Priceboffin.co.uk

 

Where to find the cheapest heating oil

There is a forum thread (here) on MoneySavingExpert.com which recommends this page on BoilerJuice.com as a useful place to find information about average local prices for heating oil. The BoilerJuice site itself is one of a number of sites which helps you to get quote for the cheapest heating oil from companies delivering locally. Another site recommended in the thread is HeatingOil.co.uk. Similar services are also provided by:

• CheapestOil.co.uk (Around 30 references on the Money Saving Expert forum)

• 123getaquote.co.uk

• HeatingOil.co.uk

• OilPriceCheck.co.uk

If you have experience of these or other sites which help people to find the cheapest source of heating oil, please add more details to this article.

This page about Home Heating Oil may be useful if you are new to oil-based heating.

 

How to pay less but find the best landscape designer

One of the best ways to save money on landscape gardening, before you call the professionals in, is to start growing plants in tubs, this will save you pounds in the future. If you are unsure where to start there are many books on the subject of growing plants in containers at Amazon

Browsing through seed catalogues is an excellent way to gain inspiration, and find out which flowers will grow best in your area, and the type of soil in your garden.

Seed Catalogues

Dobies They guarantee value, quality and a great service; you can request a free catalogue online.

Sutton This catalogue even has special selections, like Alan Titchmarsh Cottage Garden Flower Seeds.

Other great seed catalogues include:Unwins Crocus Greenfingers Seedgarden

How to Choose Your Landscape Gardener

A recommendation from a relative, friend or colleague, is always the best way to find a skillful creative, and knowledgeable landscape gardener, but if this is not possible, there are many other options open to you.

The Landscape Link This is one of the leading landscaping websites in the UK. It allows you to search for thousands of local and national companies. It is totally comprehensive with more than ten thousand pages to link you directly to people in the gardening and landscaping industry.

Trustatrader not only a trade directory, but also a recommendation from tried and trusted sources. Before a trader can advertise on this site they have to prove that they have at least two years experience, indemnity insurance, prove their membership to any trade association and their qualifications. Additionally they must provide five recent customer references.

Ratedpeople This is a new business directory, which lists and rates thousand of trade’s people in the UK. Customers, like you, who have used these tradesmen, write the reviews.

UKTradestreet This is also a tradesmen recommended site in that local people will recommend good Tradesman for others to use too. It is free for customers to post their projects and then receive quotes from skilled and certified local tradesmen.

Trade organisations

The main trade organisations for UK landscape gardeners in the UK are the Association of Professional Landscapers, British Association of Landscape Industries Society of Garden Designers and the, Landscape Institute is the Royal Chartered body for landscape architects.

Members of these associations provide quality products, and only the highest professional services, to add value and beauty to you business or home.

Landscape Gardeners rates

Obviously you will expect to pay more for a landscape gardener than your average gardener, as their is a great deal more skilled work involved, but visiting whatprice.co.uk will give you an idea of costing, but make sure you receive at least three quotations, before making a decision.

 

Supermarket Price Comparison

At Mysupermarket you can enter an entire shop and then find out which of the four largest online supermarkets offers the lowest overall price for that selection of products. Armed with that information, you decide which supermarket you wish to shop at, and your chosen shopping list is entered for you automatically. The site also features a useful general supermarket price comparison.

You should note that there are judgments involved in the selection of comparable products for the price comparison. Loyal Ocado customers may be happy with the prices they pay because they prefer Ocado’s products to those from Asda (which, when last checked, came out with the best prices for the largest number of products).

Supermarket Wine

 

Wine Anorak offers useful monthly supermarket wine recommendations. This focuses particularly on quality, but prices are also listed. If you buy your wine from your supermarket, it may also be worthwhile considering whether it would be cheaper to buy wine from a specialist online wine merchant – see our article on Wine Price Comparison.

 

How to pay less for good building work

Do you know good builders who do quality work, charge reasonably and are always available when you need them? If not, this article is for you. This article aims to pool the best ideas for finding getting building work done well and for a reasonable price. It’s a wiki, so you can edit it to make corrections or suggest further ideas.

Recommendations and quotes

In the old days, the main alternatives for people looking for builders were (a) taking pot luck from the Yellow Pages and sizing people up when they came to give a quote (with savvy buyers going the extra mile and taking up local references), or (b) seeking personal recommendations from friends or neighbours.

 

The internet has created a way of merging those two things, and vastly increasing the pool of customer experience which you can draw upon. There are now several sites where (a) you can post your project and have several builders bid for it, and (b) you can read reviews by previous customers.

 

So far, the site of this kind which appears to be most popular (and have the best profile in the press) is RatedPeople.com. It does not appear that you can see a list of the participating builders, but when you enter your postcode and the specialism you need the site does indicate the number of listed builders with that specialism in your area, so you should be able to be confident that you are testing a sufficiently large market.

