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

23:48And it's only in the middle of March. Our Loughlin says wholesale prices for energy are cheaper now than before the Russian-Ukraine war. I'm not sure that's strictly true, but that's certainly lower than they were at the peak of the Russian-Ukraine war. yet prices are over three times more. And I'm just going to move it on to another question that this one's from Dan that I think interlinks with that. Is it time to break the linking of electricity prices to the price of gas? And if not, why not? Yeah. So two quick things. I think, first of all, you know, that first question, to a degree, was right.

24:19I mean, depending on the date you look at, wholesale prices have come down a lot. That's why you were so right earlier to be highlighting that right now, A fixed tariff will be cheaper than the price cap because the price cap was backward looking. We found this very rapid drop in wholesale. But that market is so volatile. It's perfectly possible there's some more tensions. You know, the peace process doesn't go well. There's so many variables in this. Which is why if it's cheaper on the day, you bag it on the day and cross your fingers it was the cheapest day. And if it wasn't, if it's still cheaper, it's still cheaper, you know.

24:52You don't know. You've locked it in. I would say, though, thanks to the price cap, at least when prices do come down, people get the benefit. sooner or later, which didn't used to happen, as we know. But I think the... So at the moment, you might say we're paying about 60 % more at our retail price than we were before the crisis, if you're looking at the cheapest fixes now. And so there's a whole bunch of new costs coming to the system, like that massively increasing cost for turning off wind farms, which is why it's good we've built renewables. It gives us energy independence. We're not so dependent on the global gas market.

25:26but we need to reform the market so that some of the benefits of that flow through to people. There's a particular thing we advocate called zonal pricing that would reduce energy costs by 3.7 billion a year just through operational savings, probably another 2 or 3 billion through infrastructure savings at least. Now that's how we get back to the kind of prices we experienced before the crisis. Now that's off my area but it is important to say that there are other energy firms who dispute the savings that you're suggesting in that method. It is a relatively divisive issue. It doesn't mean either one's right or wrong, and I'm not qualified to judge because I don't cover those wholesale markets.

26:01I just want to raise one more point. We had a professor on the show who was quite senior, who used to work in Shell and was buying, saying he says that the price cap of Gem is making a mistake by linking to the price cap to the price of European gas. And that isn't really the way that you could be buying it. And it could be a lot cheaper if we decoupled the off-gem setting the price cap on European gas. What do you think about that? Look, actually, UK gas prices for consumers are lower than most European countries at the moment at retail level. It's electricity that's our real problem. So I think, look, I mean, I'm focusing entirely on what we do to fix that very broken market.

26:38There may be some details in gas, but honestly, that's a side issue. You don't think it'd make much of a difference? It's a side issue. The big issue is the inefficiencies in our electricity market. And I think you asked about that decoupling gas from electricity. The thing I was advocating, which some incumbents don't agree with, but that would break the link to a large degree. At the moment, the way our electricity market works is the price is set every half hour by the most expensive unit of electricity generated anywhere in the country during that period of time. That 80 odd percent of the time is expensive gas.

27:13If we move to more locational pricing. Is that the price you pay? Yeah. That's the price that you pay. That's right. At any moment? Yeah, the wholesale price. And so that's not for people on fixes because you would have bought ahead? That's for people? No. So even when we're buying ahead, essentially the energy traders that lock the price in for us buying ahead and making their assumption of what the wholesale price is going to be. And they know that 80-odd percent of the time it is set according to the price of gas. Now, if we move to a more locational model with local supply and demand setting it, many areas wouldn't have the price of gas setting it within a given half hour so you break the linkage to a large degree So very important update for everybody who's listening we now have support in the room trying to get Greg's headphones working we're not quite there yet this is high-end drama everybody there's a very nice lady wearing a yellow t-shirt who's trying headphones as we speak I've learnt that the 5 Live button needs to be pressed on in the studio it's next to Snappy Nable which needed to be held down for two seconds to get it to come on but we still don't have headphones working.

28:17Adrian, speak to Greg. Let's cross our fingers. Will it work? Hello, Greg. Hang on. Oh, he's changing headphones. Those headphones... Say again. Say again. Hello, Greg. Yes. Yay! He's on the wrong headphones. He's going to have to stretch. I'm going to change his microphone, speak again, and let's see if it works. Hello, Greg. Hello, Adrian. Yay! How are you doing? It's beautiful. The best in public service broadcasting. As soon as you said the engineer had a yellow T-shirt on, those are the elites. They're the crack troops of engineering support there. I knew it would be fine then. We've got Leslie Button asking on Facebook, why do I have to pay a standing charge to be a customer?

