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Debit cards are a million times safer than credit cards.

Interesting that parent was downmodded, even though it is more or less true. Credit cards use an inherently unsafe system secured only by the knowledge of a few numbers, whereas debit card transactions (EFTPOS) always require authorisation by the bank, entry of a PIN code that is verified remotely and nowadays almost always use a chip on the card (EMV). Moreover, a credit card charge is limited only by the maximum credit the card was issued for, while a debit card transaction is limited by the account balance.

Maybe where you're from, but here in the UK both my credit cards (along with both my debit cards) have chip and PIN which are verified online. It's standard here; there's no difference between the two.

Furthermore, under UK consumer credit law, if you buy something that's worth more than £100 using a credit card (even if you only pay 1p of that amount on the credit card), the credit card company becomes jointly liable with the supplier if something goes wrong; this can be invaluable if, for example, you buy flights or a new kitchen from a company that subsequently goes bust. (See here for examples.) UK debit cards DO NOT have this legal protection. Also, in the case of a fradulent transaction, I'd far rather it was taken from my credit card (where I can pay off the minimum and argue the fraud later), then clearing out my main bank account via my debit card. These reasons may be why the grandparent was modded down.

Nobody cares if a credit card is skimmed. That's oney belonging the credit card company that's been stolen; You're not liable. They either reclaim the money from the vendor, or they get it covered by insurance.

This is why you should always use a credit card for large purchases, even in part, and when purchasing online. Not only do you have whatever protections you receive from local legislation, you also have the extra protection of the credit card company. It's UK law, but check out Section 75 Consumer Credit Act 1974 There are other protections for fraudulent transactions.

They did that before the layout change too. Even I got tricked by them for a while. Never gave them any money, but they frustrated me quite a bit, as the information I wanted wasn't there. They looked like the government websites I was used to - same layout, same fonts, same colour theme - so it took me quite a few minutes to force my eyes onto the URL and realise that it's a $placeholder-gov.co.uk website instead of the $placeholder.gov.uk I expected.

It's gotten so bad that it warranted some press attention.

However, not everything is better in Europe: a glass of water might cost €2

In England restaurants and bars which sell alcohol are legally obliged to serve free tap water to their customers.

According to http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/tap-water-rights that is not true.

They claim that restaurants that are licensed to sell alchol in england scotland and wales are obliged to provide free tap water but that restaurants in northern ireland and restaurants that are not licensed to sell alchol are not. Furthermore while they can't charge for the water itself they apparently can charge for the "service" and the "use of the glass".

I was about to reply with a post about "...but here in the EU (unlike the US IIRC), PayPal *is* classified as a bank and therefore has to comply with much stricter legistlation than they appear to have to do in the US".

But in looking for a citation I found these:
http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?391236-Paypal-freezing-closing-accounts
http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?235225-Paypal-claim-and-the-small-claims-court...
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=2198081&page=1

Glad to see my initial "PayPal are an utter shower of bastards" estimation all those years ago still seems to be true.

The system of prepaid cards with fees is not the perfect solution for poor workers. But it is better than the old system of paying them with checks. Free checking is not available in most banks.

Then why not fix that problem? You also enable poor people to pay bills electronically, buy things online, etc.

British banks have to* offer a "basic bank account", which has no fees (as normal in the UK) but doesn't allow any borrowing, and so doesn't require a credit check. If you have a valid identity document, and don't have "multiple convictions for fraud", you can get one: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/basic-bank-accounts

It's not that well publicised. For a while, I lived with some Eastern European immigrants in a cheap flatshare in London. They were keeping cash under the bed, but they all were able to open a basic account.

*As is often the case in the UK, instead of a law or regulation the industry is doing something on the understanding that if they didn't, there'd be a regulation, and it'd be worse for them.

Here's a good impartial look from somebody who understands debt: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-tuition-fees-changes

Point 8

"Many people worry that with the much higher levels of student debt, cash will be too tightly squeezed to live on once post-2012 starters graduate. Yet actually, today's university starters will have MORE cash in their pockets each month than those students who've just graduated. Graduates who started their course before Sept 2012, repay 9% of everything earned above £15,795. Those starting in 2012 and beyond see that increased to £21,000. That means those earning above the £21,000 threshold have £470-a-year more in their pockets than now."