 

Alternative sites offering a similar service are buildersite.co.uk, Mr-Skill.co.uk, workbidder.co.uk, mybuilder.co.uk and myworkman.co.uk.

Trustmark and trade organisations

To protect consumers from cowboy builders, the Government has introduced the “Trustmark” initiative. Builders who have a Trustmark certificate have to meet certain criteria and are subject to periodic checks. Additional peace of mind may be obtained from particular trade organisations. You can search for Trustmark certified traders on the Trustmark website.

 

Individual trade organisations have their own schemes, which in some cases predated Trustmark and now tie in with it. A good example of this is the Federation of Master Builders MasterBond scheme. If you instruct a MasterBond builder you can also purchase the benefit of the MasterBond warranty, which for £75 plus IPT on a job costing £5,000, provides extensive long term warranties and an arbitration service to deal with disputes.

Another good site to look at is on www.uktradestreet.com see site.

 

Builders’ rates

How much should you expect to pay? There is useful information on how much various building jobs cost on whatprice.co.uk. There is also a building costs calculator at building-cost.net, which allows you to specify your job online and then see the estimated price for it.

 

Where to get the best value legal services

 

Finding the best value solicitors

If you have to pay for legal services, there are various useful websites and tips which may help you to get the best value. As with anything else, getting the best value is not always the same thing as paying the lowest price. A cheap solicitor may not be the cheapest option. You should also bear in mind that a lower hourly rate does not always equate to the lowest total cost, if another solicitor with a higher hourly rate and perhaps greater experience might have done the job in less time.

Solicitors with recognised expertise

For anything requiring specialist help, you should consider expertise first and price second. The Chambers & Partners Guide provides a useful way to find out which solicitors have the best reputation in each practice area. Comments and ratings are the result of extensive research and interviews amongst solicitors’ clients, other solicitors and barristers. (For an example page, see their recommended personal injury solicitors.) A similar service is provided by the Legal 500 Guide.

Solicitors’ Hourly Rates

The amount solicitors charge per hour varies by practice area, and by region. You can get an idea of what you may expect to pay by looking at the levels the Court regards as reasonable when assessing costs – see the Guideline Rates for Summary Assessment (pdf). It may also be possible to negotiate a lower rate than the solicitor first quotes to you. Often a solicitors firm will have more than one person working on your case. You should find out the rates for each person, and how the work will be divided between them.

 

Getting competitive quotes from solicitors

Most people phone around – and there is much to be said for talking with solicitors and getting a feel for how they come across and what appears to be their expertise (see the section above on getting free legal advice). There are very few websites offering price comparison and independent customer reviews for solicitors. However, there are websites which provide a free service of obtaining quotes from a number of law firms. (The websites make money by obtaining a referral fee from the law firm you choose to instruct.) One of these is takelegaladvice.com, which is reviewed in this article in the Guardian. Another site providing a similar service is ContactLaw.co.uk.

Getting the best value for Men’s Suits

There is no simple formula for getting best value for suits. It obviously depends enormously on taste and style.

Sample prices for Off the Peg Men’s Suits

Sample prices for men’s suits from leading online shops.

Shop   Sample Item Price Delivery   Notes Dress-for-Less   Business suit by Soho New York £139.00 Free   Suggested retail price: £ 269.00 Burton   Bengaline Performance Suit Jacket+Trousers £75.00+£35.00 Free   Machine washable Boden   Silk Linen Suit Jacket+Trousers £99.00+£49.50 Free   Normally £199+£99.00 TM Lewin   Grey twill suit – SFLG £500.00 £6.00   Leg hemming to the length specified NEXT   Black Suit £110 £3.75   100% wool. Lining 57% polyester 43% viscose. Dry clean. YOOX   BIKKEMBERGS suit £ 474.00 £ 5.50   40 42

This table was last updated on [13th March 2008].

Tailor Made Suits

If you have a little more money to spend, you may consider have a suit made to measure. If you do not want to pay Saville Row prices, an alternative is to use international tailors like Raja Fashions, who take customer’s measurements in the UK but make the suits at a lower price in Hong Kong or elsewhere. (But click here for some less than complimentary reviews of that particular tailor.) Another international tailor which comes up in the search engines is Grover Fashion, but we have not seen any reviews for this. The UK men’s clothing chain Roderick Charles sell made to measure suits from £599.

Off the peg with adjustments

If you are a pretty standard shape, a half-way house worth considering is to buy a quality off-the-peg suit and have it adjusted to your measurements when you buy it. Roderick Charles do this (and have a range of branches in London you can visit). The trick with them (and many other suit suppliers) is to wait for the reasonably regular sales. A suit in the sales from Roderick Charles costs about £280 (or £500 for two).