Martin Lewis speaks to Britain's biggest energy boss about prices, smart meters and more

Martin Lewis puts YOUR questions to Greg Jackson, the boss of Britain’s biggest energy retailer Octopus. Smart meters, profits, standing charges & will prices EVER drop? Plus with energy prices going up by 6.4% next week, is now the time to fix? To get in touch, email [email protected] mailto:[email protected].

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:11Martin Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Martin Lewis and this is the cunningly named The Martin Lewis Podcast. I do wonder what that's all going to be about. Usually much of it comes from a BBC Radio Five live show with Adrian Charles. But don't worry, there's bonus money-saving tips just for you lucky, lucky podcast listeners. In today's pod, the energy price cap rises 6.4% next week. So first I'll explain exactly what's happening and then what you should do to beat it. After that, we're joined by Greg Jackson, the founder and boss of Octopus Energy. 10 years ago, that company didn't really exist. Now it's just overtaken British Gas to become the UK's biggest energy retailer,

• 1:53Martin Lewis?

  with 23.7% of customers, according to Cornwall Insights. I'll be asking him, can prices ever return to pre-crisis levels? We'll be talking about smart meters, standing charges, profits and does he really answer all the emails sent to him personally? Then I've got a quick tip for you about the longest 0% for spending credit card we've seen since March 2023. And in Mastermind, well, I'm going to pit Adrian up against Greg Jackson. Let's see who knows more about consumer rights. Play the theme tune.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Right, so no waffle from me, let's get straight into energy bills then Martin. What is the state of the eight nation now when it comes to the cost of energy?

• 2:55Martin Lewis?

  So, the energy price cap is rising at 6.4% on the 1st of April. The energy price cap is the price you pay if you're on a firm's standard tariff. It's default tariff, the I've done nothing tariff. The tariff you're on if you've not fixed or your fix came to an end and you didn't do anything or you've not chosen a special deal. If you're not sure whether you're on it, you probably are. If you know you're definitely not on it, you're not on it. So if you're on a fix or you're on a special tariff, you're not on the price cap. Everybody else is. And on the 1st of April, that goes up 6.4%. In practice, that means on average, for every £100 you pay now, you'll pay £106.40 from the 1st of April. Although, much of the rise is on the unit rate, the rate you pay for each unit of gas

• 3:38Martin Lewis?

  and electricity that you use, rather than the standing charge. So the higher user you are, let's say over £2,000 a year, the bigger your rise will be, getting up to 8 or 9%. The lower user you are, the smaller your rise will be. Now, this April price cap rise is 6.4%. But crucially, it's on the back of a 1.2% rise in January and a 10% rise in October. And that means when you add them all together, we are roughly 18% higher now. Energy prices 18% higher now than in the summer last year when it was at the bottom that it has been since the whole energy crisis started in the first place. So prices are going up, there are things that you can do about it.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Go on then, what shall we be doing?

• 4:22Martin Lewis?

  Okay. So, right, let me try and draw you a graph of what's happening to prices because you need to understand this to understand what your choices are. So we are where we are right now and then on the 1st of April it's going up 6.4% the energy price cap. Now, the current prediction is in July it's going to drop again and it's going to drop to, I mean, depending on whose predictions you listen to, roughly where we are now is what I'd say, and then rise again in October, rise again in January, and it all depends on the prediction basis. So what you can see is you've got this hump coming in April and then after that it's going to be roughly flat compared to the prices that we're on right now.

• 5:04Martin Lewis?

  So, then you have to contrast that to the cheapest fixes on the market. Now, the cheapest fixes on the market, they're at around 6-7% cheaper than the current price cap. So that means they're around 13-14% cheaper than the April price cap and then if the predictions are right, and it always is a big if because they're predictions, they're not set in fact and they depend on what happens to wholesale markets, they're around 6% cheaper than the price in October and in January and next April, although things could change there. So, on a straight basis, if you believe the predictions, it's an absolute no-brainer to go and get the cheapest fix right now because you're going to be saving instantly,

• 5:46Martin Lewis?

  you'll be saving 13-14% in April, you get certainty of peace of mind that you know exactly what you're going to pay, that the price can't go up, and it looks like it's still going to be a winner afterwards. Of course, the big wobbler here, in a positive way, and let's all pray that we get more peace in the world, so I don't want to see this as a negative anyway, in terms of fixing, is if we happen to have peace in Ukraine and Russian gas supply were turned on, we would expect to see prices drop much more substantially than currently predicted, which could mean you're locking in at too higher rate. So there are two things to look at, is what are the early exit penalties? If you needed to get out of that, now, look, early exit penalties are 25 to 50 pounds per fuel, so 50 to 100 pounds for someone on gas and electricity normally, which for

• 6:30Martin Lewis?

  most people is typically 2.5% of their bill. You did see really, really big changes. You're always free to leave a fix and you can pay the exit penalty, get out and go somewhere cheaper. Alternatively, there are a number of fixes that let you move. There's one from British Gas at the moment that lets you move to its own other fixed products in the future without an exit penalty. Or there's an EDF fix, not quite as cheap as the very cheapest on the market, but there's an EDF fix at the moment which allows you to, you have to go direct to its website, not very comparison type to get this, to leave without any early exit penalty. So if prices did drop in future, you'd be fine. But in general, based on the predictions, the risk averse thing to do is just go and grab yourself a fix right now. I mean, that would be the risk averse option

• 7:15Martin Lewis?

  and the cheapest fix that you can get with the company you're happy with.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Mike Jackson.

• 7:19Martin Lewis?

  And I've got Greg's just walked in and he's not doing this bit, but he was nodding in that at the same time. I just thought I'd tell you that.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 7:25Martin Lewis?

  Now, just a quick interlude, as I can do it more politely in the podcast than I could in the live. Yes, I'm about to introduce Greg Jackson, the boss of Octopus Energy. The voice you're going to hear when we talk about Greg is Greg Jackson.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Mike Jackson's been in touch. He says, my Octopus fix ends on the 30th of May. Should I reset it before next week's cap increase, even if by extra for a couple of months?

• 7:47Martin Lewis?

  I'm still not going to let Greg talk on this one because I got to, look, there's a very common misunderstanding about fixes and the price cap. The energy price cap is based on past prices. It is going up in April because wholesale rates from November to February were high. It is not going up in April because wholesale rates are high now. You are not on the price cap. You are on a fixed tariff. You're in a locked in tariff. Now, of course, when your deal ends, you'll go up onto the price cap. So it'll move. But you're probably, if you're a fixer, you're probably looking at getting another fix when your fixed deal ends. And the prices that fix to set at, unlike the price cap, they

• 8:26Martin Lewis?

  look at current and future prices, not looking backwards. So what we have right now is perversely, while the price cap is rising, fixes are getting cheaper.