Point 20

"The maximum possible loan combining tuition fees and maintenance is £16,675 a year; £50,000 over a three-year course. This is a frightening amount, and indeed many are frightened of it. Yet it's important to not just jump at this figure, but look at it in regards to how much of that you'll actually have to repay. In fact, when you examine this debt, it's far more like an additional tax than a loan for the following reasons:
It's repaid through the income tax system
You only repay it if you earn over a certain amount
The amount repaid increases with earnings
It does not go on credit files
Debt collectors will not chase for it
Bigger borrowing doesn't increase repayments
Many people will continue to repay for the majority of their working life"

Cash works here, but I'd rather use a card if the store accepts one, because it's more convenient for me. Cash involves trips to the ATM, bulking out my wallet with coins, and hopefully having appropriate denominations for the purchase at hand (a £20 note seems a bit much for a 60p purchase, while a collection of 10p and 5p pieces is going to be annoying if it's £5). If it gets stolen, it's essentially guaranteed lost, which means I shouldn't carry a lot of it at once, whereas if my card gets stolen, I can hopefully cancel it before it's used by the thief, which Chip and PIN makes more difficult. There are also additional protections afforded for purchases on credit cards, and my credit card offers 1% cashback. Yes, it would be stupid to run up credit card debt, but that's easy to avoid by paying the full balance each month.

I'll pay by cash if I have to, but I'd much rather pay by card, which means I always have the right amount to hand and I get nothing back but a receipt.

A little help:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/consumer-rights-refunds-exchange

Like many things, medical regulations are often designed to protect the people who are unable, for whatever reason, to take care of themselves. Someone like yourself is probably responsible enough and qualified enough to handle your own medication and measurement of the side effects. However, for every responsible and educated person like yourself, there will be several people who aren't responsibile and educated enough to self-medicate. There are also many people who, in the absense of a prescription system, would accept drug advertising as fact, and proceed to self-diagnose, and then buy and apply inappropriate medications. I would like to see a system where people like yourself can opt-out and self-medicate to a large degree, but the system also needs to recognise that the majority of peole are not educated well enough to be given uncontrolled access to the contents of a modern pharmacy, and that we don't want a return to the era of unqualified quack-doctor-advertisements telling patients that random drug X will "help" cure their cancer.

(Incidentally, I came across this interesting blog post recently : A blog in support of stupid people’s rights. The list of "stupid" people probably includes a large number of the population at some time in their lives).

Not exactly...
What the retailer offers is irrelevant, they can make additional offers but they cannot take away your statutory rights under the law... They will often try to claim otherwise, but this is only because most people aren't aware of their rights and capitulate.

Some good reading is available at:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/consumer-rights-refunds-exchange

In particular, within 6 months it is the responsibility of the retailer to prove that the goods were not defective when bought... A lot of retailers will argue, but soon capitulate if you quote your rights and threaten to take them to the small claims court.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/consumer-rights-refunds-exchange#goods

Read the bit about the Limitations Act etc.

Can you point to this in legislation? I believe the GP is right, everything I've seen in the Sale of Goods Act and Consumer Protection Act seems to suggest 6 months statutory burden on the seller to prove user fault, and after 6 months on the buyer. Most companies if you push it wont ask you to prove you weren't at fault though because they know full well that you weren't and that in pushing it to that point could escalate their costs as they may then face small claims court costs, costs for time and money spent trying to get them to accept fault etc. too.

John Lewis isn't just accepting a legal minimum with their 2 years at all, they're just saying that they'll accept fault assuming there is no obvious evidence of user damage no questions asked and deal with the problem up to 2 years. It just gives you piece of mind that they wont try and shirk their obligations by trying to shift burden of proof of cause of fault onto you, which is something you don't have with the likes of Dixons group stores.

I had a look for the 2 year period you mention but can find absolutely no evidence of it in the acts themselves:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/54

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1987/43

Further, all of the consumer advice organisation seem to be agreeing with the 6 months, and again no mention of 2 years so I'm not sure where you dug up the 2 years figure from:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/consumer-rights-refunds-exchange

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_world/consumer_affairs/buying_goods_your_rights.htm

http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/sale-of-goods/understanding-the-sale-of-goods-act/your-rights/

Six months doesn't sound great, but in practice it works well, I've had a leather office chair replaced outright by Staples after 2.5 years because the pump went on it because they knew it should last longer than that, and similarly my Dell laptop was replaced at 3 years and 1 month with a newer model because it was high end and should've lasted longer and they knew they couldn't just shirk it off as "out of warranty now". The maximum period for a claim is 6 years.

Again, the survey was done in Britain.

