In short
The Martin Lewis Podcast: Episode Summary
Episode Title
Q&A Special: Beat the bill rises, ISAs, Car financing, Pension tax, Premium Bonds, Child Trust Funds and more
Episode Overview In this episode of *The Martin Lewis Podcast*, Martin Lewis takes on listener questions regarding significant financial changes, particularly focusing on rising bills, investment options, and consumer rights. The discussion also delves into customer service experiences and a segment on credit scores, hosted by Adrian Chiles.
---
Key Topics Covered
- Current Financial Landscape
- Rising Costs:
- Water bills are increasing by an average of 26%, with some customers facing increases of up to 80%.
- Energy prices have risen by 6.4% as of April 1st, reflecting an overall increase of 18% since the government change.
- Key Reasons for Increases:
- Major price hikes typically coincide with the start of the new tax year.
- Investment needs in the utility sectors are cited as reasons for rising costs.
- Car Finance Mis-selling Cases
- Supreme Court Case:
- Discussion surrounding ongoing car finance cases, specifically the implications of commission disclosure and discretionary commission arrangements.
- Potential payouts could total tens of billions if the Supreme Court rules in favor of consumers.
- Tips to Reduce Bills
- Water Bills:
- Switching to water meters can lead to significant savings for households.
- Check for social tariffs that could reduce bills up to 90% for low-income households.
- Energy Bills:
- Encouragement to switch from standard tariffs to fixed plans to secure lower rates.
- Investment Insights
- ISAs (Individual Savings Accounts):
- Deadline approaching for ISA contributions, with a maximum of £20,000 allowable for the new tax year.
- Child Trust Funds:
- Importance of tracking down these funds as beneficiaries turn 18.
- Options for moving funds into more advantageous investment vehicles like ISAs.
- Customer Service Highlights
- Listeners shared positive experiences that showcased exceptional customer service from various companies, highlighting the impact of good service on customer loyalty.
- Mastermind Segment on Credit Scores
- Common Misconceptions:
- Frequent checks on credit scores do not negatively impact creditworthiness; they are classified as 'soft searches.'
- Importance of understanding the difference between soft and hard searches in relation to credit scoring.
---
Key Takeaways
- Consumers are facing substantial increases in utility bills; proactive measures, such as switching tariffs and seeking social tariffs, can help mitigate financial strain.
- Significant legal changes in car financing could lead to large payouts for consumers, emphasizing the importance of understanding financial agreements.
- Investments should be strategically managed, particularly with the deadline for ISAs approaching, emphasizing the need for careful planning.
- Positive customer service experiences enhance loyalty, suggesting businesses should prioritize quality service.
---
Conclusion This Q&A special provides invaluable insights into current financial challenges, legal implications surrounding consumer rights, and strategies for effective money management. Martin Lewis encourages listeners to take action amidst rising costs and to remain informed about their financial choices.
For further inquiries or to submit questions, listeners can reach out via email at martinlewispodcast@bbc.co.uk.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
0:07Every day, millions of customers engage with AI agents like me. We work round the clock and have the facts at our fingertips. We're fast and effective, but incredibly patient. And we're built on Sierra, the leading AI-powered customer experience platform. No hold music, just answers and action. Visit sierra.ai to learn more. That's sierra.ai.
0:39BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. 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 &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.
1:21And I'm even asked about pensions for kids and if anyone really wins a million pounds on premium bonds. 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
1:57I've got a man, I've got a fee, so I'm going to make sure everybody eats. 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 importance 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.
2:33I've even heard it misreported in the news. Shock horror, fake news, everybody, fake news. Because there are two distinct car finance mis-selling cases out there. Let me 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.
3:15This was on PCP personal contract purchase and higher purchase agreements up until 2021 when it was banned. The regulator, not the court, the regulator, the FCA, has 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 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 would almost certainly be a discretionary commission arrangement that you're asking did I have a DCA so many people 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.
4:22So 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 believe it.
4:54That 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, 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.
5:35Those are the three options. 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 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 when 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 forget the law, you look at the unfairness.
6:13People 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. So there's a difference between the two. And who stands to take a bath if the Supreme Court's more shock upholds the court of appeal? I mean, Lloyds, Close Brothers, all the big financial names are all involved in this. 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.
6:49Multiple. To whom? To people who had a car finance deal from the financial firms. Right. Tens of billions. OK, I'm just trying. PPI scale payouts. OK. And so how would you know if you were one of those? Because you had car finance. For anybody who had car finance. 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 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 anything that we really need to understand what the scale of payouts would be.
