Off Topic

Link: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/

Did you know that many banks act illegally when dealing with your account, when you are in credit there is often no problem but as soon as you miss a payment, fall on hard times and cant pay for any length of time then all sorts of illegal and bad practices emerge from the woodwork.

MBNA appear to be the worst offenders according to the Consumer Action Group forum.

Banks can not expect you to pay back more than you can reasonably afford.
Banks can not encourage you to take out more credit to pay your debts.
Banks are not allowed to harass you.

MBNA as well as many others do all 3 of the above and other unethical and illegal practices.

They will bully you into taking secured loans and borrowing from friends, they will harass you buy ringing you up to 5 times a day they will give you ultimatums to meet or your life will be very difficult and possible loss of your house and belongings.
They will give you offers that seem too good to be true, they are too good to be true you must watch every word they write and imply.

Example when you have a few months problem payments they will put you through to loans direct, MBNA will earn commission from the referral, if you take out the loan you can very easily lose your home if you do not keep up repayments.

MBNA will offer you a chance to settle your account by offering an amazing deal, pay cash lump sum of 30% and they will not chase you for the rest of the payment, they will mark it as “partial settlement” with the credit agencies, sounds good? if you put the payment on another credit card you have 1/3 of your bill to pay and the rest is written off? nope you have moved the debt to another card another bad debt to your credit history if you don’t keep up payments, what’s more MBNA will sell the remainder of your debt to a debt collection agency and they will chase you for the other 2/3 plus interest.

MBNA will try anything to get payment out of you whether you can afford it or not, their staff are on commission and will use any means possible to get you to pay them, as soon as they see you are having problems paying they will whack the interest rate as high as they can 34% is the norm, the reason they do this is so they can get as much cash out of your account as possible when they sell the debt to the debt collection agency

MBNA and other credit card companies have flaws in their armour that can be exploited to reduce and sometimes eliminate the whole debt, if you visit the Consumer Action Group forum you can receive personal help (almost real-time) to avoid the Banks scams and make life a lot easier and safer for you.

The Consumer Action Group forum is free, it is run by people who have or are successfully challenging the banks.

Link: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk

The Banks are ripping off the less fortunate members of the public illegally, read this forum its free and gives information on how to get your money back, you hear from real people who have done it and how they did it.

Currently the site boasts.

Total Bank Charges Returned : £16595128 to 9717 people.

have a look and add yours to that total.

The Consumer Action Group - Reclaim the Right as a consumer and reclaim your unfair bank charges! Free site with letter templates and helpful forum.

Free money saving advice for everyone who reads this post.

How much does it cost to fix my computer? that is a question that most people ask when they contact us here at Bristol and Bath Home Computers! for about 75% of our customers that contact us it is FREE, we can and will fix your computer FREE for 75% of our callers, that is a fact.

Why and how can we afford to do that?

The simple reason is if we do not need to visit you for a repair we will not charge you, if we decide you need a visit to rectify your problem you can rest assured that the only way to fix your computer is if we come and have a look, we do not and will not pay you a visit if we can talk you through rectifying your problem over the phone.

If you have a problem with your computer give us a ring, you may well be one of the 75%, if your not then you choose if you want us to visit you and correct your problem.

If you want someone to come and have a look and hopefully repair your computer there are many people who can do that, most offer a no repair no fee option.
If you want someone to come around and repair your computer then call us, we do not need the no repair no fee option, with us failure is not an option we can fix it!

You do not want different engineers coming to your door you want one who can fix it.

You can call us for any reason, to help remedy a fault, for advice on purchasing, or just a computer chat, we are a local Bristol number and eager to help, call Steve 0117 9071966.

One of the easiest ways of saving money around the house is to purchase low energy light, bulbs, for the equivalent amount of light as the conventional filament light bulbs you are using about a quarter of the electricity, If you normally spend £400 a year on lighting just by fitting these bulbs you will only be spending £100, not bad if you ask me.

When the energy saving bulbs were first introduced they were about £10 to £15 each, the price dropped to around £8 but at the same time Ikea had the same bulb for 99p or £1.49 for the 100w equivalent, needless to say I bough loads of them from Ikea, Ikea also had a demonstration where they had about 25 of each bulb on and a meter showing how much electricity was used, a bit extravagant and a waste of our valuable resources but it certainly proved a point.

Nowadays the price of these bulbs has decreased considerably as well as their physical size so the low energy bulbs can be used almost everywhere a conventional bulb can be used, the price of these bulbs has also reduced considerably, most supermarkets sell these bulbs for 99p or under, I bought 5 from a Morrison’s when I was on holiday because they were 59p each.

The best price I can find for low energy light bulbs on our shopping portal was 75p, you may or may not get it cheaper elsewhere but 75p is a good price if you ask me and the money you can save is phenomenal, take a looky here.

You must have noticed the prices of almost everything going up in the supermarkets, despite roll backs and special offers and whatever the chosen supermarket decides to call their deal of the moment over all the price of a weeks shopping is going up.

There have been shops springing up all over the place for a few years now that appear to be cheaper than the rest, the ones I can think of are Aldi, Lidl and maybe not so obvious Iceland.

Iceland
I will start with Iceland, This is a great place, most of the food is frozen so you need a freezer to store your food but the food is cheap, a lot cheaper than the major supermarkets, ready meals for as little as a pound as well as other food for meals at £1, or £2 a packet, some of the food is formed for example formed chicken breasts using pieces of chicken shaped to look like a real chicken breast, although this is a bit of a cheat you still have 4 tasty chicken pieces for a pound or two as part of a meal, they will also deliver free if you spend over £25.

A for a store locator click here
Their website can be located by clicking here

Lidl
I went to Lidl the other day, Had a quick look around, a lot of familiar food at a fraction of the normal supermarket price, not all well known brands but I have no doubt they are just as good quality, not everything is cheaper there so you need to know prices that you would normally pay, lots of 2 for one and other discounts on all sorts of items food, coffee makers as well as other equipment.

A store locator is available by clicking here
Their website is available here
You can sign up for their newsletter and get regular emails about their special offers.

Aldi
I haven’t tried Aldi I will one day but Lidl is closer and next to the bank I use so more convenient, I am sure they offer the same as Lidl.

Store locator available by clicking here
And their website here
Aldi also have a newsletter you can sign up for for regular updates on special offers.

Always worth trying these places you can save a lot of money from your weekly shop.

Please let me know about any other supermarkets that give you good discounts as a comment.