• 8:39Martin Lewis?

  So why would you leave your nice cheap fix because the price cap is rising when that is irrelevant to the price you can fix at? Now, what I can't tell you, and maybe I'll ask Greg. Greg, I can't tell you whether it's likely fixes are going to get cheaper in the future because that's based on wholesale rates. Do you know, do you think fixes will get any cheaper or are they roughly going to be stable now?

• 8:57Speaker 07

  And literally, no one knows. The whole point of fixes really is that we go to the wholesale market every day and see what price we can get energy for for the next year or 16 months or whatever we can get the cheapest bundle. And I mean, that goes up and down like the tide. So now in the last week, and there was one day when it went down 10%, the next day it goes up by five. It really is that volatile.

• 9:21Martin Lewis?

  So if I simplify this for people, and hopefully the analogy works, the price cap is based on past prices.

• 9:28Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 9:29Martin Lewis?

  When you fix, you go into the market and you say, what can I buy at today and how many customers enough can I buy it for? Because we know with this many people are going to fix, I'm going to buy a tranche of at this price and I'm going to sell the fix at this price. And then when it's gone, I'll launch a new fix depending on the price I can buy on the day that I can get the new fix, in that sort of concept.

• 9:47Speaker 07

  It is, in fact, I think because of competition, I have to be quite careful about what I say. But like, for example, we might go and buy 10,000 or 20,000 fixes on a given day. That's the number we have available for customers. And so we'll be basing what we buy on the volume we think customers will fix with us that day or that week.

• 10:05Martin Lewis?

  So the reason I would suggest people who are on the price cap fix now is because every day you don't fix, you're paying more. But I've forgotten the name of the question there, Adrian.

• 10:16Speaker 07

  It was Mike.

• 10:17Martin Lewis?

  Mike, you're already on a fix. You're already on a low price, so you're not paying over the odds by not fixing now. So look, what you can do perfectly sensible, go onto a comparison site, compare the cost of your fix to what the cheapest fix is on the market. If you were going to, if it's cheaper to fix now, you've got to factor in the cost of the early exit penalties, which you can't be charged in the last 50 days before your tariff ends. So you might want to wait until that period. And if it's cheaper to fix now, factor that in and you might decide to go for a fix. But the 1st of April is a complete red herring for anyone fixing. It's just irrelevant if you're on a fix, what's happening to the price cap because that's based on a time lag, not on future prices.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Can I ask Greg a question?

• 10:57Martin Lewis?

  Sure.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Greg, can you just very briefly, or I'll get in trouble with Martin apart from anything else, just explain how it works, what you do. You effectively go out and notionally buy energy, gas or electricity, and then you supply it to us for a certain margin. But where do you buy it from? And I take it you don't store it and then deliver it? You just buy a contract to be supplied it yourself to pass on to us?

• 11:24Martin Lewis?

  Greg is saying he can't, is that competition rules that are stopping you doing it?

• 11:28Speaker 07

  Oh, sorry, I can't actually hear the question.

• 11:30Martin Lewis?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  You don't hear much, don't worry.

• 11:32Martin Lewis?

  Okay, so the headset's not working. I'm gonna parrot that, we'll fix the headset in a moment. We're not in the full Greg phase yet, we're meant to be. So Adrian basically was asking, where do you, when you actually, what do you actually do? I mean, you go out, you buy energy, where do you buy it from? And you then make a margin on it? He said, I'm trying to repeat his question, you don't store it, do you? So what actually is the job of an energy retailer? We get the customer service and with customers, but who are you buying from? How does it work?

• 11:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, so it's a bit like if you went to the stock market to buy some shares, right? Essentially, that's an exchange that enables you to buy shares from people who already own them. So in our case, we will go and buy energy. Now, for example, we're buying gas, we'll buy gas from the very big global gas giants. Now, there may be, there's loads of traders sitting between, just like on the stock market. But the point, when we lock it in, what we're doing is basically guaranteeing the amount we'll buy over the next, you know, if it's the price cap, three months, if it's a fix, the next year, and we're guaranteeing the price for that. Now, the job we're doing is, on top of that, by the way, there are dozens of other costs in energy. So for example, and by the way, some of them we totally disagree with,

• 12:41Speaker 07

  but they're there because of regulation or the way the market works today. But for example, you know, we have to pay the rental on the meter. Every meter is owned by someone, we pay the rental, we have to pay.

• 12:52Martin Lewis?

  So you don't own the meters?

• 12:54Speaker 07

  In our case, we own some of them, but everyone is owned by someone. And if we don't, and if you switch to us, obviously we don't own that meter. So we've got to pay rental to whoever owned it. We've got to pay for access to. The transmission grid, to the local electricity networks, after a rental for the gas pipes at the national level and the local level. And then you've got to pay for all of the government charges and levies like the warm home discount, eco stuff like that. So what we do, so the wholesale cost is, you know, just one portion of the whole energy bill.

• 13:23Martin Lewis?

  What percent is it, the wholesale cost?

• 13:24Speaker 07

  I mean, sometimes it's about half.

• 13:25Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 07

  Right? And then you've got a bunch of other costs as well.

• 13:28Martin Lewis?

  But it's the big variable, isn't it?

• 13:29Speaker 07

  It's the one that varies literally daily.

• 13:31Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. So, so which, and that's why the price, and the price cap is set roughly based on that because everything else is roughly fixed. I mean, it's not exactly fixed, but that's how we can predict the price cap because they might vary the fixed costs a little bit, but it's the wholesale rate that's the variable.

• 13:44Speaker 07

  There are a couple of, so first of all, on the, on the wholesale price, we can just give an idea, during the energy crisis, there's a point when the wholesale price of gas increased fifteen fold, 1,500% over a few months. So the degree of variability there can be huge. And of course, on the electricity network, there are half hours when the electricity price literally goes negative. And so what we try and do is work out how you mush all of that together to get the best possible value that we can then lock in for customers.

• 14:12Martin Lewis?

  And on the negative one, you actually have your, you have your agile tariff, which is, I mean, I would say only for sophisticated users, the price changes every half hour. And sometimes if you're overnight, you actually pay people to use electricity, don't you?

