Q&A Special: Beat the bill rises, ISAs, Car financing, Pension tax, Premium Bonds, Child Trust Funds and more

You ask, Martin answers. A must-listen at this crucial time of year. Martin and Adrian go through the big questions from you as a number of big changes come into force. Plus you tell us about customer service done well, and Adrian tackles a mastermind on credit scores. You can email the podcast team via [email protected] mailto:[email protected].

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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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 going to be about. Usually much of it comes from my BBC Radio 5 live show with Adrian Charles. Today, though, Adrian and I are doing a podcast special. In today's pod, well, I've got my brown trousers on as it's an Ask Me Anything Q and A special. I'll be answering on how to beat the water bills hikes, energy hikes, mobile hikes, broadband hikes, council tax hikes and more because you're asking lots of questions. No wonder those bills are going up a lot. Plus, there's questions on the ISA deadline, pension tax, car insurance, child trust funds, and I might even provide answers too. And I'm even asked about pensions for kids and if anyone really wins a million pounds on premium bonds.

• 1:57Martin Lewis?

  This week's tellers: When has a firm gone above and beyond? Who gave you outstanding customer service? What did they do and why was it so special? Let's shine a light on those who get it right. And this week's mastermind is all about credit scoring. Play the theme tune.

• 2:34Martin Lewis?

  Let's start off in one of the highest court in the land, is that right? What's happening there? Yes, indeed. So we have a car finance case going through the Supreme Court this week. It's starting this week. You know, Supreme Court cases take a long time before you get the adjudication, although we're hoping because this is of such huge public interest and such a manifest important across the financial sector that we'll get a decision, I mean, I hope before the summer, but don't bank on that. But there's a lot of confusion. I've even heard it misreported in the news. Shock, horror, fake news, everybody, fake news. Because there are two distinct car finance misselling cases out there. Let me

• 3:14Martin Lewis?

  first do the one that this isn't about, because the one this isn't about, which is discretionary commission arrangements, is the one I normally talk about, and that isn't involved in the Supreme Court case. Now discretionary commission arrangements, or DCAs, applies to about 40% of car finance deals. This is where brokers and dealers could increase the amount of interest that they charge customers without telling them in order to get more money from the finance firms. This was on PCP personal contract purchase and hire purchase agreements up until 2021, when it was banned. The regulator, not the court, the regulator, the FCA, has

• 3:54Martin Lewis?

  investigated into that, it's done a big case, and it has now told us effectively that if it does get to the point where it decides there was misselling, and it's almost certainly going to do so, then you won't actually have to apply to get the money back, it's going to arrange automatic payouts, which is a massive structural change. And so this is everyone from when until? Until 2021. The when they start is more difficult to say. I will say it could go as far back as 2007, which is not the same as me saying it will be 2007, until January 2021, if you bought one of those two types of deals. And this applied to 40% of car finance deals. So 40% of people. Now, if you've used my template letters, two and a half million people have, then that

• 4:39Martin Lewis?

  would almost certainly be a discretionary commission arrangement that you're asking, did I have a DCA? So many people will know, because you didn't know if you had one of these, but part of the template letters I put in was saying, did I have a discretionary commission arrangement? So you will now, many people now know whether they had a DCA or not. Now, that isn't what's going on in the Supreme Court, although I've read it reported because people have conflated the two things. So what's going through the Supreme Court? That is commission disclosure complaints. Now, this all came through because the Court of Appeal did a shock ruling, and I mean proper shock, I mean fall off your chair shock if you're in the industry. I couldn't believe it. I know the regulator couldn't believe it. I don't think many car finance firms could believe it, and many commentators couldn't

• 5:22Martin Lewis?

  believe it. That if car finance agreements didn't tell consumers all the details of the commission, including the amount, which they almost never did, then those deals were unlawful. Now, that applies to 99% of car finance cases, including all discretionary commission arrangement cases. So if you see, this is basically all of them, and DCAs are a subset. Now, that Court of Appeal ruling took everyone by surprise. The Supreme Court, it's been appealed to the Supreme Court. That's the Supreme Court in the land by definition. So it now could agree with the Court of Appeal, overturn the Court of Appeal, or come up with something somewhat different. Those are the three options.

• 6:06Martin Lewis?

  I think the most likely outcome is that it will overturn the Court of Appeal decision. I only say that just because of the amount of shock it caused. You know, the government tried to get, become a party to this case. The regulator is a party to this case. And there are concerns, including by me, that if this goes through and they uphold the Court of Appeal ruling, you know, you've got proper economic questions over the sustainability of the consumer credit market and what would happen on that basis. And I think there's a very different level when I look at it, even if we forget the law. You look at the unfairness. People having extra commission bunged on top without being told that it was extra commission, without being told that people are getting paid more money. You can see the obvious unfairness. This is a technicality.

• 6:50Martin Lewis?

  So there's a difference between the two.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  And who stands to take a bath if the Supreme Court's more shock upholds the Court of Appeal?

• 7:00Martin Lewis?

  Lloyds, Close Brothers, I mean, all the big financial names are all involved in this. So let me give you the, let's, so let's do that. If that happens, my guess, please only see it as a guess, is you're probably talking the multiple tens of billions of pounds potentially being paid out, multiple.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  To whom?

• 7:19Martin Lewis?

  To people who had a car finance deal from, from the financial firms.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 7:25Martin Lewis?

  Tens of billions.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm just trying.

• 7:27Martin Lewis?

  PPI scale payouts.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  Okay, and so how would you know if you were one of those?

• 7:32Martin Lewis?

  Because you had car finance.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  For anybody who had car finance.

• 7:36Martin Lewis?

  It's 99% of people who had car finance. But we don't know how long you can go back for. We don't know what the payout would be because this, this Court of Appeal ruling was taken by a claims management firm. Everybody thought it was just going to flop and then they won and it was like, wow. So we don't have any, anything that we really need to understand what the scale of payouts would be. But it, because it would be every car finance, every car finance deal that had been made in the last X number of years, and I can only say X, it's likely to be a lot of money.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  God, can you imagine how much money the silks are making on this one? They must, they must have a big courtroom to.

• 8:09Martin Lewis?

  Get all the silks in there to represent the industry. But let me go through, if what I think is the most likely outcome, and I could be wrong because I mean, it's the Supreme Court will decide. So don't, don't bat on my outcome, which is they'll overturn the Court of Appeal. Then what is likely to happen is the court case disappears, but the regulator case on discretionary commission arrangements is separate and that will still remain. That's the one about bunging the extra, the amount on top. Forty percent. Yeah, I think that will, I reckon that's somewhere between six and 12 billion of payouts. Right. And that's, and people, but what we don't yet know is how much money would be paid out now. The, the expectation is that you would be given the difference between the minimum interest rate and the interest you were actually charged once it was bunged up.

