how to defend a charging order but for those that are not sure, here is a summary:

• ALWAYS defend a charging order
• Always have the case heard in your local magistrates court
• Always appear in person and make a defence

Points you can make to help your defence (For more details click the link above):

• Offer only what you are sure you can afford, there is no point going back to court in the future or struggling to meet a payment you offered
• Keep your repayment offer, the same as any other creditors that you may have
• To grant a charging order on your property would give an unfair prejudice to any other creditor who did not have a charging order on your home
• Point out that the original debt was unsecured - the company were happy to give you what they gave you, unsecured, why do they require it now?
• As the debt was unsecured, you would have been charged a higher rate of interest upon taking it out and any payments that you have made towards paying it off. Ask for a refund of the difference in interest between a secured product and your unsecured product - they now want to secure the debt, you should get at least their secured debt rating?
• If you have any "administration" charges in the total amount the company are claiming you owe them, only offer a partial admittance, add up your "admin" charges or "late fees" and request that these be taken off the full balance being claimed.
  Point out to the court that you have asked for a detailed breakdown of each charge and as you have not been given one (no company will!) you can only assume that they are making some level of profit from each charge and as such it becomes a penalty charge - which under common law in England and Wales, is unenforceable (as a penalty charge can only recover ACTUAL LOSS and not make a profit)

As with anything legal, if you are unsure about any of the points raised, please seek legal advice or contact your citizen's advice bureau, BEFORE you take any action or decisions.

A 722% increase in charging orders being applied for through magistrates court is a huge amount, be on your guard gang!

Defending a charging order 

Eon fitted us a smart key meter - after paying for credit to go on the meter, the emergency £5 credit was showing at nil and unavailable, Eon staff insisted that it was my fault and that I had used the "emergency" before my own credit ran out!
Here is a list of excuses given by Eon customer service staff to myself, regarding problems with our "new" and "more efficient" smart key meter:

• "The engineers add £10 emergency credit when installing a key meter" - this is incorrect!
  The £10 credit they put on our meter was credit and still left £5 emergency credit, which my first credit payment paid back.
• "You have used the emergency £5 credit already!" - factually inaccurate!
  Once the £10 credit was used I activated the £5 emergency credit, using £1.87 of it. I then entered the smart key into the meter with £20 on it, which paid back the £1.87 back on to the emergency credit, which left me with £18.13 in credit.
  The £18.13 credit was used over the next two weeks and when the key meter was showing less than £1 I attempted to activate the emergency credit reserve, which showed as being nil and unavailable.
  Can I physically use emergency credit whilst also using paid credit? No was the reply, well how can I have used the emergency credit then? The advisor had no answer!
• "The meter takes a few weeks to bed in!" - utter tosh, it is an electrical device, it should work correctly and accurately from the moment it is installed!
• "Key meters remove the need to send people round to your house to read your meter" - a blatant lie!
  At present, by law, a meter must be read at least once every two years (It was previously every 3 months) Your meter must still be read once every two years, no difference what-so-ever from the law, as it stands today.
• "Any difference in price of electricity from when you put credit on the meter until you put more credit on it, is written off!" - completely the opposite to what the three previous advisors told me. I am more inclined to believe them as our six monthly statement showed a shortfall of more than £50 for electricity that is paid for in advance. This outstanding amount fell to just £12 by the next statement, clawed back by the meter settings.

It is time that big business was punished severely for misleading customers.
For the past ten years the regular line has been trotted out by managers and senior company staff, "This has identified a training requirement."

It is not a training problem highlighted all to often with big business, it is blatant misleading of customers and knowingly giving out inaccurate information to explain away their profiteering, at the expense of the customer!

Eon smart key meters costing customers more money
Eon want to fit key meters - why?
Eon customer service number

There are a vast selection of fancy creams and lotions around to help prevent and to relieve nappy rash.

Without doubt the best method we have come across (and one of the cheapest), is good old fashioned vaseline.

Rubbed well in, vaseline creates a barrier.

Other creams such as sudocrem, might be the market leader, but on our baby - who is now almost 4 months old - we found after two days of using sudocrem, nappy rash started appearing.
We returned to vaseline and within a day or so, the nappy rash cleared up.
After about 12 weeks, we ran out of vaseline and used the sudocrem again for about three days, once again the nappy rash returned.

So we went back to vaseline and are staying with it, because it works!