• 14:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's happening more and more now that we've got, you know, so much renewable in the system. At times it's very windy and very sunny, if demand is low, that literally has got to go somewhere and they literally pay people to take it off their hands. They've always done that for industry and that was, the agile was kind of opening up for consumers. But I was going to say the other costs that vary a lot, things like the balancing costs of the system. So every day, national, in fact, every minute, national grid or the energy system operator now spends a lot of money trying to keep the supply and demand for electricity in balance. They'll pay batteries to charge and discharge, they'll pay gas plants to be on standby and they turn. All those costs, you kind of only discover them every minute because you see how much national grid need to do.

• 15:02Speaker 07

  And they get retrospectively added to the system cost for energy that then go into the formula for both the price cap and indeed our guesses for what we can fix prices at.

• 15:13Martin Lewis?

  But we don't have storage of gas in this country, do we?

• 15:15Speaker 07

  No.

• 15:16Martin Lewis?

  And we don't have, I mean, I've seen some people suggesting that we should have these huge hydroelectric plants where you have a big pile of water at the top. And then when you need, when you need electricity, the water comes down, generates electricity. And then when, when we're generating too much electricity in the market, we, we basically pay to pump the water back up. It's like a giant water battery. Will those type of things work? Will we have them in the future?

• 15:35Speaker 07

  It's a killer problem for the UK, right? So first of all, um, on those huge water batteries, if like, my dad helped build one in the nineteen seventies.

• 15:43Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 07

  So, uh, there's a bit of history there. But the, um, the reality with the UK is we don't have big mountains with a lot of snow and a lot of altitude. Cause the, essentially, the higher you can pump the water, the more energy you store. Cause it takes more energy to pump it up and you get more when it comes out. And we just don't have that geography. On gas storage, uh, look, the UK doesn't have a lot, but we're part of an interconnected gas market with Europe. And essentially, Europe is pretty good, uh, at balancing its gas needs. And there's huge gas storage in some of the countries, especially Germany. And essentially, the, the UK has traditionally had just about the most, uh, direct access to gas.

• 16:26Speaker 07

  So lots of liquid natural gas terminals to bring gas in from around the world and also obviously our own, uh, North Sea gas. And so I think as part of that balanced European system, the idea of the UK's lack of storage is a bit of a secondary one. Now, lack of storage, it, it, it, storage can only get you so far. You know, the big problem we had during the, uh, horrific, uh, sort of Russian invasion of Ukraine. Whereas there are some countries in Europe that were dependent for between forty and sixty percent of their gas on Russia. And very, very quickly, as that starts drying up, you've got to find it from elsewhere. The world is rewiring. So, you know, the United States has built, uh, liquid natural gas terminals.

• 17:05Speaker 07

  Germany built five new terminals during the crisis, uh, which is why we've now got, you know, the prices are still way too high, but they're not where they were at the peak of the crisis.

• 17:15Martin Lewis?

  So Adrian, we jumped, did that answer your question Adrian?

• 17:17Speaker 02

  That answered my question and we got plenty of questions, do you want to?

• 17:21Martin Lewis?

  I think there was, I think there's, there's one more you were gonna ask me.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, just about the meter, just about the meter, yeah, about, is this meter reading time?

• 17:29Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, this is basically my tit list of things I need to talk about in the practical before we get fully into the great, yeah, look, it is meter reading time. As always, when the energy price cap changes, if you're on a price cap tariff, then as the price is going to go up, it's nice to draw a line in the sand and say all the energy I used before this date was at the cheaper price, all the energy I used after this date is at the more expensive price. So it's meter reading, we, you want to be putting in a meter reading right now. Now, you only need to do that if you're on direct debit and you only need to do that if you don't have a working smart meter. And therefore, you know, that's not everybody, in which case I just go and get your meter reading, submit it. It doesn't have to be on the first of April, it can be three or four days before, three or four days afterwards, you can even do it retrospectively.

• 18:12Martin Lewis?

  And then, that's a pretty simple way to go, but the one other warning, if you are on a non-smart electricity meter, then all other prepayment meters, you tend to pay the rate of the day that you use, but non-smart prepayment electricity meters, with some companies, not all companies, you pay the rate of your last top up. So you would want in that case to be topping up before the first of April as much as you can and then not up again, top up again until as very late as you can. And that way you would stick on the cheaper price, the cheaper price cap rate. Now, of course, that's really important because people on non-smart prepayment meters have the least choices of tariffs out there.

• 18:57Martin Lewis?

  Smart prepay, there are some fixes available for, but there are none for non-smart prepayment meters.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  Tony's got a question.

• 19:05Martin Lewis?

  Tony, why are we constantly being charged more now and being given the excuse of war in the Ukraine and everything else when bonuses and profits for every firm have gone up to the highest they've ever been, Greg?

• 19:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, but look, I can't speak for other firms. I think we barely made a profit this year.

• 19:23Martin Lewis?

  Eight million, wasn't it?

• 19:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was about eleven pounds per customer across the year on a bill of one thousand seven hundred. The price cap props caps energy company margins at about one point eight two percent. Supermarkets are on thin margins there at three, but there are huge profits further down the supply chain. So particularly those global oil and gas giants, you know, we've seen record profits from them

• 19:50Speaker 07

  over some of the recent years. And of course, a lot of them are non-British companies, that's from around the world, because that's where we're buying a lot, for example, our gas from. But there are rather major issues, like, you know, the energy electricity generators. You know, some of them are, you know, generating electricity, sorry, turning off their wind farms when they could be generating electricity and getting paid to do that because we've got a broken market. And then we've seen companies that exploit the way the back end works. There were a bunch of, I think, two or three gas generators that got paid seventeen million pounds for two or three hours' generation. So the reality these days is the energy suppliers, partly thanks to the price cap, have, you know, genuinely very low profits.

• 20:32Speaker 07

  But throughout the supply chain, the the the source of the energy, there are still many places people make a lot of money.

• 20:39Martin Lewis?

  So you as an energy retailer, let's just break this down a bit. You're an energy retailer, you buy in gasoline electricity and you distribute it and provide the customer service functionality for people who sign up to Octopus's energy.

• 20:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, we also, by the way, you know, handle all the difficulties people have not been able to pay their bills. Essentially, you know, collecting money but looking after customers, which all those back end companies don't do.

• 21:01Martin Lewis?

  You're a retailer.

• 21:02Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 21:03Martin Lewis?

