Keep up with the Joneses

20 December 2007

Consumer champion Which? is to give one family the ultimate makeover in 2008 in a bid to see just how much time and money an average family could save with expert guidance.

The Joneses*, from Wolverhampton, will be recommended Best Buy products and services on everything from finance and recycling, to cars and vacuum cleaners. In the January edition of Which?, experts suggested some quick and easy first steps which will save over £250 in the coming year.

The family’s electricity and gas was supplied by Powergen until they used switchwithwhich.co.uk and found they could save about £150 a year by switching to Southern Electric’s Price Fix 2008 Online tariff.**

The Joneses also saved £27 a year by switching line rental from BT to a promotional rate offered by their broadband provider TIscali. They switched their Tesco Clubcard MasterCard to a Capital One Cashback World Mastercard, which will earn them £75 more than they’d get to spend instore with Tesco’s points.***

The family could have saved a further £23 by switching their Lloyds TSB current account****, but decided to stay with Lloyds as they’ve always received good customer service from their local branch.

Which? will report monthly on how the Joneses are getting on. Over the coming year, the consumer organisation will advise them on an array of topics, from recommending a value-for-money family car to making their household greener. There will be plenty of tips to help other consumers save time and money too.

Darren Jones told Which?, “The Which? team’s expertise is exactly what we need to make sure our hard-earned money is being utilised efficiently. We hope they’re going to save us many hours of decision-making time too.”

Notes to editors

*The Jones family comprises Darren,35, and Toni, 36, and their two children, Sam, 5, and Harriet, 3. Which? will also be advising and reporting on the wider family, including Darren’s parents, Dallas and Maureen Jones, Darren’s sister, Deborah Jones, and Toni’s parents, John and Kath Stevens.

**The Joneses could have saved about £170 a year with British Gas, but they weren’t impressed with the paltry one-star customer service rating from Energywatch. The Southern Electric service has a five-star rating for customer service.

***The Joneses spend an average £500 per month on purchases outside Tesco. The Capital One Cashback World Mastercard offers an impressive 4 per cent cashback on all spending in the first three months and pays 1 per cent cashback after that. The Capital One card would pay £105 cashback in the first year, £75 more than they’d get to spend instore with Tesco’s points.

****The Joneses have a Lloyds TSB Classic Plus current account, which pays 4.25 per cent interest a year on balances up to £2,500. To earn more interest, they could switch to a current Best Buy such as Alliance and Leicester’s Premier Direct account, paying 6.50 per cent on credit balances up to £2,500 until 31 January 2009. Based on an average balance of £1,000, the Alliance and Leicester account would pay around £23 more in interest than the Lloyds TSB account.

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