28:56The argument that is to cover things like metres, fixed costs, etc. doesn't hold water. I don't have to pay Tesco a standing charge to cover their rates, building insurance, etc. So why do you have to do it with energy companies? Yeah, well, so first of all, you know, we've been very clear that standing charges have got out of all control. Most countries have some form of standing charge. And, you know, that, for example, we have to pay a daily rental for the meters. And there's a bunch of other costs we get charged by the regulated system for every day a customer is with us. Now, you know, I think hard about how we bring down standing charges.

29:35But I think one thing is, it's like with a coffee shop, you don't have to pay a standing charge to use it. But they have enough customers using their overheads, like their rented space every day to spread the cost out. When you've got a meter, you're the only person using it. And so you can't spread that cost over a lot. So that's why most countries have some form of standing charge. But what's happened over the years is there's a whole load of regulated costs that used to be spread out over everybody. For example, a lot of the payments to the people that own the networks, the wires in your local region, used to be paid by a little bit extra you added to the unit rate.

30:15And the regulator moved that onto the standing charge and made that a fixed cost per customer per year. So the only way you could recover that cost was through the standing charge. Now, I think that's crazy. and I think it's completely perverse that because you've got these really high standing charges, people who can try and save a little bit of energy don't save as much money as they should. So we've been pushing the regulator a lot to try and take some of these charges. In fact, when they did that move, for example, it was something called the Targeted Charging Review. I think we were maybe the only, one of the few companies that really pushed hard against it because we don't think people should have to pay all these very high charges just to have access to energy.

31:00So, you know, look, I've campaigned against the standing charge for a very long time. You've got the potential of this new dual price cap coming in, one with low standing charges, one with higher standing charges. I mean, it has to be said that on the price cap, the regulator sets the maximum standing charge and the maximum unit rates. You could go lower. You could choose to do it lower and choose to put the cost on the unit rate. You could do it either on your price cap or you could choose to offer a no standing charge tariff. There are a couple of firms who do it and they recoup it through higher unit rates.

31:28You haven't decided to do that, haven't decided to offer that in the competitive market? No, and I think there's a couple of reasons. I mean, first of all, we've always charged below the price cap on the standing charge. Currently, it's between£10 and£50 a year below, depending on what tariffs you're on. But the problem with those ones that try and recruit it on the unit rate is unless you use, I mean, almost zero, you pay more, right? Because those unit rates are so much higher, that very quickly they cover the standing charge and then any usage above that is costing customers a lot more. It's very difficult.

31:59The most important thing we can do isn't this mucking around at the edges. It's to reduce those fixed costs that the regulated system put on each household. And that's why we campaign against TCR and we continue to campaign against standing charges.

32:18Let's just do a couple of questions about Octopus specifically. We've got Dave who is asking, why can I not get the cheaper rate for charging my car just because Octopus don't list my charger or my vehicle? Yeah, so I think Dave's probably referring to something called an intelligent Octopus tariff. That's where you can pair your car or your charger with us. And what that does is it means that we control the exact time your car charges, what time it's grabbing electricity from the grid. Now, electric cars pull enormous amounts of electricity. So if you can pull it out at the cheapest times, you can save an awful lot of money.

32:57Now, those cheapest times vary every day, depending on the wind, the sun, how congested your local network is. I think there are 28 different variables. If we can control it, we can grab the electricity at the cheapest times. If we can't control it, there are still some very cheap tariffs. They're just not the cheapest. So if you've got a car that we cannot pair with, we can't do that. I think we should look at this the other way around. So do you have a tariff of the people you can't pair it with that's an EV tariff? Yeah, so there's the standard one, which is cheap between 11pm and 5am, or varies a bit.

33:31But that is super cheap during those times. But the very cheapest one, we can control the device. By the way, we also do the same with people who've got home batteries, for example. We can try and integrate with those. But essentially, all this is about understanding in the new electricity system, if someone can shift their consumption, they can get cheaper power. But if we do that, it makes it cheaper for everyone else too as well, because it takes demand away from peak times. So it reduces the competition for electricity at times of less of it around. So everybody benefits. So ultimately, and I think, look, I think everyone needs to understand we're moving to time of use tariffs.

