November monthly mailbag
Posted by: Matt
It's the first day of the last month of the year, so time to look back through our mail bag from last month.
Farepak debate
An article written by one of our columnists Robin Amlôt on the recent collapse of Christmas savings firm Farepak stirred up a large number of comments from users last month.
Here are a selection of your responses to Robin's piece:
I totally agree with this article and the governemnt should get its act together and look at real problems‚ not just the ones that can give it a bit of good PR around election time.
On the Farepak issue, could you imagine yourself being in their situation, saving all year to receive nothing. Your article here is putting the boot into these less fortunate families. If you can remember your childhood‚ how would you feel waking up on Christmas with no presents under the tree? These kids will be humiliated by their peers as they didn't get presents. This guy who did this with Farepak needs to be sent to jail. He has stolen money. But his company goes into adminiustration and he is still rich. He has a personal fortune of £30 million. This should be taken off him and they should make him live the life of one of his customers.
Your writer has absolutely no idea of the difference about those who generally use a pay weekly scheme like Farepack. The users of these type of savings have no isa options‚ often no current account‚ many are women who "hide" the savings from their husbands. It's not an easy life and your writer should not be so blinkered in his advice. He could have offered information on local savings schemes‚ he could have thought just a little more before putting pen to paper‚ but he didn't. I have reccomened the page to others really just ot show them how blinkered your attitudes are.
We don't expect everyone to agree with the views expressed by our writers in their columns. They are intended to provoke thought and debate, not merely to tow the line and play safe and on this topic, Robin has clearly achieved the former.
What's happened to some of our old pages?
One of our investing users emailed us to ask:
"Why don't you have the page "the week ahead" and "what's in store?" anymore - it sets out which results and dividends etc are due?"
We moved our site onto a new publishing platform at the beginning of 2006 - sorry to get technical, but there's no other way to explain it - and as part of this process, some of our pages were moved or deleted. We've currently just revamped our
investing section, but we're always looking to improve the site and make it as useful for individual investors as possible so we'll look into the possiblity of restoring this page and let you know about any upcoming changes and developments.
And remember, if you can't find one of our pages any more, you can use our handy site search box located on the left-hand side of most of our pages to find exactly what you're looking for.
Where's Alvin?
Why are we still on Alvin Hall truth 5? When can we expect truth 6?
Financial expert Alvin Hall has been producing an excellent weekly series of articles and podcasts for us, entitled
Alvin's 12 Truths of Money. Unfortunately, for the past fortnight he has been laid low with illness and has been unable to write or record for us.
The good news is that he's now back on his feet and will be revealing his sixth money truth next Thursday, December 7. Make sure you check it out, it's a cracking read and listen.
The perils of a place in the sun
The article is all about Europe!! Have you never considered The Bahamas? For £160k, you can have a new 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom villa on the beach on a secluded island surrourded by blue clear water.
It's true to say that the main focus of Naomi's piece was on Europe, but it was not totally Euro-centric. And the reservations she has about buying property abroad are equally valid outside of Europe. I'm sure properties in the Bahamas are stunning: who wouldn't be tempted by the thought of a dream home on a tropical beach - but it pays to be fully aware of the risks you take when you invest in property overseas.
Virtual Trader
A teacher writes:
I am using the site with my Economics students and find it a very valuable teaching tool. However‚ there seems to be a glitch in that when you sell stocks the money does not get credited back into your account. Is there a way you can fix this problem please?
We have recieved a number of complaints about apparent glitches in our fantasy sharetrading game,
Virtual Trader. The game is actually administered and run by an outside company and therefore we are unfortunately unable to address these issues directly. However, rest assured that we will pass on all your queries to them, and they will endeavour to fix any bugs that may be occurring.
Nevertheless, it's great to see that as well as being a horribly addictive game, it's also highly educational. If you haven't signed up already, I urge you to do so now; you won't regret it, trust me!
Send to a friend
Sheena wrote in to us to say:
I thought this article was really useful and it would be nice to forward it on as an e-mail to others that I think would benefit. Alas, if I cut and paste it into an email, the links would be lost. A nice feature would be one that enabled you to email it to others in an e-mail-friendly format that kept in all the links.
We're happy that you found the article useful Sheena. The ability to email our articles on to friends is something that is very much in the pipeline; we're just waiting for our developers to create the feature. As soon as it's completed, we'll let you know. In the meantime, why don't you paste the url into an email and send that on to your friends or family. That way, they will be able to view the page in its full glory, links and all!
Keep 'em coming!
Thanks to everyone for their great comments and suggestions again this month - keep them coming by using the feedback link on the bottom right of all our pages. And don't forget that if you've got something to say about one of our articles or you just want to get something off your chest, then get involved on our
message boards.
Season's greetings to one and all!
Tools 
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people cool
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i think about my blogs every day
after betty and barney
hills had seen a ufo at
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Dus ik wacht het nog even af tot ik het zeker weet en dan lezen jullie dit natuulijk op mijn space!.
