How Cloudworks Started

I had the idea for Cloudworks in early 2005.

The real credit has to go to my card company, MBNA. I was struggling to reduce the bill, and I noticed that the amount of interest charged was more than the minimum repayment. At the top of the bill was written:

"If you only make the minimum repayment, then it will take you longer to pay of your balance."

I can't let this sort of thing go. Very obviously, the balance was never going to be paid off, and their warning was wrong.

I rang them. They explained that if I understood compound interest then it would be clearer to me. As it happens I do understand it, and it changed nothing. Before long I was talking to someone in their marketing department who assured me that the balance would eventually be paid off if I kept making the minimum payments. (Again they were wrong.)

Then the conversation took an interesting turn. If I paid them £25 then they would reduce the interest from 24.9% to 22.9%. I told them to forget it and hung up. I made arrangements to have the debt cleared.

This encounter is a good example of how card companies and banks are allowed to trap people in debt. MBNA's headline rate is 15.9%. That's where I started. As the agreement progressed they slowly increased the rate to 24.9%. At this level the minimum repayment of 2% per month doesn't decrease the debt. Credit card companies are well aware of this.

Rather than get annoyed at them I decided to do something about it, and Cloudworks was born.

This is a place filled with attitude that challenges the establishment. I'm interested in cutting through the gimmicky and often misleading advertising and providing incisive interesting journalism that prints truth not fiction.

I received support from several friends and decided to launch the site.

Right now, it's very much something that is created in the spare time of a few busy people. So whilst we try and update daily, we don't always succeed. It's also the reason that we can't answer every email, although we do where we can. You can be assured that we read and appreciate every one of them.