7:25But because it would be every car finance deal that would be made in the last X number of years, and I can only say X, it's likely to be a lot of money. Could you imagine how much money the silks are making on this one? They must have a big courtroom to 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 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.
8:04That's the one about bunging the amount on top. The 40%. Yeah, I reckon that's somewhere between 6 and 12 billion of payouts, right? And people, but what we don't yet know is how much money would be paid out. Now, 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. 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 onto the rest, but they could plevin it, for anyone knows what plevin means from PPI, I'm not going to explain.
8:35If 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 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 Supreme Court says the Court of Appeal was right, huge payouts. One outcome, they say it's wrong, but 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 commission disclosure complaints and make a pronouncement within that, which causes the regulator to rethink the discretionary commission arrangements complaints, i.e.
9:15something 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.
9:39OK, let's get on to some questions. They're related to what's being called Awful April. Household bills are going up. I like to call it Bills Day or B-Day because all of our backsides are getting rinsed. OK, right. I'll roll with that for sure. So, I mean, why are they all happening at once? 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 privatised firms, but their year still starts at the same point at the beginning of April. So, let's start with water bills.
10:15What's happening there? Water bills 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 percent, maximum over 40 percent. And that's the average rise. Depending on your water, the assumption of your water and sewerage use, some people are seeing 60, 70, 80 percent 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. Today I did interview Jonathan Reson, 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.
10:58Why are we now having to pay more because they didn't invest in the water system? 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. Joel has had Thames Water increase his bill by 49%. How is this allowed? He says his circumstances haven't changed at all. Not only allowed, it's regulated. These are regulated price rises. Within the water industry, we have privatisation 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.
11:31As 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 more 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 live in a four-bedroom house if we're on water bills the the bill that you get is based it's actually on the rateable 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.
12:16Hence, more or the same number of bedrooms and people going to the Consumer Council for water's website and do a calculator. I mean, savings there can be hundreds a year. I've had£900,£1 ,000 type savings. And if you're worried, you normally, not with every firm, double check. You can 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 be someone in a block of flats where they say, we can't fit one you've got shared pipes and 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 well 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 that save money save water.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 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 so isn't all pensioners what's that is that all pensioners i think some pensioners have much more income than that type of money um but and there's whole different later 11 i all i'm let me be really this is a call to arms to who should check not who will get okay every firm does it differently every firm has its own criteria there's a second scheme that you could have both which is called water shore water shore is for two categories of p is 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 wash a lot or you have three or more children in the house and you're on benefits.
14:13In that case, that can cap your water bill. So that's my very quick list of what people should be doing on water bills. Okay, Colin's got a question. My latest bill was horrendously increased, surcharge of around£150 due to not having a water meter installed. So I called them and queered 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 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.
14:49How could they get away with that excessive charge? Did they give him the money back? They did give him the money back. OK, so, I mean, just look, we have no competitive market that's poorly written. And 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 had a water meter and it wasn't being used? I can think of a few scenarios, but they're pretty rare. 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.
15:22So 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. But people, I mean, water's often ignored. That sounds like a farce, doesn't it? But I'm unsurprised by the farce. Well, actually, I live in flats and a complex, and we've all got individual water meters. But getting them assessed, they've been wrong, getting them serviced, getting them looked at, is a real farce.
15:57Anyway, that's my personal issue. I wonder if other people have had similar issues. But make a formal complaint. 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. Well, I'm not sure even that. No, it's just incredible. 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.
16:31And that is pure supposition, I should say.
16:37Energy bills, then. What do we need to know there? So the energy price gap, we've talked about this a lot, so I won't do too much, 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's 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.
17:11So, 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. 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.
17:44And 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 tariffs out there we did a full program 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 if you're worried about things changing then just make sure any fix you get has relatively limited early exit penalties if you can't needed to leave it early sarah wants to know she should have taken back all her credit from the electricity and gas account approximately 600 pounds or should she have left it there okay so i'm presuming she's i'm 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 uh if she's switched you should get that credit so i would presume okay right so i'm going to assume she's with the energy company okay um the energy direct debit cycle i know i know how sexy is this program 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 once you get to around November, you should be in maximum credit.