• 8:54Martin Lewis?

  That's about an average of over a grand per person. But what they could do, I'm not going to explain this because I want to get on to the rest, but they could plevin it for anyone knows what plevin means from PPI. I'm not going to explain, if you don't know, you don't need to know. But they could effectively say, there's a fair interest rate and you only get the amount above a fair interest rate, not the lowest interest rate. So that, all of that is still in abeyance and still in play, exactly what they would announce. The third outcome, so you've got one outcome, the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court says the Court of Appeal was right, huge payouts. One outcome, they say it's wrong, that the regulator still does its discretionary commission arrangement system. The third outcome, which I think is unlikely, but not impossible, is there's an outside chance the Supreme Court will rule out

• 9:34Martin Lewis?

  commission disclosure complaints and make a pronouncement within that, which causes the regulator to rethink the discretionary commission arrangements complaints. I.e. something is said where the regulator goes, ah, we thought it was like this, but it isn't. And we have to obey the courts, therefore we're not going to do the discretionary commission payouts. I think that is unlikely, but you know, there's known unknowns and there's unknown unknowns. And I'm just trying to give you all the eventualities, but we're still, I would think, nothing is going to happen until we get the Supreme Court ruling. And I think if we got that before summer, that would be quick.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Okay, let's get on to some questions. They're related to what's being called awful April. Household bills are going up.

• 10:14Martin Lewis?

  I like to call it Bills Day or B-Day because all of our backsides are getting rinsed.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Okay, right. I'll roll with that for sure. So, I mean, why are they all happening at once?

• 10:28Martin Lewis?

  So, we have the end of the tax year, but traditionally, the former monopoly suppliers that we had, the big utility monopoly suppliers, always did their price changes in April. Now, many of these are now privatized firms, but their year still starts at the same point at the beginning of April.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  So, let's start with water bills. What's happening there?

• 10:46Martin Lewis?

  Water bill's going up by an average, average 26%, but in fact, of all the water firms in the country, one is going down. It's only a small one in the southeast of England. All the rest are going up by a minimum 19%, maximum over 40%, and that's the average rise. Depending on your water, the assumption of your water and sewer use, some people are seeing 60, 70, 80% rises coming in place. Now, this is to provide investment into the water system. I need to be careful not to be political, but I did. I was presenting Good Morning Britain yesterday. I did interview Jonathan Resins, the Business Secretary, and put to him the fact that companies have been paying tens of billions of pounds out in dividends while building up huge amounts of debt. Why are we now having to pay more because they didn't invest in the water system?

• 11:31Martin Lewis?

  I got a politician's answer is how I would rephrase the answer I got. But we're not here to talk about that, Adrian. We're here to talk about the fact that it's happening.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Joel has had Thames Water increase his bill by 49%. How is this allowed? He says his circumstances haven't changed at all.

• 11:45Martin Lewis?

  Not only allowed, it's regulated. These are regulated price rises. Within the water industry, we have privatization without competition, so we haven't got any of those market benefits that you would expect. And so the regulator sets the price rises that are allowed. As I say, there are average price rises, but your price rise doesn't necessarily have to be the average because of the composition of your use. So let me just go through very quickly, because I've talked about this in other places and I've talked about none here before. The four things you should do with water bills. Number one, if you're in England and Wales and you have more or the same number of people in your or the same number of bedrooms in your house than people, you should look at getting a water meter. So you and I, Adrian, in our nice house, there's two of us, we

• 12:29Martin Lewis?

  live in a four bedroom house. If we're on water bills, the bill that you get is based, it's actually on the ratable value of your house, but it's a proxy for your house value. So it'll be big because it's a four bed house. But there's only two of us, so we're not using that much water. Therefore, if we went on a water meter, it'd be cheaper. Hence, more or the same number of bedrooms and people, go into the Consumer Council for water's website and do a calculator. I mean, savings there can be hundreds a year. I've had nine hundred, a thousand pounds type savings. And if you're worried, you normally, not with every firm, double check. You could normally turn back within two years if you voluntarily switch to a water meter. If they say it's number two, if they say it's not practicable to have a water meter, you can ask for an assessed charge. So this would

• 13:12Martin Lewis?

  be someone in a block of flats where they say we can't fit one, you've got shared pipes. An assessed charge assesses how much water you would use if you were on a water meter, even though you're not. So therefore, we're in our two bed, our four bed house, there's just two of us. Clearly, our assessed charge is going to be lower than our water bills because there's only two of us. So they would assess it to be quite low. And number three, there's freebies available most, not all water firms at savemoney savewater.com. Have a look at that. Number four, probably the most important. So there are 5.7 million eligible homes missing out on social tariffs for water. Social tariffs are tariffs that make it much, much cheaper for those on low incomes, typically, but it depends by firm,

• 13:55Martin Lewis?

  now under 22,000 pounds a year. If you're in that situation, check out your firm's social tariff. It could drop your bills by 90%.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  So isn't that all pensioners, presumably? Isn't that all pensioners?

• 14:06Martin Lewis?

  No, I think some pensioners have much more income than that type of money. But and there's whole different level. All I'm, let me be really, this is a call to arms to who should check, not who will get. Every firm does it differently. Every firm has its own criteria. There's a Second scheme that you could have both, which is called Watershore. Watershore is for two categories of people, it's for people who use a lot of water, basically. So either you have a medical condition that means you need to use a lot of water, Crohn's disease. People have to have to wash a lot. Or you have three or more children in the house. And you're on benefits. In that case, that can cap your water bill. So that's my very quick list of what people should be doing on water bills.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Okay, Colin's got a question. My latest bill was horrendously increased, so charge of around a hundred and fifty pounds due to not having a water meter installed. So I called them and queried it. They then told me, I'm praising this, but essentially it turned out. He already had a water meter outside his property, been there for a few years. And then it turned out that they that they knew he hadn't been using. Or they had access to that information. They knew he hadn't been using as much, but. Until he queried it, they were going to carry on charging him anyway. How could they get away with that excessive charging? They did give them the money back.

• 15:22Martin Lewis?

  Okay, so. I mean, just look, we have a no competitive market that's poorly written. These companies have local monopolies. And they do get away with a lot. So. I don't know what's going on in that situation. I can't comment on it. I mean, why he had a water meter and it wasn't being used. I can think of a few scenarios, but they're pretty rare. I what I would say, and this is worth knowing, we don't have an ombudsman in the water industry. Which you have in other utilities. But there is the Consumer Council for Water. So what you do if you've got a complaint, you make a formal complaint. If you're unhappy, you can go to the Consumer Council for Water. It will try and advise you and get it sorted. If that doesn't work, it will put you in touch with an ADR, an Alternative Dispute Resolution Process. Where you can be adjudicated whether you've been treated the right way or not.