  Like a supermarket, it's a retailer, it doesn't make the food, it it it sells the food and it deals with the customers and it does the interfacing between the two. Then there are, now, the problem is when people look at energy firms' profits. And and I've, we've had this when we had Offgem on the show.

• 21:18Martin Lewis?

  A lot of people go, why are you allowing such big profits? Some firms are integrated across the board. So some of the firms that we deal with, I mean, British Gas is part of Centrica, they go further down the supply chain. The profits are regulated at the retail end, but Ofgem doesn't regulate beyond that. It doesn't regulate producers or generators or distributors. So therefore it doesn't regulate those profits. And there is a confusion between who's making what. You're a retailer only primarily.

• 21:43Speaker 07

  That's right. A bit like supermarkets, you know, like a lot of supermarkets, most of the stuff they sell, they don't make themselves. But some of them own a few farms or have got, you know, their own arrangements. And I think it's very much like that. But our job is to be at the front end, essentially providing the customer with the service. That's the actual product of energy and the service around it. And then do what we can to squeeze cost down the rest of the chain.

• 22:05Martin Lewis?

  And so some of those integrated firms who are making the really large amounts of profits, which tends to be because of the further down the supply chain than the regulated bit at the end, they're not allowed to cross subsidize and make it cheaper at the retail end though, are they? Because that would give them an unfair advantage. So actually, almost competition law prevents us as consumers benefiting from the fact they're integrated. Is that correct?

• 22:26Speaker 07

  I mean, I think that's a reason that some of them will give. I mean, the reality is, if they were allowed to do that, they'd probably just break the companies up and have a very profitable company doing the generating. In fact, you know, two companies left the retail market to focus on generation because I think one of them said, you know, retail was 20% of their profit, but 80% of their headaches. And, you know, part of our job now as retailers, and obviously you do this brilliantly in your job, is to start putting pressure on the rest of that chain to say, how do we squeeze cost out of it? Because we've got to do something. Bills are too high and we've got to fix that chain to bring bills down.

• 23:08Martin Lewis?

  Stephen says, ask him, ask Greg, is it genuinely possible we will see prices go back to the pre-COVID Ukraine war levels, given the renewable plan? Or is the government industry plan wrong? So just to put this in perspective, the cheapest fixes before the energy crisis, for someone on typical use, hate that number, but it just helps explain it, about 800. Hundred quid, now most people paying sixteen hundred quid roughly, so it's roughly double what the very cheapest fixes were, the price cap was a little high, but what the cheapest fixes. Are we ever going to go back to that thousand poundish a year type level, do you think?

• 23:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, for me, I would say it was pre-crisis, really about a thousand pounds, there was that dip when there were some companies making astonishing losses that ended up going bust, and they were the ones typically leading the charge on the hundred quid. But around about a thousand pounds was kind of the natural level. The modelling says that in ten or fifteen years, as you kind of start squeezing gas completely out of the system, move to a fully electrified system where the vast majority is coming from renewables, you start getting down to those levels. I don't think we can wait that long, and that's why we need things like to start reforming our markets. You know, the biggest wind farms, some of the biggest wind farms, get paid more to not generate than to generate, and that all goes on our bill. These can be fixed.

• 24:24Speaker 07

  You know, on the windy days in Scotland, we're turning off wind farms instead of giving the electricity away cheap or even free to at least do something with it, because currently the market pays those companies to not generate. That's why you'll see me so, you know, kind of frequently advocating for this reform. So far this year, turning off wind farms and then paying gas plants to generate expensive replacement electricity has cost UK bill payers something like three hundred and fifty million pounds, and it's only in the middle of March.

• 24:56Martin Lewis?

  Arlochlan says wholesale prices for energy are cheaper now than before the Russian-Ukraine war. I'm not sure that's strictly true, but they're certainly lower than they were at the peak of the Russian-Ukraine war. Yet prices are over three times more, and I'm just gonna move it on to another question that's this one from Dan, I think interlinks with that. Is it time to break the linking of electricity prices to the price of gas? And if not, why not?

• 25:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, so two quick things. I think first of all, you know, that first question, to a degree was right, I mean, depending on the dates you look at, wholesale prices have come down a lot. That's why you were so right earlier to be highlighting that right now, a fixed tariff will be cheaper than the price cap, because the price cap was backward looking, we've found this very rapid drop in wholesale. But that market is so volatile. It's perfectly possible there's some more tensions. You know, the peace process doesn't go well. You know, there's so many variables in this.

• 25:52Martin Lewis?

  Which is why you bag it, if it's cheaper on the day, you bag it on the day and cross your fingers it was the cheapest day. And if it wasn't, if it's still cheaper, it's still cheaper, you know.

• 25:58Speaker 07

  You don't know, you've locked it in. I would say though, I mean, you know, I would say thanks to the price cap, at least when prices do come down, people get the benefit sooner or later, which didn't used to happen as we know. But I think the, so at the moment, you might say we're paying about 60% more at a retail price than we were before the crisis. If you're looking at the cheapest fixes now.

• 26:18Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 26:19Speaker 07

  And so there's a whole bunch of new costs coming to the system, like that massively increasing cost for turning off wind farms. Which is why like it's good we've built renewables, it gives us energy independence, we're not so dependent on the global gas market. But we need to reform the market so that some of the benefits of that flow through to people. There's a particular thing we advocate called zonal pricing, that would reduce energy costs by 3.7 billion a year. Just through operational savings, probably another two or three billion through infrastructure savings at least. Now that's how we get back to the kind of prices we experienced before the crisis.

• 26:54Martin Lewis?

  Now, that's off my area, but it is important to say that there are other energy firms who dispute the savings that you're suggesting in that method. It is a relatively divisive issue. Doesn't mean either one's right or wrong, and I'm not qualified to judge because I don't cover those wholesale markets. I just want to raise one more point. We had a professor on the show who used to, was quite senior, used to work in Shell and was buying, saying, he says that the price cap of Gem is making a mistake. By linking to the price cap to the price of European gas. And that isn't really the way that you could be buying it. And it could be a lot cheaper if we decoupled the off Gem setting the price cap on European gas. What do you think about that?

• 27:31Speaker 07

  Look, actually, UK gas prices for consumers are lower than most European countries at the moment at retail level. It's electricity that's our real problem. So I think, look, I mean, I'm focusing entirely on what we do to fix that very broken market. There may be some details in gas, but honestly, that's a side issue.

• 27:48Martin Lewis?

  You don't think it'd make much of a difference?