34:07And the whole point of smart meters where they are meant to take us, but they're nowhere near sophisticated enough at the moment. the generic ones that are installed, are so that you're able to delegate to the energy firm when your various appliances and high use electricity appliances are turned on, so that they're being turned on at a time when it is the cheapest. And if we can do that, then we bring down the peak levels of demand between four o 'clock and nine o 'clock at night, which means we don't need much redundancy in the system and everybody's bills get cheaper. So, I mean, you're at the forefront of that.

34:36My concern from my side of it, and I've spoken to the regulator about this, my difficulty, look, your tracker and agile tariffs, which are absolutely the primary time of use tariffs in the country, far bigger than anybody else's. The tracker tariff, the price changes every day. The agile tariff, it changes every half hour. We talked earlier that sometimes it can pay you to use it. Other times it can be way more expensive than the price gap. But as long as you move your usage, it can be very effective. My issue going forward is as other providers come in and offer similar things, Tomato, we're trying it recently, there was another one coming up, is the difficulty of comparison for customers.

35:13Because we have these time of use variable tariffs, how will consumers be able to compare different companies? Because we don't know what your price is. So I've suggested that there must be an algorithm. Are you setting prices based on an algorithm of the wholesale rates at the time, or is there someone manually inside your company? And if this is competitive and you can't tell me, I understand. But how is it actually working? Who's setting the price? Algorithm-based, or is it competition and how much money you can make based? Yeah, so the two you just described there, Tracker and Agile, are both an algorithm, both a formula that's published on the website.

35:49And in fact, for comparison, essentially, if we ever change that formula, we give you, I think, at least 14 days notice, the same as you would do for changing a tariff. And then we publish digital feeds to comparison sites, third-party websites, specialist apps, that run detailed analyses of whether people will be better off on these tariffs or not. But it becomes a bit more like a supermarket. So am I better off shopping at Tesco or at Sainsbury's? Well, I kind of do my weekly shop at one of them. And if it starts looking a bit expensive, I go and try and do my weekly shop at another. And if overall that bundle's cheaper, then I might start changing to the other one.

36:28And I think you need a world in which you've got total transparency so you know what you spent. Look, the world where you get a quarterly bill on an undecipherable PDF that you've got to download from a website that you don't know the password for, which is the world we're coming from. You know, people don't have much visibility control over the transparency of what they're paying. So I think as we move to this world, you need to give total transparency, which is what we do on these tariffs. Which is what I'm pushing, that the regulator that anybody offers a time of use tariff, the algorithm must be published, even if it isn't a way that consumers can understand that trusted intermediaries could therefore analyse and give you a comparison saying, looking at your usage over the last year, this one would have been the cheapest.

37:06And if things continue the way it is, this one is the cheapest tariff for you. Because otherwise you completely defeat the ability to have a competitive market if you can't compare between two. Honestly, I think that transparency is critical. By the way, not just for these tariffs, but for everything. The other thing I was just going to say on this is I don't think there's a world where we suggest everybody should have this. It's a bit like supermarkets. If I go to a supermarket, I'm not a creative cook, so I just buy whatever I'm going to buy anyway. But my mum's creative and she's a bargain hunter, so she sees that sausages are cheaper than bacon this week.

37:34She'll buy sausages and change her cooking plans. For people who want to hunt for bargains, this is a real opportunity. But for people who don't want to think about it, it just brings cost down for everyone. Those tariffs are not good for people who just want to switch and forget it because you have to manage your household and your usage in order to make the most of it.

37:53Jo's been good enough to come on and speak to us. Jo in Hirsham. Jo? Hello. Hi, everybody. Yeah, my question is I've had an outstanding issue for over a year and a half with Octopus Energy. One of the main reasons I chose Octopus was because of the levels and quality of the customer service. has your customer service sort of dropped off a bit um greg and uh you know do you still believe it's the best customer service out there has it been outsourced greg or do you just do it in-house it's nearly all in-house there's a couple of great partners that we picked up when we acquired shell and bulb that were so good we kept them but basically it's all in-house and i think look even when we were tiny i would pick up issues with customers that sometimes i was like i can't believe we made that mistake.

