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By Julia Kukiewicz Staff Writer
Friday, 20 February 2009
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After a short break, the money news roundup is back.
Recession Bites...
MONEY news has been taking a short break of late so I'm glad to be back and tackling important issues head on.
This week the Bank of England announced a rise in 23% on the number of claims for pet-chewed banknotes. It's serious business before you say anything: that's £113,000 worth of tasty notes.
The total claimed back was £34m in torn, washed, contaminated or otherwise mutilated money.
Happy Birthday to Cheques
HAPPY birthday to cheques who turned 350 this week, at least according to Tony Levene in The Guardian for whom the celebrations were bittersweet.
Most people suggest that the cheque will disappear within 10 years and - like rara skirts and piano key ties - they've been in decline ever since 1990.
It's not really surprising given that cheques are much more fiddly than credit cards, are often not accepted in shops, are heavily surcharged by phone companies and require a working pen.
That didn't stop Levene's nostalgia-fest though, as he bemoaned online banking and mourned royalty cheques and massive charity cheques alike.
Credit Card Companies Reward Each Other
FOLLOWING the bad press that credit card companies have received of late the industry decided to throw itself a big award ceremony this week to celebrate the most ethical credit cards.
Nationwide scooped an award for most responsible credit card lending practices for their Trust Us, Trust You campaign while American Express won the best marketing campaign for their Bono-endorsed charity credit card RED.
The most responsible customer acquisition award went to HBOS for the second year running (HBOS offer the Halifax All in One credit card and Bank of Scotland All in One credit card, which both offer equal - and safe to use - 0% rates on balance transfers and purchases). Barclaycard got the prize for the best new credit card innovations.
Any hope of boosting good news stories for credit card companies was quickly dashed, however, as the awards have so far failed to be picked by up anyone in the mainstream media. One site which mentioned them even erroneously claimed that they had been hosted by Dara O'Brien which was true... in 2007.
More Googled than Obama
IT'S telling, then, that a story about Martin Lewis received much more coverage this week. That's right: Martin Lewis was more Googled than Obama this year.
The statistic from Hitwise showed that Lewis had an 11% lead on the new US president. Money Saving Expert's forums are now ranked as the 10th most popular social networking site in the UK while the site itself was the 100th most popular website in the UK last month.
If this shows anything, Lewis mused on his blog, then it's that people are desperate for sound financial advice as credit continues to crunch. Nobody trusts banks to help them save cash anymore and few trust other financial institutions.
It's great that more people than ever are trying to be financially savvy by comparing credit cards, bank accounts and trying to save cash day by day but there's some sadness to that as well: Money Saving Expert just wouldn't be as popular without the recession.
I'd like to think that Choose money contributes a little to these new sources of financial information, too, although our remit is only to help you compare credit cards.
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