• 27:49Speaker 07

  It's a side issue. The big issue is the inefficiencies in our electricity market. And I think you asked about that decoupling gas from electricity. The thing I was advocating, which, you know. Some incumbents don't agree with, but that would break the link to a large degree. At the moment, the way our electricity market works is the price is set every half hour by the most expensive unit of electricity generated anywhere in the country during that period of time. That eighty odd percent of the time is expensive gas. If we move to more locational pricing.

• 28:22Martin Lewis?

  Sorry, is that the price you pay?

• 28:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 28:24Martin Lewis?

  That's the price that you pay.

• 28:25Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 28:26Martin Lewis?

  At any moment.

• 28:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, the wholesale price.

• 28:28Martin Lewis?

  And so that's not for people on fixes because you would have bought a head? That's for people?

• 28:33Speaker 07

  No, so even when we're buying ahead, that essentially the energy traders that lock the price in for us, buying ahead and making their assumption what the wholesale price is going to be. And they know that eighty odd percent of the time it is set according to the price of gas. Now, if we move to a more locational model with local supply and demand setting it, many areas wouldn't have the price of gas setting it within a given half hour. So you break the linkage to a large degree.

• 29:03Martin Lewis?

  So very important update for everybody who's listening. We now have support in the room trying to get Greg's headphones working. We're not quite there yet. This is high end drama, everybody. There's a very nice lady wearing a yellow t-shirt who's trying headphones as we speak. I've learnt that the five live button needs to be pressed on in the studio. It's next to snappy nable, which needed to be held down for two seconds to get it to come on. But we still don't have headphones working. Adrian, speak to Greg. Let's cross our fingers, will it work?

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Hello, Greg.

• 29:28Martin Lewis?

  Oh, he's changing headphones. Those headphones. Say again. Say again.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Hello, Greg.

• 29:32Martin Lewis?

  Yes. Yay! He's on the wrong headphones. He's going to have to stretch. I'm going to change his microphone. Speak again and let's see if it works.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Hello, Greg.

• 29:40Speaker 07

  Hello, Adrian.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Oh, it's beautiful. The best in public service broadcasting. As soon as you said the engineer had a yellow t-shirt on, those are the elites. They're the crack, they're the crack troops of engineering support there. I knew it'd be fine then. We've got a Lesley Button asking on Facebook, why do I have to pay a standing charge to be a customer? The argument that is to cover things like meters, fixed costs, et cetera, doesn't hold water. I don't have to pay Tesco a standing charge to cover their rates, building insurance, et cetera. So why do you have to do it with electricity, with energy companies?

• 30:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, so first of all, we've been very clear that standing charges have got out of all control. Most countries have some form of standing charge and, you know, that, for example, we have to pay a daily rental for the meters and there's a bunch of other costs we get charged by the regulated system for every day a customer is with us. Now, you know, I think hard about how we bring down standing charges, but I think one thing is, it's like with a coffee shop, you don't have to pay a standing charge to use it, but they have enough customers using their overheads, like their rented space every day to spread the cost out. When you've got a meter, you're the only person using it. And so you can't spread that cost over a lot. So that's

• 31:00Speaker 07

  why most countries have some form of standing charge. But what's happened over the years is there's a whole load of regulated costs that used to be spread out over everybody. For example, the, a lot of the payments to the people that own the networks, the wires in your local region, used to be paid by a little bit extra you added to the unit rate. And the regulator moved that on to the standing charge and made that a fixed cost per customer per year. So the only way you could recover that cost was through the standing charge. Now, I think that's crazy. And I think it's completely perverse that because you've got these really high standing charges, people

• 31:42Speaker 07

  who can try and save a little bit of energy, don't save as much money as they should. So we've been pushing the regulator a lot to try and take some of these charges. In fact, when they did that move, for example, it was something called Targeted Charging Review. I think we were the, maybe the only, one of the few companies that really pushed hard against it. Because we don't think people should have to pay all these very high charges just to have access to energy.

• 32:05Martin Lewis?

  So I, you know, look, I've campaigned against the standing charge for a very long time. You've got the potential of this new dual, dual price cap coming in, one with low standing charges, one with higher standing charges. I mean, it has to be said that on the price cap, the regulator sets the maximum standing charge and the maximum unit rate, you could go lower. You could choose to do it lower and choose to put the cost on the unit rate. You could do it either on your price cap, or you could choose to offer a no standing charge tariff. There is, there are a couple of firms who do. Do it and they recoup it through higher unit rates. You haven't decided to do that, haven't decided to offer that in the competitive market?

• 32:38Speaker 07

  No, and I think there's a couple of reasons. I mean, first of all, we've always charged below the price cap on the standing charge. Currently, it's between £10 and £50 a year below, depending on what tariffs you're on. But the problem with those ones that try and recoup it on the unit rate is unless you use, I mean, almost zero, you pay more, right? Because those unit rates are so much higher that very quickly they cover the standing charge and then any usage above that is costing customers a lot more. It's very difficult. The most important thing we can do isn't this mucking around at the edges. It's to reduce those fixed costs that the regulated system put on each household. And that's why we campaign against TCR and we're company to campaign against standing charges.

• 33:25Martin Lewis?

  Let's just do a couple of questions about Octopus specifically. We've got Dave who is asking, why can I not get the cheaper rate for charging my car just because Octopus don't list my charger or my vehicle?

• 33:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I think Dave's probably referring to something called an intelligent Octopus tariff. That's where you can pair your car or your charger with us. And what that does is it means that we control the exact time your car charges. What time is grabbing electricity from the grid? Now, electric cars pull enormous amounts of electricity. So if you can pull it out at the cheapest times, you can save an awful lot of money. Now, those cheapest times vary every day depending on the wind, the sun, how congested your local network is. I think there are 28 different variables. If we can control it, we can grab the electricity at the cheapest times. If we can't control it, there are still some very cheap tariffs.

• 34:18Speaker 07

  They're just not the cheapest. So if you've got a car that we cannot pair with, we can't do that. I think we should look at this the other way around, which is-

• 34:26Martin Lewis?

  So you have one, do you have a tariff for the people you can't pair it with that's an EV tariff?

• 34:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, so there's the standard one, which is cheap between 11pm and 5am or varies a bit. But that is super cheap during those times, but the very cheapest is when we can control the device. By the way, we also do the same with people who've got home batteries, for example. We can try and integrate with those. But essentially, all this is about understanding in the new electricity system. If someone can shift their consumption, they can get cheaper power. But if we do that, it makes it cheaper for everyone else too as well because it takes demand away from peak times. So it reduces the competition for electricity at times with less of it around. So everybody benefits.