19:09Do you understand? 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 your bills are£1 ,000 a month,£600 credit isn't much. If your bills are £100 a month,£600 credit is a lot. So if you're anything more than a month, a month and a half's worth 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 just be really plain if your bill is 200 pounds a month and you're 600 pounds a month in credit i'd want 400 quid back now 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 like to be any change to the standing charges being reduced when we have no choice of the tariffs we're on.
20:02I think that's two questions is it? Yes. 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 that allows people on smart prepay to do.
20:33Worth 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 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 paying receipt of bills, by the way. But 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.
21:09But 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 would be good for lower users. That I hope may be out by this winter or if not by next spring but it is not a hundred percent confirmed yet let's move on to mobile broadband sure how a mobile phone broadband company has allowed mid-contract price hikes that are higher than inflation surely that is fueling inflation itself surely the government should be looking into this don't call me surely first of all sorry very old airplane joke right well the the government has and i've been lobbying and written papers to the government on this, we have had a change in the regulation.
21:53So most people are seeing broadband and mobile contract price hikes of around 5 % to 7 % this year. But new rules have come in, but 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 will 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 hack, then you must be allowed to leave within 30 days of the notification of that penalty free, which is the one Sky is choosing to do.
22:32So Sky isn't telling you this, but Sky is letting you and actually gets some competitive advantage because therefore its headline price is 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.
23:04Because if you're on a£20 a month and your rise is£3, that's 15%. Whereas on the old inflation system, you would have been on 5 % and 7%. 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 simply be a moratorium on rising prices above inflation during the contract. I mean, it's a contract. 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.
23:37Council tax. Theresa wants to know. So that's going up. Let's just do the stats going up, In England, mainly 5 % and a few councils a bit more, but up to 10 % around Wales and Scotland. OK. Council tax. Can you tell me if ex-council houses, says Theresa, are paying the right amount of council tax? I can't see any reason ex-council 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. um you know we might be at band a band b band c band d band d band f or plus which council you are because the council sets the charge based on the bands in the area you live so two neighboring 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's the cheapest of the lot um 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.
24:37But 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 ink hair. We are old enough to remember. In 1989, the rateable 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, but I don't do music, so I can't help. What was around in 1989? Oh, I tell you what. So I'm going to... In excess, were they about then? I'm going to 1991. Yeah. So then the poll tax riots came, which was a big thing that young people won't remember, which was about the way that...
25:12And then they decided to replace the poll tax with the council tax in 1991, which I think is when... Oh, sit down, oh, 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 assessed 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. That stopgap valuation back in 1991 is still what values all the homes in England and Scotland.
25:52Wales has revalued since. So there 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 Townsville 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.
Read the full transcript
26:24Some people with disabilities can get the bands dropped at a level. Carers may be able to get a discount in certain circumstances. 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 into detail.
26:55But if that rings a bell, look up Severe Mental Impairment Council Tax Discount. When you were casting around for a musical reference, we need to work some time, 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 60 years, and he'll tell you what was number one on that date. 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. Anonymous, why can't council tax be spread over 12 months instead of 10? You have a legal right if you ask them that they can pay it over 12 months.
27:31We have this bizarre system that council taxes normally pay from April to January in 10 months. Some people like it because then I had 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 of 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 90 % in Scotland, I'm 100 % in England and Wales, that if you get in touch with your council, you can ask for it to be spread across 12 months instead of 10.
28:03Tell us then. The tell us is about outstanding customer service. 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 Facebooks. 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£25 less a month for the whole package than we have been for the last two years. See, that ends up annoying me, that does.
28:36Well, 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 place? Exactly. I'm going to go Claire. My dad died unexpectedly in 2019. 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 11 and 12£11, 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.
29:08Louise says the AA, 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 OK. Thank goodness. Kate. I had a lovely young lady in fat face 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. Bose had a set of headphones for around three years. The ear cups had all wasted away due to use.
29:49I wrote explaining I thought they should be more durable considering the quality and costs. Sent me the replacement parts free of charge, no hesitation. Saved me buying replacements. I'm just going to do mine. I had two in a trip. We went to Orlando. 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 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 a shuttle.
30:25I 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. We got in there. We picked a pair of shoes 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. Yeah. But that was good. And then the same, at Universal Studios, same trip, we went, it was a blistering hot day.
31:00We 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 had been so excited about going but couldn't cope. So I went and 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 yeah and she said as you've only just come through i'm going to give you a ticket for another day um 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 had 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 two hundred dollars each so i I mean, they know how to do customer service.