• 16:06Martin Lewis?

  But people, I mean, water's often ignored. That sounds like a farce, doesn't it? But I'm unsurprised by the farce.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Well, actually, I live in flats.

• 16:16Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  In a complex, and we've all got individual water meters.

• 16:19Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  But getting them assessed, they've been wrong, getting them serviced, getting them looked at is a is a real fuss. Anyway, that's my personal issue. I wonder if other people have had similar issues.

• 16:29Martin Lewis?

  But make a formal complaint.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Look, we've tried everything and better people than me and my neighbours have done that. It is we need you down there. We need you down there.

• 16:38Martin Lewis?

  Well, I'm not sure even that. The problem is we have this industry that's got no competition in it. That, you know, they've been spraying their water up the wall, may I phrase it that way? Or spraying people's money up the wall. And I don't think we've properly cracked down on what's going on with these firms. But then the problem is the government now is also scared that they're going to go bust and they're going to have to bail them out. That they're having to treat them gently. And that is pure supposition, I should say.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Energy bills then.

• 17:07Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  What do we need to know there?

• 17:08Martin Lewis?

  So the energy price cap, we've talked about this a lot, so I won't do too much, is going up 6.4 has gone up 6.4%. These all happened on the 1st of April, which is yesterday on the date of recording this. That affects the price that 66% of homes in England, Scotland and Wales pay. Anyone who's on a standard tariff, the bog standard, you haven't done anything tariff, it's gone up by 6.4%. It is worth noting, while we were talking politics, and I did put this again to the Secretary of State yesterday, that 6.4% on top of 1.2% on top of 10% in October, which means it's up 18% since we had a change of government. So, you know, that is a difficult political question for the government to have to answer when they came in with the promise that energy bills will go down. What do you do? Well, look, based on the assumptions at the moment and the predictions of what will happen, the price cap moves every three months.

• 17:52Martin Lewis?

  If you're on the price cap, it's a pants cap. You can get a 14% cheaper fix right now than the April price cap that we are currently on. That is like the April price cap is likely to drop in July by about 7% and stay at that rate for the rest of the year. But if those predictions are right, then the current cheapest fixes are still 7% cheaper than you'd pay for the rest of the year. And if you get a fix, you have peace of mind, you know exactly what you're going to pay. So I would say most people should get off the pants cap and look at fixing or some of the other innovative powers out there. We did a full programme on energy last week, so I'll let people go and listen to that. Back to that particular podcast, but get on with it. Every day you stay on the pants cap is a day that you are paying too much.

• 18:32Martin Lewis?

  If you're worried about things changing, then just make sure any fix you get has relatively limited early exit penalties if you needed to leave it early.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Sarah wants to know, she should have taken back all her credit from the electricity and gas account, approximately six hundred pounds, or should she have left it there?

• 18:50Martin Lewis?

  Okay, so I'm presuming she's, I mean, the tense, I presume she hasn't moved, she's still with that energy company by the sound of it, it's not she's switched, if she's switched, you should get that credit, so I would presume, right, so I'm going to assume she's with the energy company, okay. The energy direct debit cycle, I know, I know how sexy is this programme, the energy direct debit cycle is like a, it's a sine wave, it goes up and down with roughly equal levels depending on where you start. Your peak debt, the peak amount you should be in debt is basically now, right? Around April, you've spent the winter using up, using more, so that you've built up a debt, and then as you move into the summer, you pay that debt off gradually, and then

• 19:34Martin Lewis?

  once you get to around November, you should be in maximum credit. Do you understand? Because, because you think the warm and cold period, so if you're in anything over a month's worth of credit now, and I do it by the month, because of course, if, if your bills are a thousand pounds a month, six hundred pound credit isn't much, if your bills are a hundred pounds a month, six hundred pounds credit is a lot, so if you're anything more than a month, a month and a half's worth of, in credit right now, it's too much for me. As long as your direct debit is set right, as long as you're building up credit and you're doing make regular meter readings, I would be asking for all but a month's worth of credit back. So to, to be really plain, if your bill is two hundred pounds a month and you're six hundred pounds a month in credit, I'd want four hundred quid back now.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Okay, and Helen wants to know about smart prepayment, electricity meters and the price rises, are companies obliged to offer a fix? Also, is there likely to be any change to the standard charges being reduced when we have no choice of the tariffs?

• 20:30Martin Lewis?

  I think that's two questions, is it?

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:31Martin Lewis?

  Okay, so first, you're on a smart prepayment, companies are not obliged to offer you fixes, but if you're on smart prepayment, there are fixes available, unlike those who are on old school prepayment meters where there are no fixes available, so go on to a comparison site, make sure you say that you're on smart prepay and it will come up with the cheapest fix. Available for you. There's much less choice than there is in the direct debit market, but there are fixes and some relatively decent ones. I think EDF has a particularly good one if I'm doing that off the top of my head for that that allows people on smart prepay to do. Worth noting, of course, prepayment is the cheapest way to pay if you're on the price cap. This is really important to differentiate. So if you're on the do nothing price cap pants cap tariff, prepay is actually cheaper than direct debit. The advantage of direct debit is

• 21:15Martin Lewis?

  it's a very, it's the most competitive market. So that's where all the cheap switchers deals come in that you don't have if you're on prepay. So if you do nothing prepay slightly only marginally beats direct debit, the worst is pay and receipt of bills, by the way. But if you, if you're doing something, then direct debit wins. As for standing charges, again, talked about it a lot before, they are not going to get rid of standing charges on the price cap. But there is this investigation, which I'm hoping will come in based on my suggestion, to be honest, of a dual price cap where firms will be forced to offer the price cap as it is now and a low or no standing charge version where the unit rates will be higher, which should be good for lower users. That I hope may be out by this winter, or if not by next spring, but it is not 100% confirmed yet.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Let's move on to mobile broadband.

• 22:02Martin Lewis?

  Sure.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  How are mobile phone broadband companies allowed mid-contract price hikes that are higher than inflation? Surely that is fueling inflation itself. Surely the government should be looking into this.

• 22:13Martin Lewis?