• 35:07Martin Lewis?

  So ultimately, and I think, look, I think everyone needs to understand we're moving to time of use tariffs and the whole point of smart meters where they are meant to take us, but they're nowhere near sophisticated enough at the moment, the generic ones that are installed are so that you're able to delegate to the energy firm when your various appliances and high use electricity appliances are turned on so that they're being turned on at a time when it is the cheapest. And if we can do that, then we bring down the peak levels of demand between four o'clock and nine o'clock at night, which means we don't need much redundancy in the system and everybody's bills get cheaper. So, I mean, you're at the forefront of that. My concern from my side of it, and I've spoken to the regulator about this, my difficulty,

• 35:47Martin Lewis?

  look, your tracker and agile tariffs, which are absolutely the primary time of use tariffs in the country, far bigger than anybody else's, the tracker tariff, the price changes every day, the agile tariff, it changes every half hour. We talked earlier, sometimes it can pay you to use it, other times it can be way more expensive on the price cap. But as long as you move your usage, it can be very effective. My issue going forward is as other providers come in and offer similar things, Tomato, we're trying it recently, there was another one coming up, is the difficulty of comparison for customers. Because we have these time of use variable tariffs, how will consumers be able to compare different companies? Because we don't know what your price is.

• 36:30Martin Lewis?

  So I've suggested that there must be an algorithm. Are you setting prices based on an algorithm of the wholesale rates at the time? Or is there someone manually inside your company? And if this is competitive, you can't tell me, I understand. But how is it actually working? Who's setting the price? Algorithm based or is it competition and how much money you can make based?

• 36:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, so the two you just described there, tracker and agile, are both an algorithm, both a formula that's published on the website. And in fact, for comparison, essentially, if we ever change that formula...

• 37:02Speaker 07

  We give you, I think, at least fourteen days' notice, the same as you would do for changing a tariff. And then we publish digital feeds to comparison sites, third-party websites, there's specialist apps, that run detailed analyses of whether people will be better off on these tariffs or not. But it becomes a bit more like a supermarket. So am I better off shopping at Tesco or at Sainsbury's? Well, I kind of do my weekly shop at one of them, and if it starts looking a bit expensive, I go and try and do my weekly shop at another. And if overall that bundle's cheaper, then I might start changing to the other one. And I think you need a world in which you've got total transparency, so you know what you've spent. Look, the world where you get a quarterly bill on an undecipherable PDF that you've got to download from a website that you don't know the password for, which is the world

• 37:47Speaker 07

  we're coming from, you know, people don't have much visibility, control over what the transparency of what they're paying. So I think as we move to this world, you need to give total transparency, which is what we do on these tariffs.

• 37:59Martin Lewis?

  And which is what I'm pushing, that the regulator, that anybody offers a time-of-use tariff, the algorithm must be published, even if it isn't a way that consumers can understand that trusted intermediaries could therefore analyse and give you a comparison, saying, looking at your usage over the last year, this one would have been the cheapest, and if things continue the way it is, this one is the cheapest tariff for you. Because otherwise, you completely defeat the ability to have a competitive market if you can't compare between two.

• 38:21Speaker 07

  I think, honestly, I think that transparency is critical. By the way, not just for these tariffs, but for everything. The other thing I was just going to say on this is, I don't think there's a world where we suggest everybody should have this. It's a bit like supermarkets, you know, if I go to a supermarket, I'm not a creative cook, so I just buy whatever I was going to buy anyway. But my mum's creative and she's a bargain hunter. So she sees that sausages are cheaper than bacon this week, she'll buy sausages and change her cooking plans. For people who want to hunt for bargains, this is a real opportunity. But for people who don't want to think about it, it just brings costs down for everyone.

• 38:50Martin Lewis?

  Those tariffs are not good for people who just want to switch and forget it, because you have to manage your household and your usage in order to make the most of it.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Joe's been good enough to come on and speak to us. Joe in Hersham, Joe?

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Hello, hi everybody. Yeah, my question is, I've had an outstanding issue for over a year and a half with Octopus Energy. One of the main reasons I chose Octopus was because of the levels and quality of the customer service. Has your customer service sort of dropped off a bit, Greg? And, you know, do you still believe it's the best customer service out there?

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Has it been outsource, Greg? Or do you do it in-house?

• 39:31Speaker 07

  It's nearly all in-house. There's a couple of great partners that we picked up when we acquired Shell and bulb that were so good, we kept them. But basically, it's all in-house. And I think, look, even when we were tiny, I would pick up issues with customers that sometimes I was like, I can't believe we made that mistake. It still happens today. But actually, all of the third-party surveys, or nearly all of them, show that our service is as good now as it ever was. And actually, I can tell you one thing, like, when companies say getting big is an excuse to become less good at service, it's an excuse. Because the reality is, issues that used to happen so rarely, that we couldn't automate the solutions, and now happen enough that we can automate the solutions and do a better job. So, Joe, I am sorry that you've had an outstanding issue with us.

• 40:15Martin Lewis?

  Joe, what's happened? Briefly, what's the one and a half year long issue that's been going on? Hey, we've got the boss sitting here. If you can't sort it now, we never will. Let's use it. Let's pervert the course of justice and get it sorted for you.

• 40:27Speaker 03

  So, the gas meter didn't work. So, I waited over a year for an appointment for a gas engineer to come out. They eventually came out and then left. And subsequently, I was told the electricity meter now needs upgrading because now I've got an upgraded gas meter, the electricity meter won't send automated readings to Octopus. So, I'm, yeah, still waiting for that electric meter appointment.

• 40:51Speaker 07

  I actually think I know your case, or at least one that sounds identical. And we could have done a better job. I'm sorry we didn't. The bigger picture is, I think you're a victim of the way in which smart meters have been rolled out. Because if I recall correctly, your original meters were something called Smetz 1.

• 41:11Speaker 07

  We came and replaced your gas meter with a new one, which was a Smetz 2. And that means your Smetz 1 electricity meter is no longer working properly either because they're not, it turns out, by the way, there are three and a half thousand different combinations of manufacturing firmware. It turns out this combination isn't working. And I think we're going to get someone to change both meters for the latest Smetz 2. And a good bit of news in the world of smart meters, I think 92% of all the smart meters of our customers have got are working. But for the ones that we've installed so far this year, it's 97%. So they're getting better and better all the time. But Joe, I am sorry it took this long, but I hope we can get it working for you.

• 41:47Martin Lewis?