38:41It still happens today. But actually all of the third party surveys or nearly all of them show that our service is as good now as it ever was. And actually I can tell you one thing. When companies say getting big is an excuse to become less good at service, it's an excuse. Because the reality is issues that used to happen so rarely that we couldn't automate the solutions and now happen enough that we can automate the solutions and do a better job. So Joe I am sorry that you've had an outstanding issue with us. briefly what's the one and a half year long issue that's been going on hey we've got the boss sitting here if you can't sort it now we never will let's let's use it let's pervert the course of justice and get it sorted for you uh so the gas meter didn't work um so i waited over a year for um an appointment for a gas engineer to come out they eventually came out and then left and subsequently i was told the electricity meter now needs upgrading because now i've got an upgraded gas meter the electricity meter won't send automated readings to octopus so i'm yeah still waiting for that so joe i think i actually think i know your case or at least one that sounds identical and we could have done a better job i'm sorry we didn't uh the bigger picture is i think you're a victim of the the sort of the way in which smart meters are being rolled out because if i recall correctly your original meters were something called uh smetz one we can replace your gas meter with a new one, which was a SMETS 2.

40:09And that means your SMETS 1 electricity meter is no longer working properly either because they're not, it turns out, by the way, there are three and a half thousand different combinations of manufacturing firmware. It turns out this combination isn't working. And I think we're going to get something about to change both meters for the latest SMETS 2. And a good bit of news in the world of smart meters, I think 92 % of all the smart meters of our customers we've got are working. But for the ones that we've installed so far this year, it's 97%. So they're getting better and better all the time.

40:37But Joe, I am sorry it took this long, but I hope we can get it working for you. Well, I'll tell you what I'm very impressed at. I'm very impressed that clearly, we asked for questions on social media, we've had 1 ,200. Your team have been through them and given you notes on certain of the problem ones, complaining. I can see, because you've got someone with you, the ones that are complaining about octopus specifically, I expect, to do a background briefing, and that's how you know about this one. Is that right? It is, but Martin, you'll see I'm on social media literally every day, picking up the issues that customers complain about.

41:02And on your forums, we see the ones that write about issues with us. And not just me, but my directors do the same. Alison, on that, please ask him why he insists that you email him on Greg at Octopus, etc., when it's obvious he never sees them. Octopus is a great example of a company that's grown exponentially, due in large amounts by its good customer care, but is now not providing that level of care. Do, who answers, let's see on the belly, who actually reads Greg at Octopus? Yeah, so every one of them goes into my inbox. They go into a folder. and particularly one close colleague, Samira, works through that folder.

41:37I get to see any that I think are a systemic issue. Is this a problem we have that we need me to change the way the organisation works to fix it? And I raise those every day. I raise examples of those with our operations team and our technical teams to eliminate those issues going forward. But what we want to do is make sure that each individual issue does get looked after. So then Samira works with a team of three or four people that are extremely good. It's exactly the same on social media, by the way. I get to see every, I mean, I might not read every one of them, but they're all there for me.

42:08No, I noted you were replying to some of the questions that came into this directly. Yeah, I tried to, it's interesting. So I have a bit of a rule on this, which was the ones where we could directly help one of our customers who'd got an issue, then we would do so because I don't want to leave a customer, if we've already got it wrong, I don't want to make it worse by ignoring them. On the other hand, if there were people asking you systemic questions. About the industry. about the industry or about bonuses and salaries and profits, I thought I didn't want to sort of take away what you might want to ask me today.

42:35But I think where it's individual customers, you know, we won't always get it right. And, you know, we've got 7.5 million customers in the UK. So 1 % where we get it badly wrong is still, you know, 70 ,000 people, but that doesn't make it okay. We've got to work hard on every one of them. I just want to talk to you about smart meters a little bit more. I mean, you will be aware. I've written to the Secretary of State for Energy to say that I think the targeting of smart meters based only on installations is perverse, because what it means is companies, and I do that in the plural, not you particularly or specifically, companies therefore, I mean, I've had cases where people, companies have installed smart meters they know won't work because it hits their target, even though it's in an area that doesn't have the signal that the smart meter can get.

43:21And because of that, all the smart meter staff are focused on installations and not repairs. so we have a stat that 20 % of people say their smart meter doesn't work. And I'm asking him to change it based to so that it is on working smart meters. Is that the type of thing you would support, or are you happy with the structure at the moment? No, it's the type of thing we say to the regulator as well. But the reality with smart meters is if we don't hit a certain target number of qualifying installs, as they call them, in a certain year, we get fined big amounts. By the way, all that eventually obviously makes its way back onto bills.