  Don't call me surely, first of all. Sorry, very old airplane joke. Right, well, the government has, and I've been lobbying and written papers to the government on this. We have had a change in the regulation. So most people are seeing broadband and mobile contract price hikes of around five to seven percent this year. But new rules have come in that I will keep it simple, that say on new mobile and broadband contracts, they cannot do mid-contract price hikes. They have to tell you in pounds and pence before you start how much the price will rise during your contract, which you'll now see if you go and do a comparison on this. The only exception is if they choose not to do that and do a mid-contract price hike, then you must be allowed to leave within 30 days of the notification of that penalty free,

• 22:58Martin Lewis?

  which is the Sky is choosing to do. So Sky isn't telling you this, but Sky is letting you use. And it actually gets some competitive advantage. Because therefore it's headline prices cheaper on price comparisons by doing that. Which I think might distort the market. They might need to look at it. So they have changed the rules on this. My problem is. They're still allowed to increase the price mid-contract. They're still allowed to increase it above inflation. They just can't link it to inflation. And what we're perversely seeing is. These pound and pence rises are more transparent. But for many people, especially those who are on relatively cheap deals, they're bigger than the old inflationary price hikes. Because if you're on twenty, if you're on a twenty pounds a month. And your rise is three pounds, that's fifteen percent.

• 23:39Martin Lewis?

  Whereas on the old inflation system, you would have been on five and seven percent. Now, in the submission I put to the government on this. And it was the former government and the Ofcom, the regulator. Was that there should certainly be a moratorium on rising prices above inflation during the contract. I mean, it's a contract. Why, I mean, a fair contract would say you can put it up by inflation, but why more? But that's not what they've chosen to do, and I'm not in charge.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Council tax. Theresa wants to know.

• 24:08Martin Lewis?

  So that's going up. Let's just do the stats going up depending. In England, mainly five percent, in a few councils, a bit more, but up to ten percent around Wales and Scotland.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Okay. Council tax. Can you tell me if. Ex-council houses, says Theresa, are paying the right amount of council tax?

• 24:24Martin Lewis?

  I can't see any reason ex-council town houses would pay any different amount of council tax. Let's go back. The amount of council tax you pay. First of all, every property has a raw figure, you know, what is the valuation? That depends on which band you are in. And, you know, it might be band A, band B, band C, band D, band D, band F, or.

• 24:43Martin Lewis?

  Plus which council you are, because the council sets the charge. Based on the bands in the area you live. So two neighbouring councils may have very different band D charges. And, and because one council is more expensive, you know, classically, London is, tends to be cheaper and Westminster is the cheapest of the lot. And so it's band D's in Westminster or band F's in Westminster can be paying more than band C's in other parts of the country. But which band you're in. Was originally dictated by Second Gear Valuations in 1991. So let's take this back. Adrian, you've got grey hair. I've got grey hair. We are old enough to remember. In 1989, the ratable system was replaced by the poll tax. Maybe you could give me a music reference for the time. That always helps people know the date,

• 25:24Martin Lewis?

  but I don't do music, so I can't help. What was around in 1989? I tell you what, so I'm going to 1991.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  In excess, were they about then?

• 25:32Martin Lewis?

  I'm going to 1991, which is, so then the poll tax rights came. And then, which was a big thing that young people won't remember, which was about the way that, and then they decided to replace the poll tax with the council tax in 1991, which I think is when "I'll sit down, I'll sit down, sit down next to me", by James, came in, I'm guessing 1991, which I'm very proud of my music reference. So, the way they did it, because they urgently had to bring this council tax system into place and assess the bands, was they had a stopgap valuation that was nicknamed Second Gear Valuation, because they had estate agents in cars with a clipboard of the number of bedrooms, driving past in second gear going, "Band C, Band D, Band E",

• 26:15Martin Lewis?

  that stopgap valuation back in 1991 is still what values all the homes in England and Scotland. Wales has revalued since. So, where are fundamental errors of up to 400,000 houses? So you ask, "Is my ex-council house?", well, it depends on what it was worth back in 1991. Now, I have a full check and challenge system, people I'm sure will be able to find for themselves, where you can read whether you are in the right or the wrong band on this one. It's also worth remembering on council tax, are you entitled to discounts? Single adult discount, if you're the only adult in your house. People who don't count as adults are under 18, full-time students. So if you're one adult in the house, you're entitled to a 25% discount. Some people with disabilities can get the bands dropped at a level. Carers may be able to get a discount in certain circumstances.

• 27:00Martin Lewis?

  And the big one, people with a severe mental impairment, that's an impairment of social functioning. It could be dementia, it could be severe Parkinson's, a severe stroke, and who are eligible for certain benefits, including non-means-tested benefits. They can be disregarded for council tax purposes. In other words, they don't count as an adult, so they would get the discounts. And that is massively under-publicised. I've been campaigning on that. Again, we've got so much to get through, I won't go in detail. But if that rings a bell, look up, horrible name, look up severe mental impairment council tax discount.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  On, uh, when you were casting around for a musical reference.

• 27:35Martin Lewis?

  Oh, yeah, go on.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  We need to work sometime, you and I. You can't have come across Paul, our producer, whose party trick, you can give him any date, I think in the last sixty years, and he'll tell you what was number one on that date.

• 27:47Martin Lewis?

  And well, I'm very regular, so I could tell you if I did a number one on that date, but I'm not sure I could do the actual number ones.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Anonymous, why can't council tax be spread over twelve months instead of ten?

• 27:57Martin Lewis?

  You have a legal right, if you ask them, that they can pay it over twelve months. We have this bizarre system that council taxes normally pay from April to January in ten months. Some people like it, because then, I, I had someone, someone said the other week on the show, I think it was in one of the tellers, that they then use those extra two months, the money they're not paying on council tax, to pay their car insurance, and to save it for the car insurance. Some like it as a budgeting tool, but you have a right, certainly in England and Wales, and I think in Scotland, I'm, I'm ninety percent in Scotland, I'm a hundred percent in England and Wales, that if you get in touch with your council, you can ask for it to be spread across twelve months instead of ten.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Tell us, then. The tell us is about outstanding customer service.

• 28:36Martin Lewis?

  Yeah, so the idea here is, we often moan and we berate, so we wanted to know, who gave you outstanding customer service? What did they do? Why was it so special? To shine a light on those who got it right. Do you want to start? I've got these notebooks.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Joe, got an email a couple of months ago, saying Sky was almost doubling the price of our broadband cord last week, spoke to a nice bloke who discounted it, and the TV packages, we're now paying twenty-five pounds less a month for the whole package, than we have been for the last two years. See, that ends up annoying me, that does.

• 29:05Martin Lewis?

  Well, I think you probably, I mean, first of all, I call that a haggle rather than good customer service, but there's a question, why did they charge you so much in the first?

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 29:11Martin Lewis?

