21/12/2013 Your Money

your shopping? Just about. Maybe one or two little people that I haven't

forgotten about at all! All that on this week's Your Money.

Hello and welcome to Your Money here every weekend on BBC News. Bargain

hunt, we will discover the tricks we need to do to get the lowest prices

for our Christmas shopping. We will get our rights if it is the wrong

colour or doesn't work or we don't like it anymore. Toxic tipple, Brian

Milligan discovers that cheap booze maybe fake and could damage your

health. So the shortest day is upon us.

Surmer is on the way! A couple of long days of Christmas shopping to

get out of the way first. We are taking a look at how to find the

last minute bargains and what your rights are if the goods just aren't

right. With two very special shopping elves, sue Hayward and

Sarah Pennell. Welcome to both of you. Sue, preparation is everything

when it comes to hunting down the bargains? It is being prepared. You

don't want to run out in a random rush and grab the first thing you

see. You need to, before you leave home, print off discount vouchers.

There are lots of websites you can do this. If you print them off, when

you see the bargain you can get more discount. With these vouchers, it is

a case if you are using a voucher, you can't take advantage of an

instore discount, but in the run-up to Christmas lots of shops have been

offering double discount so you can get discount as well as your

voucher... Does this mean you need to know before you leave the house

what you are going to buy or do you bring a load with you? You need to

think where you are going and what you are going to buy. There are a

couple of apps, Voucher Cloud is a good one. It will send you the

vouchers and the discounts on your phone to the nearest shop. If you

are going in and think, "I forgot that voucher." You can use the app

to get the discount. It is all hi-tech. You can show your phone and

the app to the store and get it there and then which is great.

Why would you do your shopping in advance? You do it because you are

Miss Organised! And that's fine. 72 out of 100 stores on sale right now

before Christmas. The average discount according to Price

Waterhouse Coopers is 46%. That's nearly half price? The reason I do

it. I was disorganised a couple of years ago! You learned that lesson.

The advantage of doing it in advance is you can get what you really want

and I think I think I buy better presents or more thoughtful ones

when I am not under time pressure. I might have missed out on the good

discounts, there isn't any guarantee that something that is well

discounted will be in the shops or in the online retailers by the time

you come to get it, it is a game of chicken and if you think I have got

lots of friends I can buy a variety of presents for, I want to get the

most with my money. And you don't mind the scrum, fine. You can get

more choice if you put more thought into it.

A lot of people would like to order something online, pick it up from

the local store, but not many days left until Christmas. The clock may

have run out on that? That's true. Some stores particularly Debenhams

say they need up to five days for the Click and Collect service. Are

they carrying the stuff to the store on their back or something? They

said it is five days from dispatch. So when it leaves the ware White

House John Lewis and M and Boots, you can click and collect and you

can do it to 2pm on Monday and you can collect it the next day. If the

high street is busy, sometimes it can be worth paying for a next day

delivery to save you the car park charges and the hassle of looking

for a parking space. It is swings and roundabouts sometimes.

Check. Check. Check. Absolutely and make sure it is in stock and they

won't say guaranteed Christmas delivery with a lot of these. It is

a case that you are taking your chance unless they are guaranteeing

it for Christmas. You mentioned apps. There are apps that allow you

to check the price of something while you are in the store and tells

you where if you can get it cheaper somewhere else? There is a good one

called Red Laser. You can use your phone to zap the barcode and it will

tell you where you can buy it cheaper. You may decide, quickly go

on your tablet or decide to buy it there and then. If you do and

discover it cheaper, if you keep your receipt, a lot of stores are

generous with the returns policies which means you can take it back and

get your money back and buy it elsewhere.

We will talk about your rights when you are shopping during the sales

and Sarah will have more information on that in a few minutes. It is time

to see what the Secret Santa of news brought us. MPs want to tighten the

rules on pay day loan companies. They say the lenders should be

banned from advertising on television when children's

programmes are on the air. The MPs say borrowers who get into trouble

should only have their loans extended once. That might prevent

them from clocking up bigger debts. Fewer people are worried about their

debts. There has been a drop in the number of households concerned about

the amount they borrow. But did warn that future rises in interest rates

and it is a matter of when they go up, not if, it warned more expensive

borrowing costs could squeeze households with big mortgages.

The council for mortgage listeneders says -- lenders says lending in

November was 30% higher than a year ago. It insists that's not a boom.

