To Call or Not to Call

Why do I get the feeling that phone companies have nothing better to do in winter than grab peoples attention with 'super great deals' that in the end will cost you more?
Turns out I wrote a post about this last June, so definitely a winter thing for them.
Once again the phone companies have been calling offering us a super great deal if we transfer our provider to them. You know the calls....the ones where everything will be much cheaper than you current provider as long as you are prepared to tell them what you are currently paying and then they will undercut that provider just enough to tempt you to change, to then only screw you in 12 months time!

It got me thinking though, why was I hearing from all the companies that wanted me but not from the company that had me and could explain why I should stay with them?
A quick call to my provider and suddenly I had saved $25 of my home phone.

"Yes madame we can do something for you....did you know the current plan you are on has been discontinued 18 months ago?......Wonder why they didn't call me to change it? Oh yea I know because I am currently paying them more money than the other plans are and so why turn down a customers money!...Did you also know that by continuing to keep you mobile phone with the same company you can save even more off your home bill? ......Again something I didn't know and could have gained benefit from for at least the past 12 months!....Oh and do you want to rejig your mobile plan while you are on the phone madame?"

Suddenly our home phone bill has been cleaned up and is now cheaper and I remembered that someone had called me to discuss my mobile plan a few weeks ago, in fact it was on the day I was going to have surgery and I was definitely not in the right head space at the time to discuss my mobile plan and the great new advantages I could get by changing plans! So I asked her to call back in a few weeks time, which she never did funnily enough!

This lead us to visit the shop of the mobile phone company because I was also interested in maybe, possibly getting a new phone. Something a little more user friendly maybe.
1 hour later and I walked out with a new phone, a new calling plan that fits my life and 1 very happy customer.

And the greatest thing about my phone?

The text messages show up like a little conversation. How super cool and cute is that?
Funny the little things in life that make you happy!

What's for Dinner

Do you get this question too? I am sure all households get it at some stage.
Do you always know what you are having? Are you super organised with a meal schedule?
I do have a menu and I do try to stick to it, but sometimes we need to jazz things up a little.

However having someone else make the decision for you is always much nicer, sometimes it just makes thing flow smoother having someone else make the decision and you just get on and cook it.

Turns out our local supermarket are trying to help in just that way.
They are suggesting a meal to make and also giving you a great special on the cost of actually getting the ingredients required.

Each week on a Wednesday they are offering a meal deal for $14.95. The Meal Deal for this week was a Corn Beef Meal with Dessert. For that price you got the following:

• 3kg Corn Beef
• 1kg potatoes ($2.99)
• 1/4 of pumpkin ($1.49)
• 500g bag frozen mixed vegetables ($3.49)
• 1 pkt white sauce mix ($1.30)
• 4 white magnum ice creams ($3.99)

The prices in red are what they normally cost. Adding them together it came to $13.26 so for $1.69 I got a nice piece of corn beef that actually did us dinner and lunch for Steve the next day. Corn Beef is usually selling at about $6.99-8.99/kg

Now I must admit that if I was doing dinner I wouldn't have brought all of that, although I was very clever and made sure that when they had items to choose from (pumpkin & corn beef) I got the biggest pieces. They were all the same price at the end of the day!

We didn't have this for dinner but I am now going to make a pumpkin soup out of it, so it will now do a few lunches for me and Steve.

The Magnums are definitely not something we would have brought for dinner, but they are now in the freezer for when we need a special treat sometime, cause we sure didn't need them after dinner on Wednesday.

It was just lucky that Wednesday was my day off and that I thought to go check out the special at 9am as that allowed me to put the meat in the slow cooker (crockpot) and leave it simmering all day, the house smelt lovely when we came home from soccer practice.

However, it wouldn't have made any difference because for a deal like that I would still happily have brought it and cooked it the next day, apart from the pumpkin, there really was nothing that was going to go off if not used within a day or 2.

So next week I will happily skip along to the supermarket and see what the special is, because unless it is something that we really don't like then it turns out to be a great deal.

I do know that last week they did a spaghetti bolognese meal and the week before a roast chicken meal, so will be interesting to see what comes out next week.

Checking Out a Deal

In this current climate, the economical one that is, there are companies out there constantly vying for your business.
Companies play against others and try their hardest to drag you in because they usually know that once they get you in they will be happy to keep you for only a year but at least they have you!

One such area that is trying its hardest to get you and retain you here in New Zealand, probably like other countries too, are telephone companies.

The other evening we had a seller arrive on the door trying to get us to switch to their company. They had a very good deal on offer:

• phone line
• broadband
• 40Gb data
• wireless modem

All of this could be yours for the healthy happy price of $75 per month.

On top of this they would give you 2 months free.

We have 1 or 2 little extras on our phone so I enquired about the call minder programme they have and also a set national call payment , we currently pay $20 per month and this allows us to call anywhere in NZ for as long as we want whenever we want and seeing as we have family and friends all over, then it is nice to know we can just pick up the phone and call and not worry about the cost. Some months we use this and more and other times we don't but at the end of the year it balances out.

So I got informed that yes it would be $20 more for the national call charge so the total went to $95 oh and with the call minder service it would go to $105.

Now that is currently $10-15 less per month than we pay and given that they will give us 2 free months then it was very tempting.

However, for that cost I would have to change our main family email provider, which I hate doing, I don't mind having a gmail account but I do also like having our main email account with our provider.

The other small little detail that caught my eye when he showed me the card with all the information on it was that it said in little letters down the bottom - for 12 months - so I asked him what happened at the end of the 12 months, would the price go up to what the plan should probably be?

I was informed that no it wouldn't, they wouldn't be able to do that.

I politely took all the information that he had to offer and told him I needed time to compare my plans and that I would be in touch if I required more details.

I then promptly called the company and spoke to a customer service rep to ask more questions.

I explained that I was interested in their current promotion and what happened at the end of the 12 month period?

He straight away told me that it would go to the normal price of $105. Ha got you!

So instead of $75 per month it would be $105, so add our little extras on top of this and suddenly our telephone bill each month would be $135, we currently pay about $115.

So with all their in your face immediate information, come to us we only charge $75 per month, look we will give you 2 free months as well so there is even more saving, their you will get double the probably current data you are receiving from your provider etc etc it turns out then they will sucker you in the deal at the end of the 12 months when you bill will leap higher than the sky but they will argue that you had it good for 1 year so why are you complaining?

I can see how people get suckered into deals, up front this all looked really grand and stood on the doorstep at 6pm on a cold winter evening I can see how the $75 would suddenly float in peoples minds and that they would sign up on the spot because it is indeed much less than they currently pay, although as mentioned I did immediately work out that we would only be saving $10 a month.

So next time someone wants you to switch to their company just take a day to think it over and really compare it, yes we all want our bills to reduce but are you actually saving anything?

Talking about savings, remember that I could save you some money this winter by giving you a free pair of pyjamas for you lucky child, grandchild or special child in your life. All you have to do is leave a comment on my Winter Give Away post and you are in with a chance of winning the draw when done next week, and remember it doesn't matter where you live in the world, the company is happy to ship internationally, I do love international give aways always so much more friendlier.