  I'm going to go Claire. My dad died unexpectedly in twenty nineteen, and as we lived in a different area, we always used to stay at the Premier Inn in Oldham. The morning after he died, I couldn't face eating, so I gave my kids aged eleven and twelve, eleven pounds, the then cost of an adult breakfast, as kids eat free, and sent them to explain that mum didn't feel up to breakfast, but they could pay as kids eat free with an adult. The lovely staff let them eat and sent them back with all the money. That's nice.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Louise says the AA, uh, it's when she broke down while taking her cat Max to the vet after he'd been hit by a car. The AA made us a priority, and when the guy got there, he just said, get in, and took us straight to the vet. He then went back to the car, brought it to the vet, and waited till I could go home, and Max was okay, thank goodness.

• 29:58Martin Lewis?

  Kate. I had a lovely young lady in Fatface in Bath. Gave me a discount just for being kind. I was very touched. She'd had some particularly horrible customers that day, she said. That's nice.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Bose had a set of headphones for around three years. The ear cups had all wasted away due to use. I wrote explaining, I thought they should be more durable considering the quality and cost. Sent me the replacement parts free of charge, no hesitation. Saved me buying replacements.

• 30:27Martin Lewis?

  I, I'm just gonna do mine. I had, I had two in a trip. And we went to Orlando, we did, we did the Disney, we did the Universal Studio thing when my daughter was little. And on the Disney trip, she was having real problems with her shoes. She got a blister from her shoes and she was about five or six. So we went into a shop to ask if they had any, any shoes or sandals that she could replace. It was very hot, she was little. And they said, we don't in this one, but we'll give you, we'll give you a shuttle. I should note at this point, they had no clue who I was. Before anyone thinks it was one of those, it wasn't. In either of these cases, no clue in America whatsoever. So they said, we can shuttle you to our other store that does, this is on the sort of Disney campus type thing. They took us in a shuttle, uh, we got in there, we picked a pair of shoes.

• 31:11Martin Lewis?

  And we were going to pay for them. And the person who brought us in the shuttle said, no, no, no, no. We don't have unhappy people at Disney, you take the shoes. And I thought, you pay a lot to be there.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:21Martin Lewis?

  But that was good. And then the same, at Universal Studios, same trip. We went, it was a blistering hot day. We were in there for about half an hour and my little one said, it's too hot, I can't do it. And she was in tears. She'd been so excited about going but couldn't cope. So I went and I said, I went to the customer service and said, is there any way we can, we can change the ticket for another day? We've only just got here. And they said, let me check. And they checked what rides we'd been on, which was none.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:48Martin Lewis?

  And she said, as you've only just come through, I'm gonna give you a ticket for another day. And because we want you to have a good time. And they understood why. And then we came back two days later to go pick the tickets up. And they'd added fast tracks on with a note from the woman saying, it's important that you have a wonderful memory of Universal. Those fast track tickets were like $200 each. So, I mean, they know how to do customer service. They charge a lot, but they know how to do customer service.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  You know, I've got one.

• 32:13Martin Lewis?

  Go on.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Wheels on wheelie suitcases.

• 32:16Martin Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Right. This is lifetime guarantees and stuff, but a couple of occasions, the wheels have broken off the bottom of suitcase.

• 32:24Martin Lewis?

  It's not the first time someone said your wheels have come off.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  No, true, but you can, there is a website you go to, I think it's the same company does all of them. You, you, you find out the serial number of your bag, you tell them which, which wheels are knackered and then they just send you them free of charge, you screw them back on, it's good, isn't it?

• 32:42Martin Lewis?

  Really good service.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Really good service.

• 32:44Martin Lewis?

  There we are.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  I'm glad, I'm glad you said that.

• 32:46Martin Lewis?

  Thank you very much. Laura just had an ama-, I'm way naffer than you are. Laura just had an amazing service from a company called Zinc. My son had his scooter for three months and suddenly it broke when using it. The company arranged for it to be collected, they looked into the fault for safety and when satisfied it was a one-off, has sent me a brand new scooter. They kept in touch the entire time, followed up and maintained a really friendly and open attitude. Never had such great customer service. Not only did it make things easy for us to have the situation rectified, but we feel more confident in their product.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Nigel, says Martin Lewis, a few weeks ago, I asked on a post here if anybody knew anybody who'd won a higher value prize on the premium bonds. Guess what? No one replied. Don't you find that odd? I have my suspicions about this draw and I think someone should check that high value winners are genuine people. To see a certain bond winner is from North Yorkshire, who can be sure if it's true or not? Do we need an investigation?

• 33:45Martin Lewis?

  No, no, I, I, I, forgive me, but I just simply don't think that that's going on. I mean, it depends what you count as a high value winner, so let's just, shall we just do some stats?

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:55Martin Lewis?

  You're going to be blown away by these numbers. Do you know how many premium bond one million pounds prizes are won each month?

• 34:03Speaker 02

  No. Two.

• 34:05Martin Lewis?

  I just put my fingers up, so he didn't know everyone.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  I can count the number of fingers.

• 34:09Martin Lewis?

  So, so how many are given in a year?

• 34:12Speaker 02

  In a month, you said.

• 34:13Martin Lewis?

  There's two in a month.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Uh, that's two, that's two, that's twenty-four.

• 34:16Martin Lewis?

  Well done. I wasn't trying to make it hard.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  I've been a long day. I've been working on tariffs for so long. I don't know which way is up.

• 34:24Martin Lewis?

  So twenty four million pound prizes a year. How many premium bonds are, do you think there are out there? And so remember, what actually happens in the premium bonds is each one pound bond is put into the draw like a ticket. So you might have fifty thousand of them, but it's about the number of one pound bonds. How many premium bonds do you think there are?

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Fifty million? I don't know.

• 34:44Martin Lewis?

  Up.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Hundred million.

• 34:45Martin Lewis?

  Way up.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  A billion.

• 34:47Martin Lewis?

  Way up.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Ten billion.

• 34:49Martin Lewis?

  Way up.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Twenty billion.

• 34:51Martin Lewis?

  A hundred and twenty billion pounds worth.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Good god, that's incredible.

• 34:55Martin Lewis?

  The biggest single savings. So there are twenty four one pound. Twenty four million pound prizes. There are a hundred and twenty billion bonds. So if we do it on a single month, you've got a one in sixty billion chance of winning a big prize. So you asked on, on, uh, he asked on some social media. I don't know how many people were looking at his individual post. I don't know what people count as a high value prize. Certainly the one million is rare. The hundred thousand is pretty, pretty rare as well. So, no, I don't think it's a conspiracy theory thing. I think it's a mass thing. There are so many conspiracy theories about premium bonds. Do new bonds win more than old? No. Every one pound bond has the same, it's the same rate. The reason people think new bonds win more than old, there are a lot more new bonds.

• 35:39Martin Lewis?

