Your questions answered
Hello
Please contact us with your ideas, insights or experience in which others may be interested. Below, I answer some of your questions…
Mike Lusby
Club Together
Home insurance
I’m expecting Club Together to provide home insurance. When will you have some?
John Sullivan of Colchester
Club Together replies
You’re in luck, John – see our home insurance offer launched at the end of September , tried and tested by our readers.
A better deal for a broadband connection
I think Club Together magazine is excellent. I want to get online and I will get a laptop. Any chance of a deal with retail outlets for laptops, printers & broadband connections?
Jack Wray of Dudley
Club Together replies
The deal we have just done with Utility Warehouse offers a broadband service recommended this year by Which? magazine. You could take up just the broadband or, if you take any of the other utilities from them like gas, electricty, phone or mobile, it brings down the cost even further. Utilty Warehouse was voted 'best' utility supplier in the October 2008 Which? magazine. Find out more >
Extend employee discount schemes to pensioners
William Walmsley of Southampton, Jean Brammer of the West Midlands, Robert Barnes of Bristol, P.B Chugani of Egham and many more readers suggest extending staff discount schemes to pensioners.
Club Together replies
The most popular suggestion made by Club Together readers! We have followed up on this by discussing with employee benefit firms how we could extend their services to our readers. One company we talked to could offer you everythingfrom money off in supermarkets (5-10%) to bigger discounts on clothes, electricals, travel and days out with suppliers such as Tesco, M&S and most of the other big names.
The way employee benefit firms work is to charge an employer (or us) a fee up front for access to this service for aminimum number of people. We could offer this scheme to our readers, but we would have to charge you a small fee to access the service, then sign up tens of thousands of people in the first year.
It seemed to me that it would easily pay for itself if I signed up to it. Indeed, it could pay for itself with just one purchase through the scheme.
Would any of our readers be prepared to pay for access to a discount scheme like this? Contact me below >
Use our experience
Some of us have tremendous experience of negotiating…would you be interested in us going out and being a part of the process?
Shyam Brahmbhatt of Leicester
Club Together replies
Yes. It’s a great idea, so we have adopted it. We now send readers to meet the suppliers and discuss the offers. Our readers then independently assess if what’s on offer is good value. In fact Shyam we subsequently took you to meet and assess our utility supply offer and Club Together reader Ian Austin went to check out our home insurance offer.
More on travel please
I want more about travel including days out. Can you negotiate something on days out and short trips?
Mansoor Naqvi of Wembley
Club Together replies
Travel came out as your top interest when we surveyed you. Our November magazine will have a ‘better deal’ on winter breaks – both short-term and wintering abroad.
In the light of the recent airline collapse at XL we will also feature a new supplier failure insurance with cover that beats the protection you get from ATOL and ABTA. We are also hoping to include a new travel insurance product designed specifically for Club Together readers and their family. Great cover, great value and no upper age limit.
Where’s the catch?
I think Club Together is an excellent publication. Who is paying for it? I do know nothing comes free.
Gill Stanton of York
Club Together replies
We distribute Club Together free of charge. Club Together is a project funded by Xafinity Paymaster (formerly the Office of the Paymaster General). We will be introducing advertising from reputable suppliers to help fund the project. Also, the more of you who take up our offers, the more it contributes to our funding
Pensioners unfairly taxed!
We're a retired couple on our own; the children have grown up now and moved away. I'm lucky. I did a lot of overtime and paid more into my pension, but my wife looked after the children and didn't have the ability to pay into a company pension. She's left on her small state pension. My tax allowance for income is £9,000, so I have to pay tax on the money I receive over that. Why can't we combine our tax allowances? We wouldn't have to be taxed at all! I wrote to Downing Street, but "we've no intention of changing the rules" was the reply.
Mike Pollard of Colwyn Bay
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