43:51It just makes the system more expensive. About 10 % of the smart meter jobs we do, are repairing existing smart meters. And some of the challenges there, Martin, it's perverse, but if a customer switches to us and their smart meter wasn't working before and we go and fix it, that doesn't count towards our targets. So that engineer is, you know, it's a cost that we are happy to put to making a customer happy, but ultimately we get a regulatory penalty for fixing it. And I think Octopus is particularly... It's bonkers. Yeah, and we're particularly conscious of this because, as you say, we're the leader in smart tariffs.

44:24and people haven't got working smart meters, they want our tariffs. That's a problem. So I'm going to do one more question, then we're going to try and do mastermind quickly. Maybe Greg can answer the mastermind as well. Greg, it's been brilliant to have you here. This is from Les. My Octopus loyalty fix is coming to an end in May, but to refix with Octopus will cost me£200 more and it'll be even more come the 1st of April. So that's what the price cap will be on the back. So I think I may be slightly wrong. So looking at an Octopus two-year instead, what's the incentive to stay? Where has the competitive nature of the market gone?

44:53Now, I need to be plain. You are very rarely cheapest on comparison sites. There are other, I mean, you play your customer service reputation, you play on that. How much longer do you think you can go before you're playing the price game? Yeah, we do play the price game, right? I mean, I think we've got the cheapest standard variable tariff. And by the way, for people who pay on receipt of bill, it's like, you know, 50 quid a year cheaper than anyone else, I think. But on the fixed prices, they come and go. And as I said earlier, they're up and down like the tide. So almost depending what day you look at it, we will be more or less competitive.

45:29But I think that part of our kind of view is that if you always want the absolute cheapest bargain, there will always be a company out there who's willing to lose money to win you as a customer. If at the end of that term you do the same again, those companies never make money. And that's why so many of them went bust during the crisis. Part of our job is to run a sustainable business with fair, sustainable pricing. So you should always get a good deal from us, if not always the very best. So Adrian, I think we're brilliant to have so much time with you, Greg. We really appreciate it. Shall we play the Mastermind theme tune and do that before we end?

46:03Yep.

46:09Greg, this is where Martin ritually humiliates me every week, just in case you don't understand what's going on. But this week I can ritually humiliate Greg as well. It's absolutely a double bonus. So the current Mastermind score on the three option multiple choices, Adrian has got eight right and 13 wrong. So that tells you all you need to know. Adrian, you bought a T-shirt online. You were very excited. You had it specially printed. It says, Martin Lewis is a sexy fish and I would like to snog him. Do not ask me why. I'm considering a restraining order. When the T-shirt arrives, it's the right size.

46:41It's not faulty. But you decide it looks a little bit too clingy on your bosom. so you want to send it back. So you've ordered it online, you've had it specially designed, you want to send it back. I want to know, what are your legal rights? Not the shop rights, your legal rights. A, as it was bought online, you've a right to return it within 14 days. B, as it was bought online, you've a right to return it within 28 days. Or C, you've no legal right to return it. Now, Greg, you can answer after Adrian, because just in case, you may well know consumer rights better than him. I'm not letting you do it.

47:14So Adrian, T-shirt bought online. You ordered it specially and deliberately personalised. You bought it online, right to return it within 14 days. Bought it online, right to return it within 28 days. No legal right to return it. It's not faulty. I'm pretty confident it's not C, I think, because you bought it completely online. You have got a right to return it, even though it's not faulty. And I think it's 14 days. You're going for A, 14 days. Greg, can we ask you? Well, I think for most things that would apply. But because it was specially designed, I think he might have lost his rights to return it.

47:46So, the legal rights when you buy something online. Buy in store, you have no right to return unless it's faulty. Buy online under the Consumer Contracts Act, you do. Shops, actually, websites get this wrong. So listen to me, don't listen to them. You have up to 14 days to notify them you're returning it and up to 14 days after notification to send it back, which means there's a maximum 28 days. So let's have the uh-uh for Adrian. But Greg is quite right. the one exemption to this rule is for personalised or perishable items. You can't send a banana back 28 days later once it's gone rotten. And this was, Martin Lewis is a sexy fish I'd like to snog him.

48:24For some reason, isn't on general retail sales. Somebody will have it. Yet. Somebody will take it. So it was personalised so you don't have the consume rights. Greg Jackson is one right and non-right. One correct, yeah. You get the hallelujah. And Adrian? Yeah. Eight right, 14 wrong. Thanks for having us on the show. Oh, dear.