  Well, I'll tell you what I'm very impressed at. I'm very impressed that clearly we asked for questions on social media. We've had 1,200. Your team have been through them and given you notes on certain of the problem ones complaining. I can see, because you've got someone with you, that ones that are complaining about Octopus specifically, I expect to do a background briefing and that's how you know about this one. Is that right?

• 42:05Speaker 07

  It is, but Martin, you'll see I'm on social media literally every day picking up the issues that customers complain about and on your forums. You know, we see the ones that write about issues with us and not just me, but my directors do the same.

• 42:16Martin Lewis?

  Alison on that. Please ask him why he insists that you email him on Gregor Octopus, et cetera, when it's obvious he never sees them. Octopus is a great example of a company that's grown exponentially due in large amounts by its good customer care, but is now not providing that level of care. Do, who answers? Let's be, let's, what's the underbelly? Who actually reads Gregor Octopus?

• 42:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, so every one of them goes into my inbox, they go into a folder and particularly one close colleague, Samira, works through that folder. I get to see any that I think are a systemic issue. Is this a problem we have that we need me to change the way the organization works to fix it? And I raise those every day. I raise examples of those with our operations team and our technical teams to eliminate those issues going forward. But what we want to do is make sure that each individual issue does get looked after. So then Samira works with a team of three or four people that are extremely good. It's exactly the same on social media, by the way. I get to see every, I mean, I might not read every one of them, but they're all there for me.

• 43:16Martin Lewis?

  No, I noticed you were replying to some of the questions that came into this directly.

• 43:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, I tried to, it's interesting. I have a bit of a Rule on this, which was the ones where we could directly help one of our customers who'd got an issue. Then we would do so because I don't want to leave a customer that if we've already got it wrong, I don't want to make it worse by ignoring them. On the other hand, if there are people asking you systemic questions.

• 43:34Martin Lewis?

  About the industry.

• 43:35Speaker 07

  About the industry or about bonuses and salaries and profits. I thought I didn't want to sort of take away what you might want to ask me today. But I think where it's individual customers, you know, we won't always get it right. And, you know, we've got seven and a half million customers in the UK, so a one percent. Yeah, where we get it badly wrong is still, you know, seventy odd thousand people. But that doesn't make it okay. We've got to work hard on every one of them.

• 44:00Martin Lewis?

  I just want to touch about smart meters a little bit more. I mean, you will be aware. I I've written to the Secretary of State for Energy to say that I think the targeting of smart meters based only on installations is perverse. Because what it means is companies, and I do that in the plural, not you particularly or specifically. Companies therefore, I mean, I've had cases where people, companies have installed smart meters they know won't work because they hits their target. Even though it's in an area that doesn't have the signal that the smart meter can get. And because of that, all the smart meter staff are focused on installations and not repairs. So we have a stat that twenty percent of people say their smart meter doesn't work. And I'm asking him to change it based to so that it is on working smart meters. Is that the type of thing you would support or are you happy with the the structure at the moment?

• 44:45Speaker 07

  No, it's the type of thing we say to the regulator as well. But the reality with smart meters is if we don't hit a certain target number of qualifying installs, as they call them, in a certain year. We get fined big amounts. By the way, all that eventually obviously makes his way back onto bills. It just makes the system more expensive. About ten percent of the smart meter jobs we do. Are repairing existing smart meters. And some of the challenges there, Martin, it's perverse, but if we if a customer switches to us and their smart meter wasn't working before and we go and fix it. That doesn't count towards our targets. So that engineer is, you know, it's a cost that we are happy to put to making a customer happy. But ultimately, we get a regulatory penalty for fixing it. And I think Octopus is particularly.

• 45:27Martin Lewis?

  Bonkers.

• 45:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, and we're particularly conscious of this because, as you say, we're the leader in smart tariffs. And if people haven't got some working smart meters, they want our tariffs. That's a problem.

• 45:35Martin Lewis?

  So I'm going to do one more question, then we're going to try and do Mastermind quickly. Maybe Greg can answer the Mastermind as well. Greg, it's been brilliant to have you here. This is from Les. My Optimus loyalty fix is coming to an end in May, but to refix with Octopus will cost me £200 more, and it will be even more come the 1st of April. So that's what the price cap will be on the back. So I think I may be slightly wrong. So looking at an Octopus 2-year instead, what's the incentive to stay? Where has the competitive nature of the market gone? Now, I need to be plain. You are very rarely cheapest on comparison sites. There are other... I mean, you play, you have customer service reputation, you play on that. How much longer do you think you can go before you're playing the price game?

• 46:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, we do play the price game, right? I mean, I think we've got the cheapest standard variable tariff. And by the way, for people who pay on receipt of bill, it's like, you know, £50 are cheaper than anyone else, I think. But on the fixed prices, they come and go. And as I said earlier, they're up and down like the tide. So almost depending what day you look at it, we will be more or less competitive. But I think that part of our kind of view is that if you always want the absolute cheapest bargain, there will always be a company out there who's willing to lose money to win you as a customer. If at the end of that term, you do the same again, those companies never make money, and that's why so many of them went bust during the crisis.

• 46:56Speaker 07

  Part of our job is to run a sustainable business with fair, sustainable pricing. So you should always get a good deal from us, if not always the very best.

• 47:03Martin Lewis?

  So Adrian, I think we're brilliant to have so much time with you, Greg. We really appreciate it. Shall we play the Mastermind theme tune and do that before we end?

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Greg, this is where Martin ritually humiliates me every week, just in case you don't understand what's going on.

• 47:20Martin Lewis?

  But this week I can ritually humiliate Greg as well. It's absolutely a double bonus. So the current Mastermind score on the three option multiple choices, Adrian has got eight right and 13 wrong. So that tells you all you need to know. Adrian, you bought a t-shirt online. You were very excited. You had it specially printed. It says, "Martin Lewis is a sexy fish and I would like to snog him. Do not ask me why, I'm considering a restraining order." When the t-shirt arrives, it's the right size, it's not faulty, but you decide it looks a little bit too clingy on your bosom. So you want to send it back. So you've ordered it online, you've had it specially designed, you want to send it back. I want to know, what are your legal rights? Not the shop rights, your legal rights. A.

• 48:04Martin Lewis?

