MoneySavingExpert.com Reviews 783

I went through moneysavingexpert.com to look for a car loan. They recommended Shawbrook bank for a loan even going as far as saying based on my details I was 100% pre approved. After 3 weeks and countless phone calls were the bank were less than helpful ending with them just going round in circles telling me how to send in a complaint, which we all know would go nowhere. I still don’t have the loan and even worse they have all my details including access to my bank account. I started to feel that this is nothing but a scam endorsed by the website. I tried to find a complaints line or email to discuss this with moneysavingexperts but to no avail.

Hi a few months ago Martin Lewis said some pensioner , could be entitled to Pension Credit, so i applied and was entitled to £37.28 a month ... But because i was on a rent and council tax rebate , it put my rent and council up , therefor i was no better off ..... very disappointed ...

Absolutely terrible, creates false narratives and doesn't completely mention every detail, and hides certain factors, only takes money into consideration, and not what extra you'd be getting for the extra that you'd be paying. It's like saying a ford is cheaper than a ferrari but failing to mention why. Absolutely useless

the website forum is not very good. There are a few people who will try and help if you ask a question but there are more people that seem to use the forum to tell you how wrong you are and how right they are and seem to do it in a nasty way that is my experience.

no complaints, always compare elsewhere though.

People seem to complain about the community forum which i've never used. Use reddit for that instead

Martin Lewis has no credibility. His advice cost me a loss of £1200 when he recommended Crown Currency for buying euros.Crown currency were villains of course.Now he talks rubbish about how to buy energy. He is making money by giving out bad advice. Avoid.

MSE is in general an excellent source of financial advice. There is however a problem with its recommendations for instant access savings accounts. The website fails to distinguish between the savings accounts with genuinely instant access, even at weekends (eg Zopa, Tandem, Cynergy, Virgin) and the accounts for which the withdrawal is available only the next working day (eg Shawbrook, Yorkshire BS etc).

Best advice in this area and my first port of call. Website flows well and is updated thoroughly and often by expert journalists. From what I can see, the majority of negative reviews are based on forum disagreements and personal circumstances. Hardly relevant.

Don't understand the overall rating here... Personally I don't habitually take notice of high ratings, but do of low ratings. MSE is better than the overall rating arrived at here. However I suggest MSE do something about their cookies acceptance invitation as arrived at by internet browser on a medium sized Smart Phone. If the phone it set to 'Zoom' for more visually challenged users it is not possible to scroll to the fields where the cookies preferences are provided and therefore not possible to access the website, which is most often actually well worth accessing. The pop up screen is obviously too large and badly out of proportion to the website page. I suggest MSE and/or Martin Lewis address this...Otherwise though, continue the mainly good work! And suggest to Trustpilot that the overall review total is not reasonable. MSE is definitely a MINIMUMof a 3 to 4 star organisation IMHO, hence my 5 star rating to try and redress the situation, however slightly!

Genuinely suprised to see so many negative reviews; but note most of these are about a very particular segment of the site that someone has had issue with - many of which I don't feel very fairly relates to the overall site or its editorial intentions at all. Indeed also lots of complaints about the public forums, but as MSE states, posts made there aren't editorial within the sites control - just what other members of the public are writing... personally I don't really use them. Either way I would still value the editorial very highly.

Of course, you leave a bad review after a bad experience but they have helped hundreds of people across the various articles and tools on offer, and (I believe) are quite clear on their limitations as journalists.

Martin Lewis appears to have some genuine intentions, and I believe the site he set up was intended to advise the pubilc and 'average' consumers in making the most from the money they have, whether that be spending efficiently, comparing financial products and services, or dealing with issues with other companies and refunds.

To my understanding MoneySavingExpert is simply an independent editorial site and so wouldn't cold call anyone trying to sell them anything. Martin also doesn't promote on social media for things like bitcoin investments. If you see his face on an advert or receive a call/email other than the regular newsletter from a company saying it is MoneySaving Expert I would suggest it is a scam using the good name rather than anything to do with MSE itself.

Personally the site has pointed me to securing the best mortgage deals for my situation, banking and savings products with good rates of return, obtaining good rates of currency exchange, securing cheaper utility bills, being aware of several worthwhile sales and short-term deals. Simply feeling more financially aware.

Yes. Many product choices are sponsored affiliate links, but this is purely to keep income into the site to keep it running and links are always highlighted, they say they follow an editorial code that makes the decision whether to list a product as a 'best buy' even before any commercial income is considered. So nothing should be advised unless it is genuinely offerering a notable/useful option to the reader.

At the end of the day though the site is quite clear it is just informing us of those choices and "advice", and that that doesn't constitute as 'financial advice' in the legal sense. Just read the "How this site works" in the footer. They are clear they prioritise reporting on headline facts and can only do a limited amount of research and investigation - i.e. whether an interest rate is the highest on offer in the market - rather than assessing the quality or customer experience of a third party.

The writing is generally transparent. The reader has to read(!), balance and understand any choices and risks themselves.

this review is for MSE as a whole, i have followed them for years on all sorts of advise and it / martin has never led me wrong. Ive saved hundreds on sim only, broadband, switching energy - although at the moment this is abit of a moot area but no fault of mse just the state of things at present. ive gains hundreds in vouchers and offers to use and honestly cannot fault it, i do follow martins advise very strongly and urge everyone to use his facilities. surprised by the poor reviews on this but i cannot fault

Used to be awesome 10 years ago 2012. The site was honest and clear and good deals all round. Now its quite clear they get a bung for every silly referral, most of wish are nothing like a bargain you would expect. Top car hire came up as skyscanner. In reality it was extortionate at £200 for a few hour hire in Cambridge UK. These silly prices and links make it cheaper buying an old banger with a years MOT. Martin the owner is just another brown noser creeping hs way into the elitsi by selling his soul...... shame. BEWARE always check recommendations elsewhere.