31:41They charge a lot, but they know how to do customer service. You know, I've got one. Go on. Wheels on wheelie suitcases. Yeah. Right. This is lifetime guarantees and stuff. But a couple of occasions, the wheels have broken off the bottom of the suitcase. It's not the first time someone's said your wheels have come on. No, true. But there is a website you go to. I think it's the same company does all of them. You find out the serial number of your bag. You tell them which wheels are knackered. and then they just send you them free of charge. You screw them back on. It's good, isn't you? Wheelie good service.
32:14Wheelie good service. There we go. I'm glad you said that. Thank you very much. Laura just had an amazing... 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-offer, sent me a brand-new Scoopter. They kept in touch the entire time, followed up and maintained a really friendly an 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.
32:52Nigel, 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 Yorkshire, who can be sure if it's true or not? Do we need an investigation? No. No. 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 shall we just do some stats? You're going to be blown away by these numbers.
33:28Do you know how many premium bond£1 million prizes are won each month? No. Two. I just put my fingers up so he didn't know everyone. I can count the number of fingers. So how many are given in a year? In a month, you say? There's two in a month. That's 24. Well done. I wasn't trying to make it hard. It'll be a long day. I've been working on tariffs for so long. I don't know which way is up. But anyway. So 24 million pound prizes a year. How many premium bonds do you think there are out there? So remember, what actually happens in the premium bonds is each one pound bond, is put into the drawer like a ticket.
34:08So you might have 50 ,000 of them, but it's about the number of£1 bonds. How many premium bonds do you think there are? Oh, God. 50 million? I don't know. Up. 100 million? Way up. A billion? Way up. 10 billion? Way up. 20 billion? £120 billion worth of premium. That's incredible. The biggest single savings. So there are 24£1... 24 million pound prizes. is there are 120 billion bonds. So if we do it on a single month, you've got a one in 60 billion chance of winning a big price. So you 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 price.
34:51Certainly the 1 million is rare, the 100 ,000 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£1 bond has the same rate. The reason people think new bonds win more than old, there are a lot more new bonds, because now you can put£50 ,000 in. If you bought them 30 years ago, you were putting less in. Do they win in certain areas of the country more or not? Yes, because certain areas of the country have more bonds than others. I mean, it is a random thing.
35:21I 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, 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 50 grand in. But I don't think we're being duped in the sense that they're not actually paying the prizes out, no. Anita wants to know where she should put her daughter's child trust fund when she turns 18 in a few months. Fascinating question. First of all, well done for tracking your daughter's child trust fund down.
35:50If your child was born between the 1st of September 2002 and January the 2nd, 2011, so what that's roughly what aged 14 to 23 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.
36:27So the first thing I would say is you should make an active choice to have it in the right 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 ice or 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... Where shall I put my daughter's child trust fund when she turns 18 in a few months? 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.
36:56When your daughter is 18, 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 to 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 There are caveats with the lifetime ISA, but it's worth reading and doing that.
37:26So 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. 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 NS &I, the state-backed finance provider, both paying over 4%.
37:56Because child trust fund rates are much worse than junior ISAs and you're allowed to transfer them, it's basically the same thing, moving across into a junior ISA.
38:05ISA questions. There's a looming deadline, which is, when's that? 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 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've got the money to put in next year's allowance.
38:37So when Nicole asks if she's too late to open an ISA for this tax year, she's not. 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 will 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 5th April. Louise wants to know how serious you think the government is in removing the savings ISA and offering only a stocks and shares ISA. I have not heard that proposed.
39:06What 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. Where is it coming from? 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.
39:40What I thought of it 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 will do is get people really annoyed and then they'll have to continue to save, but they will pay tax on it. So I'm not sure it will 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 anyone who's already got cash ISAs, I do not think you'll be affected.
40:11Many 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. Steve wants to know if you can put 20K in an ISA a few days before the deadline and get the full interest, 4.2%, he says, then close the ISA after you've taken out what will then be your£20 ,840. No. Nice try. Interest, an ISA is just a savings account. The tax year deadline is just about how much you can put into that savings account at that point. Interest is calculated daily. So when you get 4.2 % interest, what you actually get is 1.042 to the power of 1 over 365 each day.