  Cause now you can put fifty grand in. If you bought them thirty years ago, you were putting less in. Do they win in certain areas of the country more or not? Yes, cause certain areas of the country have more bonds than others. I mean, it is a random thing. I don't think we're being particularly duped on it. I mean, I don't like the actual product. I think it's only really good for those people who pay tax and all the savings have used up all their ISAs. Are paying tax on their savings rather, have used up all of their ISA allowance. Are higher or top rate taxpayers and can put the full fifty grand in. But I don't think we're being duped in the sense that they're not actually paying the prizes out. No.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Anita wants to know where she should put her daughter's child trust fund when she turns eighteen in a few months.

• 36:15Martin Lewis?

  Fascinating question. First of all, well done for tracking your daughter's child trust fund down. If your child was born between the first of September twenty, two thousand and two and January the second twenty eleven. So what, that's roughly what. Age fourteen to twenty-three, they would have got a child trust fund, the state would have put money in and parents could have added money too. There are hundreds of thousands of people who've lost track of those child trust funds. You can track them down on gov.uk. So if that's ringing a bell for you or for your child of that age, then go track it down. So well done for tracking it down. When your child trust fund matures, it will generally automatically be moved into an ISA. But it'll be in an ISA with the same product provider that you got your child trust fund with. So the first thing I would say is you should make an active choice to have it in the right

• 36:59Martin Lewis?

  place, not a default choice to have it move automatically into that place. And go and find whether it's the best stocks and shares provider for you, or whether it's the best cash ISA interest rates, which are paying up to 4.8% at the moment on a standard rate. Just read me the question again, the exact phrasing, because I'm at.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Where shall I put my daughter's child trust fund when she turns eighteen in a few months?

• 37:20Martin Lewis?

  Well, if I'm being very technical, absolutely nowhere. It's not your money, you can't deal with it, you have no right to do it. When your daughter is eighteen, it's your daughter's money and your daughter has to do this, if you understand the point I'm trying to make. But I will continue with the answer. There's a lifetime ISA, as long as you're not buying a property above £450,000. If she's going to buy a property at some point, your daughter in the future, you get a 25% boost from the state and whatever you save in there. So you could port up to £4,000 into a lifetime ISA and then the state would add £1,000 on top towards a first-time property and you can keep saving to that each year. It needs some more reading because there are caveats with the lifetime ISA, but it's worth reading and doing that. So they would be your two main options, or she could spend some of it, your daughter, if she chose to. There's nothing wrong with spending a little bit, but although it's providing a good nest egg for what she wants to do with it, the real answer depends on what she wants to do with it.

• 38:05Martin Lewis?

  Final note, if you have money in a child trust fund for your savings child trust fund, certainly move it to a junior ISA, do a transfer to a junior ISA. Top paying junior ISA at the moment is Coventry Building Society, that's not available to open online, in which case it's NSNI, the state-backed finance provider, both paying over 4% because child trust fund rates are much worse than junior ISAs and you're allowed to transfer them. It's basically the same thing, move across into a junior ISA.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  ISA questions. There's a looming deadline, which is, when's that?

• 38:38Martin Lewis?

  Well, this is Saturday, the 5th of April is the end of this tax year. So if you don't use your ISA allowance, you lose it because it does not carry over to the next tax year. But you do get a new tax allowance on the 6th of April. So you can put up to £20,000 in a shares ISA or in a cash ISA or some, sum up to a maximum £20,000 in both. And if you're going to be doing it, you may as well do it now and use this year's allowance just in case you get a windfall next year that you weren't expecting, even if you don't think you got the money to put in next year's allowance.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  So when Nicole asks if she's too late to open an ISA for this tax year, she's not?

• 39:10Martin Lewis?

  No, but get your skates on Nicole. I don't know. When you're listening to the podcast, get your skates on as quickly as possible if it's before Saturday. On Saturday, there are only limited providers who'll still let you do it because for admin reasons it's take longer and you have to have the funds ready to get in there on Saturday at the very latest, Saturday, the 5th of April.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Louise wants to know how serious you think the government is in removing the savings ISA and offering only a stocks and shares ISA?

• 39:32Martin Lewis?

  I have not heard that proposed. What I have proposed is reducing the amount you can put in a cash ISA, but not reducing the amount you can put in a stocks and shares ISA. The common number suggested is a maximum £4,000 into a cash ISA. I think there is a level of seriousness on this. I know it's something the Chancellor has talked about.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  Where's it coming from? I mean,

• 39:52Martin Lewis?

  I mean, there are policy proposals. I know it's something the Chancellor has talked about. I'm just going to say that and then I'm going to move on. Okay. And I know it's something I was questioned at when I was giving evidence at the Commons Treasury Committee on lifetime ISAs, what I thought of it. What I thought of it is, is I think the reason it is being done is they want to encourage people to invest more. I think it will generally be a flop. We need to educate people of investment more rather than curtailing their ability to save tax free. I think all it'll do is get people really annoyed and then they'll have to continue to save, but they will pay tax on it. And they will, so I'm not sure it'll work, but I think we will find out in the budget in autumn. I think there is a plausible chance of them dropping the amount you can put in to cash ISAs. For

• 40:37Martin Lewis?

  anyone who's already got cash ISAs, I do not think you'll be affected. Many people are worried. It's what you can put in next year that will be the question, not what you've already put in and is already protected by cash ISAs from past years.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Okay. Steve wants to know if he can put 20K in an ISA a few days before the deadline. And get the full interest, four point two percent, he says, then close the ISA after you've taken out what will then be your twenty thousand eight hundred and forty pounds.

• 41:03Martin Lewis?

  No. Nice try. Interest, a nice, a nice is just a savings account. The tax year deadline is just, is just about how much you can put into that savings account at that point. Interest is calculated daily. So when you get four point two percent interest, what you actually get is one point zero four two to the power of one over three sixty five each day. So it's not quite a three hundred and sixty fifth of four point two percent. It's, but imagine it's that. You get paid that each day. So if you have it in for five days, you'll get five three hundred and sixty fifth of four point two percent for those five days. You don't suddenly give you a lump sum a year. It's just a savings account, works the same as other savings accounts, sorry.

• 41:47Martin Lewis?

  I like the question though, I like the concept.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Vex, can I open a pension for my eleven year old?

• 41:52Martin Lewis?

  Yes. You can put up to three thousand six hundred pounds in and as you'll be getting tax relief on that, it'll only cost you eighty percent of that. Yeah, so you can put in three thousand six hundred, which will cost you, once you take, because you get twenty percent tax relief on it, two thousand eight hundred and eighty pounds a year. You don't have to put that much in. That's the maximum you can put in and you will get the standard tax relief on pensions, which is effectively you get it from pre-tax income, even though your child isn't paying tax, or I assume your child isn't paying tax.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Debbie, when I get to state pension, can I claim it and continue to work?