There is an old rule when it comes to money, if something looks too

good to be true, it probably is. Christmas shoppers have been warned

booze maybe fake as it could damage their health. Here is Brian

Milligan. In this bar in Sheffield, students

celebrating the end of term have been warned about the dangers of

drinking fake alcohol. Some admit they found bottles of cheap vodka

tempting. In my first year, I was silly enough to buy stuff from a

corner shop which came under the counter and was not a properly

manufactured alcohol product. I had friends who suffered from temporary

blindness. Fake alcohol is being sold at shops like this one. The

owner was found after 600 bottles of counterfeit vodka were found under

the counter. The number of bottle being found in Sheffield alone has

quadrupled. Most contain industrial alcohols used in cleaning flundz or

antifreeze. It is not tested. There is no quality control. These are

criminals that are manufacturing there are. They are not concerned

about the council sume -- consumer's health. There could be anything in

it. Seizures of fake vodka are growing. In August a nightclub in

Leeds was fined. At cairn Rhine, 13,000 litres were sold and this

month a pub in Chelmsford was fined for selling fake Smirnoff. Many of

the changes are not reversible. You can lose your eyesight or your

ability to walk like a normal person. You can lose your life.

Spotting a fake isn't easy. On a small bottle like this, this one

appears to have the UK duty paid stamp, but that's the wrong size. If

you look closely, you can see sediment in the bottom of that one.

On this larger bottle, it tells you on the back that it comes from

somewhere called Russia-Berlin. On a big bottle like this, the duty and

VAT alone should amount to ?8.89. If you are paying ?9 a bottle,

something is wrong. The advice being given to drinkers be careful where

you buy your alcohol, check the labels and if the product looks

suspicious, do not drink it. Thousands of elderly and poor

customers with NPower are to get at least ?25 back. It is a total fine

of ?3.5 million. The payments will be made to customers who get the

Warm home discount. The competition watchdog says we pay

too much for car insurance and blamtion the high cost of -- blames

the high cost of replacement cars and repairs.

It gives a whole new meaning to money laundering. The Bank of

England unveiled the plastic banknote it will bring in from 2016.

People in Northern Ireland will know what they feel like already because

we have had them for years. The new fiver will feel slimmery and bounce

back if you scrunch it up and survive a spin in the washing

machine. It will buy just as little as a paper fiver!

Emergency this on Christmas Day, those presents that you ordered

online, well, they didn't arrive. The shoes you did get, they don't

fit and auntie doesn't like the colour of her cashmere jumper,

grumpy old bag! There are a number of scenarios,

first of all, something doesn't fit? If it doesn't fit and you brought it

on the -- bought it on the high street, you don't have a right to

bring it back, but many shops will let you. If you have bought it as a

present get a gift receipt. If you forget, write a note saying, lovely

jumper, gifted to Declan cap Curry. Online, you have got seven working

days from the day after the goods arrived to reject the goods and

cancel the sale. There are a couple of exceptions which are common

sense, food and fresh flowers. If you were to buy a pair of shoes and

clothing and decided you didn't like them, you can cancel the sale. Do

that by e-mail and you can get a refund. You say seven days and

that's for stuff done online? Yes. No time limit for stuff you buy over

the counter? There, you don't have a legal right to bring it back. It is

at the shop's discretion. I often ask when you are buying, it is often

28 days, but it is often until the middle of January.

You have the right to bring stuff back. The law here is very clear. It

doesn't matter where you buy it, whether you buy it online, you buy

it in a high street or whether you pay full price or not. If it is

faulty, you have got the right to return it and you can get a refund

depending on when you return it are o a replacement or repair. When I am

shopping, you can imagine I am eagle eyed and I see signs saying "No

refunds. No returns on sale goods." That's illegal. They can't say that.

If you see those signs, that's not correct. You can argue your case. I

imagine you are a nightmare when it comes to shopping in the store. Sue,

that's an important point if you are buying something in the sales and

you are picking up a bar gain, those signs are there and they are wrong?

Yes, that's right. They are wrong which is the case very much

sometimes you need to actually, if you are not clear, ask for the

manager and check the details because sometimes I found when you

are taking things back to stores, the staff simply don't know the

rules. So it is worth not being fobbed off. Going home thinking

about it and checking details online and you can go back and argue your

case. You could argue cash is more personal. You can decide what you

spend your money on. Vouchers have been popular, but they are risky?

They are. The problem is as we have seen over the last year, some stores

have, when they have gone to the wall, their company won't accept the

vouchers. If you feel uncomfortable about giving cash, give one of the

vouchers that are not restricted to one store. If it is a big high

street store, the chances are you would be OK. Go cash or a voucher,

you can use amongst several stores. Is there better protection if you

pay for something on a credit card rather than cash or cheque or debit

card? You do get some protection under what is called chargeback if

you pay by debit or credit card. It is no minimum spend limit. If you're

buying something online and you see a bargain, it is made from a company

you haven't heard of and the ASCII to pay by bank transfer, do not do

it. It is like paying in cash. If it turns out to be bad, you have

absolutely no comeback. Thank you very much. That's all from Your

Money for this week.Advice on saving, borrow and spending all week

long on the Your Money pages on the BBC's website. It's bbc.co.uk/money.

You can get updates by following our feed on Twitter. We're @BBC Your

Money. We're back again in early January. From all of us here, have a

Merry Christmas. Thanks for watching today.