48:49Right, you lucky, lucky podcast listeners. It's that time of the show where we do special extra tips just for you. And I'm doing one only this week because it's an important one and it's a big one. For the first time since early 2023, you are now able to get a two-year-long interest-free borrowing credit card. This is the longest 0 % deal on purchases I've seen in a good while. Now, normally when I talk about credit cards, I'm talking about debt shifting, balance transfers, where you move your debt from one car to another. This isn't that. This is a 0 % purchasing card. It's effectively a way to borrow interest-free for two years.

49:25Now, of course, borrowing is something that should only be done if you really need to. It should be for a one-off, planned, affordable, budgeted-for purchase, you know, replacing a faulty fridge or something of that type of ill. It should never be done to willy-nilly fill in the gaps because you're short in your income. That'll get you in trouble. If in doubt, don't borrow. But if you do need to borrow, in median term borrowing, there is nothing cheaper than 0%. It's interest-free for two years as long as you do it right. So, of course, some of this will be about acceptance, but the new longest card is a 24-month 0 % spending card from M &S Bank.

50:05Also, crucially, compared to the other 0 % for purchases cards, it's a definite 24 months. What do I mean by that? Well, the other cards are up to. So with the other cards, when you apply, once you're accepted, some accepted customers won't get the full 0 % length. They'll get a shorter length. So Barclay card, the next longest is 23 months 0%, but some customers who are accepted only get 11 months 0%. With this Marks & Spencers bank card, you get 24 months 0 % on spending. And if you're accepted, you will always get the full 24 months. So if you've got a decent chance, and I always suggest go through an eligibility calculator on a comparison site, or you could use the card's own tool to see what your chances are.

50:44If you've got a decent chance, you know you've got certainty that if you apply, you're going to get the full 24 months. The other competitor cards are Barclay Card and Lloyds. Their big advantage is they also offer 0 % as well as on purchases, they also offer it on balance transfers. So if you're just looking for one card to do it all, to shift some of your existing debt to 0 % and you've got a specific new spending you need at 0%, although this does worry me, it means you're already in debt and you have to be quite careful about it, then they do both slightly better. Barclay Guards is up to 23 months 0 % on spending and up to 20 months 0 % balance transfers for a 3 % balance transfer fee.

51:21Lloyds is up to 21 months 0 % spending and up to 19 months 0 % on balance transfers, again, for a 3 %-ish fee. Interestingly, I'm getting a bit complex here, but you know I talked about the up-tos. These are both up-to cards. While Barclaycard's headline rate is better than Lloyd's, it's longer, the 0%, Lloyd's' backup rate, i.e. the default rate you'd get if you didn't get the full length that it's advertising, are a lot better than Barclaycard's. So if you haven't got a pre-approved, which you get on some eligibility calculator, so they don't pre-approve you for these cards and you've got relatively similar chances of Barclay Card or Lloyds, it's actually safer to go for Lloyds even though the headline rate is a couple of months longer because if you don't get the headline rate, the backup rate that you'd get is better than the backup rate you'd get at Barclay Card.

52:14My quick golden rules, if you do do any of these, and again, please only borrow if you need to for a planned one-off budgeted full purchase. Never miss the minimum monthly repayment or you could lose a 0 % deal and it'll cost far more. Clear the card or at least balance transfer it before the 0 % ends or the rate will rocket to around 25 % representative APR. Don't withdraw cash. That isn't usually the cheap rates and withdrawals can hit your ability to access credit in future. And if you are doing a balance transfer, you normally need to do that within the first 60 or 90 days of getting the card.

52:46But if you do need to borrow at the moment, a credit card, something you can buy on a credit card, is the cheapest way over two years, smashes the pants off any loan on the market. and just make sure you plan to do the repayments within that two-year interest-free period. Hope that helps.

53:03That's it for this week. If you've enjoyed it, please tell your friends you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast and that they should start listening to the Martin Lewis podcast too. We put out a new podcast usually every Thursday. If you subscribe, you get it into your inbox without any problem. I say your inbox, it might be anyway, it might be your podcast app, but the technology doesn't really matter. So what counts is that you're listening and they're listening and your pockets are all pleased. And if you didn't enjoy it, well, I've said it before, I've said it again.

53:35Martin 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 martinlewispodcast at bbc.co.uk. 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.