• 42:27Martin Lewis?

  Yes.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Denise, is a private pension taxed?

• 42:32Martin Lewis?

  Private and state pension income is taxable. The only exception is when you take a private pension, twenty five percent of it can be taken as a tax-free lump sum. How you get that twenty five percent is complicated. We did last year on the Not the Martin Lewis podcast, a taking your pension money special. It's, please listen to that where I go through it step by step. I'm not going to do that here because it takes quite a long time. But yes, I mean, many people get confused about this. They say we're about to move into a situation where state pensions will be taxed. State pensions are, there's no such thing as will be. Taxed, there's are they taxable or are they not taxable? State pension income is taxable, but you most people get a £12,570 personal allowance, an amount you can earn tax free and their state pension doesn't hit to that.

• 43:17Martin Lewis?

  But if you have a state pension and other income, it's all added together. And whatever you earn over £12,570 is taxed now, it's, you know, you will be taxed now. So state pension has always, as far as I can remember, been taxable and pension income, barring the 25% lump sum, is taxable. The issue is there are many pensioners who don't earn over their tax free allowance.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Dawn, please can you explain why I'm on the lower pension due to my workplace opting out? I was unaware and missing years are before the date allowed to make up any payments. I've worked full time all my life, still working at 73 and have paid in all my life.

• 43:54Martin Lewis?

  So yeah, do listen back to the podcast a couple of weeks ago. Many people on boosting your state pension if you're aged between 40 and 73. There's a massive deadline this Saturday. You lose the ability to buy back any missing years from 2008, 2006 to 2018. Now, that question is about contracting out, not opting out. Contracting out is, let me keep it simple, where many people are advised, some workplaces did it for them, many people chose to do it, there's a whole mix, that you said, I'm going to reduce the amount of national insurance I pay, so I will get a lower state pension in future, but the excess national insurance will be put into a private pension instead. So what happened is you didn't pay the full national insurance, you paid less, but some

• 44:38Martin Lewis?

  of the money went into a private pension for you. So that's why you're going to get a lower state pension, because it went into a private pension. You, you can't, you couldn't have topped up those years, even if they were in the right time, because you probably paid, unless you didn't pay the, have a full year of earnings. But because you paid the full national insurance, just some of it was diverted elsewhere. So the really big question is, do you have access to that private pension? There are many people who contracted out, didn't really understand it, didn't know they were investing in a private pension or had a private pension set up to invest in, and haven't got that private pension. Now, there is a pension tracing service on gov.uk where you can go and try and find those old pensions. So the big message to anyone who contracted out, didn't understand it and didn't know they had a second pension is, find the pension.

• 45:22Martin Lewis?

  You might have tens of thousands of pounds sitting in it.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Karen, so I've done a pension forecast and it says I cannot improve. And I will get the full state pension. In other words, so.

• 45:32Martin Lewis?

  In other words, she might have had some missing years, I don't know. But that when she goes to the state pension forecast, it says she's, well, currently it's just gone up to around two hundred and thirty one pounds a week. So it just went up this week from two hundred and twenty one pounds. So it's predicting she'll get the full state pension, so she doesn't need to buy back any missing national insurance.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  She says, I'm nearly sixty one. My question is, if I retire early, will I still get the full pension at sixty seven as a contribution will obviously stop between now and whenever she retires in sixty seven.

• 46:05Martin Lewis?

  Possibly and possibly not. So that is an urgent call if you've got missing years. If you're, so when you go to the state pension forecast on gov.uk, what it's looking at is predicting if you continue to work until your state pension age. Would you have enough to get the full state pension? What we don't know is if you stop work this year, so you had missed your last five years of work, whether you already have enough to get the full state pension. Now, it may detail that for you in there, it may not. I would certainly be calling the, your age, it is the, because it's a different, there's two different ones, it's the Future Pension Service.

• 46:45Martin Lewis?

  And they will, you will not get an answer right now, so you're going to need, and I've got it on the information I have put out, I'm not allowed to say where I've put it out, but you can work out where I put out information. There's a callback request form that if you do that now, you'll still be able to buy back any missing years after the fifth of April, once the deadline's gone. Go do that callback request form absolutely urgently, because you need to ask that question. Do I need to buy any missing years now, assuming you've got missing years to get the full state pension? If the answer's no, you're fine. If the answer's yes, well, there's a fifth of April deadline for all those years between two thousand and six to twenty eighteen.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Elaine, is there anything I can do to claim national insurance credits for twelve missing years as a stay at home mum? My husband's income was too high to claim child benefit at the time, and I didn't realise you had to register for it anyway to get the NI contributions. I'm not in a position to buy back the missing years.

• 47:35Martin Lewis?

  So, this is a question of backdating ability. If your husband had claimed the child benefit while he was working, you would be able to transfer those national insurance credits for childcare to you. That's the wrong person claim, that the working person shouldn't claim, the non-working person. You are in the didn't claim bracket. There is very limited backdating available. Remember, you only get national insurance credits for children under the age of 12. If you're looking after children under the age of 12 anyway. There's very limited backdating available. I'll be off the top of my head, I think it's only about a year. So you might want to go and check out whether you can do a backdated claim for that. If it's a long time ago, I think you may well be timed out, I'm afraid.

• 48:19Speaker 02

  Lucy's got one on car insurance paying monthly. If a company takes too many payments, so the credit is paid over a short amount of time, should the interest recalculate and payments change or does it stay the same?

• 48:34Martin Lewis?

  So basically, if you've paid off a debt, I mean, car insurance paid monthly is a loan. Forget the car insurance. What happens is there's an annual car insurance fee and then they give you a loan with an interest rate to pay it each month. So then you've got two products, if you like. You've got the car insurance, you've got a loan to pay off that you're then repaying. If they've taken your money more quickly than they should have done, then absolutely you should be paying less interest. That's what she's suggesting, isn't it? They've taken it too quickly, did I understand it right?

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:59Martin Lewis?

  Then absolutely should be paying more interest. You should make a formal complaint to them. If not, you should take them to the Financial Ombudsman Service. You should also ask why they're taking payments when they shouldn't. Sounds like abominable behaviour to me. But yes, interest is a function, the amount of interest you pay is a function of the level of your debt, the interest rate and how long you owe that debt. As you haven't owed it for as long, the amount you pay should be less.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Shirley wants to know when you're standing for Prime Minister. Well, all I want to say to you, Martin, if that happens, I don't want a responsible job. I just want to be your bagman and kind of... Enforcer, I just want to follow you around, just tending to your every need, just holding your bag, sort your computer around, getting your snacks, that kind of thing.

• 49:46Martin Lewis?

