MoneySavingExpert.com

MoneySavingExpert.com is a British consumer finance information and discussion website, founded by financial journalist Martin Lewis in February 2003. The website's focus is to provide people with information on saving money in the form of deals, tips and journalistic articles. In September 2012, it was bought by the moneysupermarket.com group for a value of £87M.[1] Since 2015, Lewis has taken on the role of executive chairman, overseeing 100 staff and editors reviewing and updating the site.[2]

MoneySavingExpert.com
Type of site
Finance
Available inEnglish
OwnerMoneysupermarket.com
Created byMartin Lewis
URLmoneysavingexpert.com
CommercialYes
LaunchedFebruary 2003 (2003-02)

Petitions

The website has launched three petitions:

  • The first aimed to have the secured loan adverts banned from children's television which the site claims received 45,000 signatures. This campaign was the subject of a Parliamentary early day motion.[3]
  • The second, launched in collaboration with the Consumer Credit Counselling Service and Credit Action, appealed to Carol Vorderman to stop appearing in secured loan advertising.[4] This petition received over 80,000 signatures.[5][6]
  • The third was in conjunction with the site's work on Bank Charges,[6] and was placed on the UK Prime Minister's website, attracting over 70,000 signatures.

Both of these campaigns have been the subject of Parliamentary early day motions.[3]

Campaigns

In August 2006 the site started to develop a system to check whether people were in the correct council tax band. Over a number of months an increasing number of people reported £1000s in backdated payouts.[6] On 26 January 2007 Martin Lewis presented a Tonight programme on this following up the successes from the site; it rated 4.5 million viewers and saw the site covered in many national newspapers including the full front pages of the Express and Metro.

During late 2005, the issue of reclaiming unfair bank charges was highlighted and a few small websites started to highlight the issue. The site has been one of the main campaigning forces on this ever since.[6] In November 2006 the original article was updated by a step-by-step guide, including template letters which speedily achieved its 1,000,000th download towards the end of February 2007.[7]

Other large-scale campaigns for the website include reclaiming council tax, payment protection insurance, reclaiming mortgage exit fees and reclaiming credit card charges all of which have had over 100,000 people using template letter downloads.[6]

The site also provides support for saynoto0870.com, a website that provides geographical alternative telephone numbers to 0870 numbers and similar.

Charity contributions

MoneySavingExpert.com regularly contributes to charities nominated by site users. It is estimated that £100,000 was donated in the 2006-2007 year.[8] In previous years all money has been given to nominated charities based on the percentage of the vote given by site users, but it has been announced that in the future a new registered charity, the MoneySavingExpert.com Charitable Fund, will distribute the money. It has also been announced that a proportion of the money will fund a feasibility study into setting up a "MoneySaving Kids charity" to help educate children about how to be consumers.[9]

In December 2006 the book Thrifty Ways for Modern Days was launched by the site. The book was compiled from advice given on the threads of the MoneySaving Old Style section of the site.[10] As the book was created from community knowledge and only edited by Martin Lewis, it was decided that all profits from the book would go to the MoneySavingExpert.com Charitable Fund.[11]

Traffic

As of September 2020, the site has a global Alexa rank of 8,891 and a UK rank of 175.[12]

Awards and support
  • The site has been praised by a specific Early Day Motion in the House of Commons[13]
  • Winner of the New Media award at the Personal Finance Media Awards, November 2005[14]
  • The Guardian newspaper wrote that the site has "a fearsome reputation for deconstructing the deals on offer from the banks and building societies to find out whether they are really good value"[15]
  • The Times listed the site as one of "ten that stun with sheer insight or inspired rich media".[16]

References
  1. "Martin Lewis sells MoneySavingExpert.com for £87m". BBC News. 1 June 2012. Retrieved 13 March 2021.
  2. Williams-Grut, Oscar (30 October 2015). "Martin Lewis the Money Saving Expert just got a £19 million windfall". Business Insider. Retrieved 30 October 2015.
  3. "Early Day Motion - Debt: Not in Front of the Children Campaign". Retrieved 6 September 2009.
  4. Poulter, Sean (4 May 2006). "Vorderman attacked over ads". London Evening Standard. ES London. Archived from the original on 30 June 2009. Retrieved 6 September 2009.
  5. Taylor, Paul (12 February 2007). "Mr Supersaver's on a mission". Manchester Evening News. MEN Media. Retrieved 6 September 2009.
  6. Henley, John (20 June 2011). "Martin Lewis answers your money questions". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 March 2021.
  7. Hickman, Martin (23 February 2007). "From banks to football, the consumers' revolt grows". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 25 February 2007. Retrieved 23 February 2007.
  8. Lewis, Martin (8 October 2006). "New Site Charity Nominations Now Open". TheGuardian.com. Retrieved 27 August 2006.
  9. Lewis, Martin. "Moneysavingexpert.com - The Charity Fund". TheGuardian.com. Retrieved 27 August 2006.
  10. "MoneySavingExpert - Business commenting in a forum". Resolver. 2019. Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  11. Lewis, Martin. "Moneysavingexpert-com - About the MoneySaving Books". TheGuardian.com. Retrieved 8 February 2007.
  12. "moneysavingexpert.com Competitive Analysis, Marketing Mix and Traffic - Alexa". www.alexa.com. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
  13. "House of Commons. Tuesday 25 January 2005. Notices of Motions for which no days have been fixed ('Early Day Motions')". House of Commons. 25 January 2005. Archived from the original on 15 July 2006. Retrieved 13 August 2006.
  14. "2005 Bradford & Bingley Personal Finance Media Awards Winners Unveiled". Bradford & Bingley. 9 November 2005. Archived from the original on 6 October 2006. Retrieved 14 August 2006.
  15. Patrick Collinson (17 September 2005). "Now time has come to end this mis-selling scandal". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 13 August 2006.
  16. Simon Kurs; Sally Kinnes (1 January 2006). "Kings of the online jungle". London: The Sunday Times. Retrieved 13 August 2006.
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