Oh google searches are rigged too.

MSN are also on bed with the credit companies. DO NOT EVER NEVER sign up to the false hope credit check companies. All this does is put a big red flag on your name to make them aware of you and then manipulate your score to cash in. Another dodgy tip MSN.
Good job there is no consumer protection worthy of the name or most of these crooks would be in clink.

Martin Lawrence is a complete idiot, on TV trying to gain popularity by giving false hopes to people who wanted refund for a holiday cancelled due to covid. The idiot didn't explain if you booked a holiday via a third party agent a chargeback wasn't wise. Listening to this idiot I wasted valuable time doing a chargeback as he advised, which after weeks got declined, caused the poor agent so much grief and finanical problems, plus delayed my claim via ABTA. The correct way was to make the claim direct with ABTA not the third party agent. Before giving out advice to get clout Martin, check your facts you attention seeking idiot and let someone else do a better job. I advise people to check with the agent what the correct process for the refund is rather some cowboy.

I am a visually impaired disabled person, I tried to join the MSE forum website and it was extremely difficult and disability unfriendly.

So I got my carer to help me today (15th June 2022) and we still could not get registered, so here is how this AWFUL website that is fronted by Martin Lewis and which he sold to money supermarket dot com for £90m.

1. Seems reasonable at first, usual things requested.
Asks for email, Username, Password twice and Captcha plus agree to terms and remember on this computer, I did not want the tip email

2. I pressed sign up and a NEW question appears asking me to agree to forum rules after I already agreed to terms and conditions, plus it wants me to complete disability unfriendly Google Capcha AGAIN.

3. Despite having already completed it a disability unfriendly Google Capcha AGAIN, this is driving me nuts by now. I have to switch to audio version which are often impossible to understand and if you ask for another it says it does not like your network.

4. Now ANOTHER new question, "why do you want to join MSE", could this question not have been asked earlier along with the addition question about Forum Rules all on the first page.

5. After I filled in why I wanted to join I had to do yet another disability unfriendly Google Capcha

6. So I filled it all in, did Google Capcha for the 1000th time and what happens when I press Sign Up button...

7. Having pressed the signup button it does this time counter but never proceeds, after a short time the disability unfriendly Google Capcha expires AGAIN. I tried completing it again but it made no difference.

8 I start over and get same problems, I try stronger password, I tried deleting cookies and starting over, now it says the Capcha was not completed correctly despute Google showing the green tick.

At this point I gave up, Money Saving Expert obviously does not care about disabled people and makes it as difficult as possible to register for their site, even without a disability.

If you want to see the screens I saved them on IMGUR under reference eqXMt5P, just copy and paste eqXMt5P then visit IMGUR, view any image and change the last segment of URL with eqXMt5P

I tried the help screen on MSE but no way to contact MSE just a completely awful page full of nonsense.

When you are a £90m plus organisation it is expected to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people, the MoneySavingExpert.com seems to have been designed to punish the disabled.

I have always enjoyed and respected the advice Martin Lewis provides including on his TV shows.
So, when I decided to change my mobile sim provider I checked the MSE website and spotted a deal I liked, which included half price for the first 5 months.
I clicked through to the Sim Provider from the MSE website.
However, when the sim was activated I was charged full price from month one.
Did an online chat with the sim provider and they explained the fault was not with their systems.
By inference I took that to mean MSE’s systems might be faulty.
Wrote an email to MSE 3 weeks ago, but no response.
The website does suggest they won’t reply to individual emails, but that begs the question, ‘how do I rectify this error?’
All very disappointing from an organisation and person I respected. Not a huge amount of money involved, but more the principle of not receiving what was promised!!

The forum is full of smarmy responders who never have the answer you are looking for, just a bunch of condescending 'clever' comments. It makes Facebook look good.

This guy is just on tv being an angry protestor claims to help people, have the right advice. The spam I get from him is unbelievable. I’m sure it’s not him. But he should concentrate on cleaning up the internet rather than financial advice.
As someone who’s followed what he advised. I’m now stuck in a limbo with a major bank I was told by him would change my bank in 7 days. Not true. I don’t know where my direct debits are.
The guy is making a fortune from people like us. While we loose and money in a shambles of a transfer of our accounts. confidence lost. It doesn’t take 7 days. It’s way longer. I don’t know what or where my bills will go out of. Thanks @martinlewis. You’ve been a real help. NOT!

It's a total P.O.S I'm surprised Martin Lewis has anything to do with this site.I have a fair sum in the bank. I pay all of my bills on time. I pay any credit card usage in full while still keeping a large amount of disposable income yet my score goes up and down like a yoyo. I now only check this site to see how much more inaccurate it will get.
Sorry Martin but you don't need to be aligned with this utter P.O.S

Extremely poor customer support. I had my energy controled my this company. My energy contract comes to an end tomorrow (21.3.22). I wrote to the company 10 days ago because they stated that my energy costs would rise by about 25%. My energy company is Octopus and when I went on their site they were stating that my new energy cost would be 150% higher then I an paying at present. Still waiting for Money Saving Expert to answer my email. Not withstanding this they have not done anything to switch me.

forum is full of shills that always protect the companies and attack consumers who are having a bad day and looking for help.