  I've said it before, Adrian, I would prefer to have my nipples wired to electrodes, and not in a good way, than to be Prime Minister. If you want, it's very, I get it quite a lot, which is very flattering, thank you very much. I know it's meant in a flattering way, although one could argue that suggesting someone should be Prime Minister means you really don't like them, because who would want that job? A couple of reasons why I wouldn't be any good. One, remember my job right now is, I am a biased journalist. I am pro-consumer bias, declared pro-consumer bias, I don't put the case of business, I don't balance, I don't do anything like that, I'm an agenda-focused campaigning journalist with a bias towards consumers. Politicians have to balance, you have to balance the industry's economy and business and all

• 50:30Martin Lewis?

  that, I would have to do the same as many of the others, I might do it better, some might think I might do it worse, but I'd pretty soon be hated. And the second, number two, I wouldn't do it to my family. And number three, my mental health is nowhere near enough, robust enough to put up with what politicians have to, it's bad enough being in the public eye, and you know, I get lots of nice messages, but I might have thin skin, and when I hear bad ones, I can't go through. How I could have professional opposition, oh my, can you imagine? Professional, Mastermind's bad enough on this show, isn't it?

• 50:59Speaker 02

  It is, absolutely.

• 51:00Martin Lewis?

  But imagine actual professional opposition. So, well, I thank you for the compliment. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 51:07Martin Lewis?

  I think I should probably stop you at this point, you've been asking me lots of questions. It's time for me to ask you one.

• 51:21Martin Lewis?

  So, Adrian, the current Mastermind score is you've got eight right, woo, and 14 wrong in this three-option multiple choice. Now, I need to tell you folks, fed up of his dismal Mastermind score, last week, Adrian decided he needed to escape everything fiscal, and decamped somewhere old school, where consumer rights regulatory, where consumer rights, regulatory rules, and credit cards wouldn't plague him. On a whim, he realised the perfect place, and excitedly booked a trip to Prague, but was very disappointed to find that the Czech Republic was misnamed, and he still had to pay on plastic.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Good, great.

• 52:00Martin Lewis?

  I told you, it's hard writing one each week, mate, it's hard.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  It's hard listening to them, I tell you.

• 52:06Martin Lewis?

  So Adrian, now back to earth with a bump. A very simple question, you know me, it's always a simple question, it's the answer that's difficult. Does the amount of times you check your credit file and or credit score impact your credit worthiness, or in common parlance, your credit score? Does the amount of times you check your credit file or credit score impact your actual credit score? A, yes, positively. B, yes, negatively. Or C, no.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Oh, well surely not negatively, please tell me not.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Positively.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  I think it should be neutral, but positively yes.

• 52:54Martin Lewis?

  You're going to go for yes, but why, why?

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Because.

• 53:00Martin Lewis?

  Show me your working.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  My working is because I assume whoever cares about these things is interested in how seriously you take your credit worthiness. So you care about it enough to check it up, see if it's in rude health, it's like caring for a puppy.

• 53:20Martin Lewis?

  I mean, I think there's a perfectly valid argument that people who look at their credit score, I mean, if you were doing it on actual risk in insurance, that would work. Because the fact that you check your credit score would show that you're, you tend to be a better credit score and you're more concerned about it and you would manage it better. But equally, it would then, the negative for doing it that way, whether they do or they don't, would be that then it would promote people paying for credit scoring services which they don't need to. So first of all, let me set your mind at risk, the answer is not yes negatively.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:47Martin Lewis?

  Nor is it yes positively.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:52Martin Lewis?

  So you got it wrong, the answer is no, but this is a common confusion because. The fact you have checked your credit score, a bit like the fact you've used an eligibility calculator, does go on your credit file, but it goes in the soft search section of your credit file. There are two types of searches, a hard search and a soft search. A soft search is one that you will see on your credit file, but lenders can't use in assessing your creditworthiness. A hard search is a proper mark on your credit file, and too many hard searches in a short space of time can be negative because it looks like you're desperate to try and find credit. So generally, those type of the more advanced products, checking your credit score, doing an eligibility calculator, you always want

• 54:36Martin Lewis?

  it to be a soft search if you possibly can, because then you can check and you could evaluate and you can search what the market is doing without it impacting you. But that did impact you negatively, Adrian, because the score is now you have eight right and 15 wrong.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Poor. Julie, let's just finish with a tell us.

• 54:55Martin Lewis?

  Sure.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Julie says, "I have a hard floor cleaner and stupidly, stupidly put the dirty wash container in the dishwasher which came out distorted and wouldn't fit into the machine anymore. I rang customer services, hoped to buy another container and filter, but to my amazement, they sent it to me free of charge." I remember a colleague who used to work for a McKinsey, the management consultant, said to me once, they'd done this research, and that you are something like three times as likely to be loyal to a company if you've had a complaint with them, which they've resolved, as against whether you've never had a complaint at all against them.

• 55:34Martin Lewis?

  Even fascinating, I used to be involved with a complaints tool called Resolver. And what they found is often people who had a complaint, it was dealt with properly and dealt with well, with someone who listened and understood. And it was then rejected, but explained to them why the rejection was and it was a legitimate reason for their complaint to be rejected would give it a higher praise and a higher loyalty score with those who had had bad treatment, but the complaint was resolved in their favour.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  Amazing, yeah. It just shows you, but then...

• 56:08Martin Lewis?

  Because we just want to be treated like we're human beings. I mean, that's what it's all about. You just want somebody to listen to you. It's very interesting how it works, but I would say, and if a rather cynical way to finish, but probably a good way to finish. For me, customer service is a function of profitability. So companies invest more in good customer service. You know, it is a way of bringing in customers. It could potentially bring in price. It's a function of profitability. Another option is you go no frills, you go absolutely cheap as chips and you compete only on price. And, you know, I often, when I'm reviewing, say, travel insurance, I have different categories. I have no frills and I have value, good value. No frills means you're just getting the, you've got to understand you're getting bog standard basics, belt and braces stuff, rather than getting the whole works.

• 56:52Martin Lewis?

  And it's important to understand what you want beforehand. I mean, if you get both, happy days.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Martin, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much indeed.

• 57:04Martin Lewis?

  That's it for this week. If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast and why not suggest they subscribe to keep up to date and then both your and their pockets will be pleased with you. If you haven't enjoyed it, then why not tell them you were listening to No Such Thing as a Fish podcast? Let me know if you think that's better than our podcast. It probably has better puns. I'm afraid I would like to apologise for my pun content this week. It has been particularly poor, although I have enjoyed it.

• 57:35Speaker 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.

• 58:12Speaker 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.

• 58:28Speaker 03

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

• 58:32Speaker 04

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

• 58:36Speaker 02

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

• 58:42Speaker 04

  Love a cup of tea.