40:59So it's not quite worth 365th of 4.2%, but imagine it's that. You get paid that each day. So if you have it in for five days, you'll get five 365ths of 4.2 % for those five days. You don't suddenly give you a lump sum of a year. It's just a savings account. It works the same as other savings accounts. Sorry. I like the question, though. I like the concept. Vicks, can I open a pension for my 11-year-old? Yes. You can put up to£3 ,600 in, and as you'll be getting tax relief on that, it'll only cost you 80 % of that. Yeah, so you can put in£3 ,600, which will cost you, once you take, because you get 20 % tax relief on it,£2 ,880 a year.
41:39You 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.
41:54Debbie, when I get to state pension, can I claim it and continue to work? Yes. Bernice is a private pension taxed private and state pension income is taxable the only exception is when you take a private pension 25 percent of it can be taken as a tax-free lump sum how you get that 25 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 in a situation where state pensions will be taxed.
42:32State 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 most people get a£12 ,570 personal allowance, an amount you can earn tax-free, and their state pension doesn't hit to that. 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, 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.
43:11Dawn, please can you explain why I am 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. 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 were advised, some workplaces did it for them, many people chose to do it.
43:50There'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 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 couldn't have topped up those years even if they were in the right time because you probably paid, unless you didn't have a full year of earnings, but because you paid the full national insurance, just some of it was diverted elsewhere.
44:28So 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. You might have tens of thousands of pounds sitting in it. Karen, so I've done a pension forecast and it says I cannot improve and I will get the full state pension.
45:02In other words, I can't put any more. 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£231 a week. So it just went up this week from£221. So it's predicting she'll get the full state pension so she doesn't need to buy back any missing national insurances. She says, I'm nearly 61. My question is, if I retire early, will I still get the full pension at 67 as a contribution that will obviously stop between now and whenever she retires in 67? Possibly and possibly not.
45:40So that is an urgent call if you've got missing years. 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 would miss 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 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 put it out but you can work out where I put out information there's a call back request form that if you do that now you'll still be able to buy back any missing years after the 5th of april once the deadline's gone go do that call back 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 2006 to 2018 elaine is there anything i can do to claim national insurance credits for 12 missing years as a stay at home mom my husband's income was too high to claim child benefit at the time and i didn't realise you have to register for it anyway to get the NI contributions.
47:00I'm not in a position to buy back the missing years. So this is a question of backdatability. 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.
47:36I'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.
47:50Lucy'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? 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 you've got two products, if you like. You've got a 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.
48:27That's what she's suggesting, isn't it? They've taken it too quickly. Did I understand it right? Yeah. Then absolutely you 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, 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.
48:55Shirley 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 bag man and kind of enforce it. I just want to follow you around just tending to your every need, just holding your bag, sorting your computer out, getting your snacks, that kind of thing. 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?
49:38A 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 biased, declared pro-consumer biased. 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 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 masterminds bad enough on this show isn't it is but imagine actual professional opposition so well i thank you for the compliment no no no no no no no no no no no I think I should probably stop you at this point.
50:41You've been asking me lots of questions. It's time for me to ask you one.
50:53So, 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 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. Like, I told you. It's hard writing one each week, mate.
51:34It's hard. It's hard listening to them. I'll tell you anyway. 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. Oh, well, surely not negatively. Please tell me not. Positively. I think it should be neutral, but positively, yes.
52:25You're going to go for yes, but why? Why?
52:31Because... Show me your working. 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 off so it's in rude health. It's like caring for a puppy. I mean, I think there's a perfectly valid argument that people who look at that credit score. I mean, if you were doing it on actuary risk in insurance, that would work because the fact that you check your credit score would show that 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.
53:13So, first of all, let me set your mind at risk. The answer is not yes negatively. Right. Nor is it yes positively. Right. 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 credit worthiness. 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.
54:01So generally, those type of the more advanced products, checking your credit score, doing an eligibility calculator, you always want it to be a soft search if you possibly can because then you can check and you can 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 8 right and 15 wrong poor Julie, let's just finish with a tell us, 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 ran customer services hoping 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've 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.
55:04So even fascinating, I used to be involved with a complaints tour 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. Amazing, yeah. It just shows you. Because we just want to be treated like we're human beings. I mean, that's what it's all about.
55:43You just want somebody to listen to you. It's very interesting how it works. But I would say, and 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. 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.
56:17No 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. And it's important to understand what you want beforehand. I mean, if you get both, happy days. Martin, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much indeed.
56:35That'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. Martin Lewis is the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, but other consumer and price comparison websites are available.
57:15You 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.
57:36BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.
From the publisher
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 martinlewispodcast@bbc.co.uk.