Hardly any British people need to keep a house heated while they're away. Hardly anywhere does it get so cold that you need the heating on before you get home, though it might be more comfortable. In any case, you simply set the timer so the heating starts 15/30 minutes before you get home, there's no point leaving it on all day.

The average British car uses 6.2L/100km, the average commute is 28km (round trip). That's 1.7 litres of fuel (of course, plenty of people don't drive to work). I can't find any decent figures for heating, but people with oil heating (not very common) seem to use well over 2L per day (e.g. here, and he's presumably trying to save money).

P.S. Opening your windows loses heat. Glass lets the solar radiation in, but traps the heated air. Hence the "greenhouse effect".

PS. If you're in the UK & feel the time has come to save some money (including beating airline surcharges), Martin Lewis' site has saved us hundreds of pounds over the years & it's well worth subscribing to his weekly email newsletter. And much as I despise the plasticity of breakfast TV, it is worth catching his regular appearances on GMTV in the morning.

My current account is with an "ethical" bank anyway (no investing in arms, oil, etc), so I'm clearly not too interested in making heaps of money :-).

I did apply for a card with better cashback, but they rejected me. They've since discontinued that card, so probably I shouldn't have worried about my credit rating.

This site is a good resource for Brits.

You can't clone a chip, period. The devices which read them are tamper resistant and tamper evident. It's not been cracked yet. It's been done really well - unsurprisingly, because the stakes are so high.

Really?

You'd better tell the people whose chip cards have been cloned.

And Google turns up rather a lot of reported incidents of chips and their readers being compromised on a grand scale. Here are just the first three I found:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2963534/Three-fraudsters-jailed-for-elaborate-petrol-station-credit-card-scam.html

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/Cards-compromised-in-petrol-station.4870282.jp

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1025761

By next week many people may have signed up with AT&T whom, had they known, would have waited to check for better deals / a preferred carrier.

Don't hold your breath though. The situation in the UK after the iPhone recently became non-exclusive is a bunch of remarkably similar deals, the only notable exception being that Tesco offers a 12 month contract.

In the past I have taken advantages of misprices, getting a couple of Dimension desktops with good specs (for then) for really really low prices. For about £100 I picked up a Dimension P4 HT 3GHz/1GB/120GB SATA for about $150). I knew I was in a legal grey area. If I got it great, if I didn't well nothing lost.

The trick with Dell is to get the order confirmation. Once you have that, Dell wont argue at all.

But to start a class action suit because you tried to take advantage of a mistake is not really good sportsmanship, in my opinion, just getting greedy.

By the way, if you are in the uk, and want to know of the "whoopsie" deals, check out Moneysaving Expert Forums The dell deals are almost always on here within 10 minutes of going live.

How about fraudulent WoW upgrades to Blizzard, like just hit my card? I had to cancel.

This is a crappy site:

    http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.htm l?t=450004

but apparently others have had the same problem.

I work for one of the major UK banks in their customer service department. We daily get flooded with calls from people who have been hit with massive charges for being merely a few pounds (or even pence) over their overdraft limit. The company line we spout is that the UK is the only country in the world where you bank for free and that we believe its fair to pass charges for services along to customers who don't run their account within the terms and conditions, rather than make the majority of our customers pay to bank with us.

Personally, I think the charges are excessive, and that people should do everything they can to claim them back. The forthcoming results of the Office of Fair Trading's investigation into the charges should help them, and make our lives a lot easier as well. One of the biggest problems is that since people in the UK are not used to paying any fees for a bank account, they see it as a service they are entitled to, rather than a business. Banks are out to make money, however possible and see a breach of your terms and conditions as an ideal opportunity to do so. If the OFT forces charges to lower though, we may see an end to free banking in the UK.

To anyone who's been charged, check out Martin Lewis's website http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/
There's some good advice about how to go about claiming charges back. Just remember that the person on the other end of the line probably agrees with you about the charges, so don't give them a hard time!

This is a recognised way of making money out of CC's in the UK - http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews. cgi?newsid1076883546,34894,

Don't know who modded you funny.. It's a genuinely serious problem! :(

There was a campaign to get loan ads off of kids tv at http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/

In UK http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/

In US http://www.dealmein.net/

Basically people sharing bargains they spotted, misprices on websites, etc.

r.

Martin Lewis' site has some good tips and interesting forums.

Moneysavingexpert, covers lots of things, from cheap phone calls and mobiles to the best ISAs. UK Only of course.