  As it was bought online, you've a right to return it within 14 days. B, as it was bought online, you've a right to return it within 28 days. Or C, you've no legal right to return it. Now, Greg, you can answer after Adrian, because just in case, you may well know consumer rights better than him. I'm not letting you do it. So Adrian, t-shirt bought online, you ordered it specially and deliberately personalised. Bought it online, right to return it within 14 days. Bought it online, right to return it within 28 days. No legal right to return it, it's not faulty.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  I'm pretty confident it's not C. I think, because you bought it completely online, you have got a right to return it, even though it's not faulty. And I think it's 14 days, I think it's.

• 48:43Martin Lewis?

  You're going for A, 14 days. Greg, can we ask you?

• 48:46Speaker 07

  Well, I think for most things that would apply, but because it was specially designed, I think he might have lost his rights to return it.

• 48:53Martin Lewis?

  So, the legal rights when you buy something online. Buy in store, you have no right to return unless it's faulty. Buy online, under the Consumer Contracts Act, you do. Shops, actually, websites get this wrong. So, listen to me, don't listen to them. You have up to 14 days to notify them you're returning it, and up to 14 days after notification to send it back, which means there's a maximum 28 days. So, let's have the uh-uh for Adrian. But Greg is quite right. The one exemption to this rule is for personalised or perishable items. You can't send a banana back 28 days later once it's gone rotten. And this was, Martin Lewis is a sexy fish, I'd like to snog him, for some reason, isn't on general retail sale.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Somebody'll have it. Somebody would take it.

• 49:35Martin Lewis?

  So, it was personalised, so you don't have the consumer rights. Greg Jackson is one, one right and non, one correct, yeah, you get the hallelujah. And Adrian?

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:44Martin Lewis?

  Eight right, 14 wrong. Thanks for having us on the show.

• 49:55Martin Lewis?

  Right, you lucky, lucky podcast listeners. It's that time of the show where we do special extra tips just for you. And I'm doing one only this week, because it's an important one, it's a big one. For the first time since early 2023, you are now able to get a two-year-long, interest-free borrowing credit card.

• 50:13Martin Lewis?

  This is the longest 0% deal on purchases I've seen in a good while. Now, normally when I talk about credit cards, I'm talking about debt shifting, balance transfers where you move your debt from one card to another. This isn't that. This is a 0% purchasing card. It's effectively a way to borrow interest-free for two years. Now, of course, borrowing is something that should only be done if you really need to. It should be for a one-off, planned, affordable, budgeted-for purchase, you know, replacing a faulty fridge or something of that type of ill. It should never be done to willy-nilly fill in the gaps because you're short in your income. That'll get you in trouble. If in doubt, don't borrow.

• 50:53Martin Lewis?

  But if you do need to borrow, in medium-term borrowing, there is nothing cheaper than 0%. It's interest-free for two years as long as you do it right. So, of course, some of this will be about acceptance. But the new longest card is a 24-month 0% spending card from M&S Bank. Also crucially, compared to the other 0% for purchases cards, it's a definite 24 months. What do I mean by that? Well, the other cards are up to. So with the other cards, when you apply, once you're accepted, some accepted customers won't get the full 0% length. They'll get a shorter length. So Barclaycard, the next longest, is 23 months 0%. But some customers who are accepted only get 11 months 0%.

• 51:34Martin Lewis?

  With this Marks and Spencer's bank card, you get 24 months 0% on spending. And if you're accepted, you will always get the full 24 months. So if you've got a decent chance, and I always suggest go through an eligibility calculator on a comparison site, or you could use the card's own tool to see what your chances are. If you've got a decent chance, you know you've got certainty that if you apply, you're going to get the full 24 months. The other competitor cards are Barclaycard and Lloyds. Their big advantage is they also offer 0% as well as on purchases. They also offer it on balance transfers. So if you're just looking for one card to do it all, to shift some of your existing debt to 0%, and you've got a specific new spending you need at 0%, although this does worry me, it means you're already in debt and you have to be quite careful about it,

• 52:17Martin Lewis?

  then they do both slightly better. Barclaycard is up to 23 months 0% on spending and up to 20 months 0% balance transfers for a 3% balance transfer fee. Lloyds is up to 21 months 0% spending and up to 19 months 0% on balance transfers, again for a 3%ish fee. Interestingly, I'm getting a bit complex here, but you know I talked about the up to's. These are both up to cards. While Barclaycard's headline rate is better than Lloyds, it's longer, the 0%. Lloyds' backup rate, i.e. the default rate you'd get if you didn't get the full length that it's advertising, are a lot better than Barclaycard's.

• 52:59Martin Lewis?

  So if you haven't got a pre-approved, which you get on some eligibility calculators, so they don't pre-approve you for these cards, and you've got relatively similar chances of Barclaycard or Lloyds, it's actually safer to go for Lloyds, even though the headline rate is a couple of months longer, because if you don't get the headline rate, the backup rate that you'd get is better than the backup rate you'd get at Barclaycard. My quick golden rules if you do do any of these, and again, please only borrow if you need to for a planned one-off budgeted full purchase. Never miss the minimum monthly repayment, or you could lose a 0% deal and it'll cost far more. Clear the card, or at least balance transfer it, before the 0% ends, or the rate will rocket to around 25% representative APR. Don't withdraw cash, that isn't usually the cheap rates, and withdrawals can hit your

• 53:44Martin Lewis?

  ability to access credit in future. And if you are doing a balance transfer, you normally need to do that within the first 60 or 90 days of getting the card. But if you do need to borrow at the moment, a credit card, something you can buy on a credit card, is the cheapest way over two years, smashes the pants off any loan on the market, and just make sure you plan to do the repayments within that two-year interest-free period. Hope that helps.

• 54:10Martin Lewis?

  That's it for this week. If you've enjoyed it, please tell your friends you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast, and that they should start listening to the Martin Lewis podcast too. We put out a new podcast usually every Thursday. If you subscribe, you get it into your inbox without any problem. I say your inbox, it might be anyway, it might be your podcast app, but the technology doesn't really matter. What counts is that you're listening, and they're listening, and your pockets are all pleased. And if you didn't enjoy it, well, I've said it before, I've said it again.

• 54:42Speaker 05

  Martin Lewis is the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com but other consumer and price comparison websites are available. You can get in touch with Martin's podcast team by emailing [email protected]. The offers and rates mentioned in the podcast are correct at the time of recording. However, if you are listening on demand, it's worth double checking as the details can date.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  In Our Time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glennie and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world.

• 55:33Speaker 03

  It's one of the first times really that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers.

• 55:38Speaker 04

  If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  In Our Time, listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Tea or coffee?

• 55:48Speaker 04

  Love a cup of tea.