Saturday 26th July, 2008 - £8,428.07 in debt…

Oh yeah! I’m amazing! Look at what I’ve just done - look at the debt counter! LOOK AT IT!

Yes, I’ve been working very hard - like some kind of idiot - for the past 18 days, and finally I’m seeing some money arrive in my bank account. That’s £350 straight onto the Barclaycard, and hopefully more to come next week.

I even got £118.50 from GfK for mystery shopping - a whole £3.50 more than I expected! And they say it’s not a proper job!

 Energy costs are set to rocket….

EDF has become the first of the big six energy suppliers to make this summer’s anticipated gas and electricity price increases.

Gas prices will increase by 22% and electricity by 17% for existing domestic customers from July 25th (today) onwards. The inflation busting price rises have been predictably blamed on rising wholesale costs.

It’s the second round of price increases EDF customers have had to face this year, following January’s 13% increase in gas costs and 8% rise in electricity costs.

However, with industry analysts forecasting increases of up to 60% on energy prices this summer, hopefully the price hikes aren’t going to be as severe as was once expected.

Average annual fuel bills for EDF customers will rise from £1000 to something around the £1200 mark.

For further updates, visit the news desk at EnergyChoices.

   Bournemouth gets broadband…

Promising super-fast broadband for everyone, Bournemouth has been chosen as the home for the UK’s first “Fibrecity,” because of its superb, err… sewer system!

Yes, Bournemouth will soon be the first city in England to boast the Fibrecity status, and not because of it’s notoriety as a colourful seaside city that comes complete with tacky tourist attractions and over-priced souvenirs.

Oh no, the reason that H2O Networks has chosen Bournemouth over 49 other English cities goes a lot deeper underground than that…

Because of their waste water system, the people of Bournemouth will soon be the privileged residents of a Fibrecity. And all this week, as a welcoming present, every home and business in the Bournemouth Borough Boundary will be invited to connect to the network for free.

The British seaside city, renowned for its seven miles of “golden” sand, will have fibre-optic cables installed into its pipelines, meaning its residents will all soon be able to take advantage of services such as IPTV and home medical monitoring, and businesses will have 22nd Century connectivity at their fingertips.

A typical house in revolutionary Bournemouth will not look misplaced in an episode of The Jetsons.

Work to install the fibre-optic cables, which will cost about £30million and will be entirely funded by H2O Networks, will begin as soon as September, but there will be little, if any disruption to the city, as laying the cables in the sewer system will happen completely underground.

As a cost effective alternative to installing cables aboveground, the project will deliver ultra high bandwidth to all Bournemouth’s businesses and more than 88,000 homes at speeds far exceeding current DSL or cable modem speeds, typically by tens or even hundreds of Mbps. And users will have unlimited access to FTTH (fibre-to-the-home), meaning faster downloads and more communication opportunities.

Brilliant news for the people of Bournemouth, as the normally very expensive installation costs will be reduced because the sewer system is already in place. So providers will be able to reflect these savings in competitively priced service packages.

The estimated completion date for all the cables to be installed is September 2010, buying everyone else enough time to pack up their belongings and relocate to the special city.

Or alternatively, you could wait for the next Fibrecity to be built. But who’s next for the underground treatment? Well, Dundee will be the first Scottish Fibrecity, and after that, the world is H20 Network’s oyster. I’m placing my bet’s that it’ll be a little while before London gets fibre-ised…

Oh, and here’s a little bit of bonus trivia for all of you who were wondering, there are 50 cities in England, and 66 in the whole of the UK. I counted them all myself.

 Takin’ it to the streets…

Thursday 24th July, 2008 - £8,778.07 in debt…

Ebay is the bane of my flipping life at the moment.

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that I started off by sticking some old stuff on Ebay and paying off my smallest debt in a week. That was great - everyone paid up and life was good. But then I carried on, blindly and recklessly Ebaying thing after thing, and now I’ve got four (FOUR!) unpaid item disputes on my hands.

FOUR! That’s enough to make me slightly cheesed off.

I’ve got a feeling this might be something to do with Ebay’s new feedback rules, so I’ve been on the hunt for some Ebay alternatives to try out. So far, I’ve found the following:

      PlayTrade: You can sell CD albums, books, DVDs, games, consoles and audiobooks on Play.com, and the site’s offering ten free listings per member until the end of July. It’s not an auction site - you pick a selling price and wait for someone to buy.

      Amazon Marketplace: You can sell practically anything here, on the same basis as PlayTrade - the item just appears on Amazon with your price against it, and you get access to Amazon’s millions of customers.

      Ebid: An international auction site, this is one of Ebay’s main competitors. Luckily for sellers, it doesn’t charge listing fees or final value fees, but not so luckily it doesn’t have anywhere near the traffic of Ebay. But, if you upgrade to a Seller+ Lifetime account (half price at £49.99 at the moment), you’ll get a… wait for it… FREE t-shirt!

      Ibootsale: This one is run like a car boot sale, where you buy a “pitch” and lay out your items to sell. Ninety-day, 25-item pitches are free right now. It’s not an auction site - the pitch system means that your item will be viewable for 90 days or until someone buys it. In theory, you only pay for your pitch and there are no other fees, but the site doesn’t currently say what the normal pitch price is.

      121bid.com: Another auction site, apparently 100% free to use. That’s no listing, reserve, buy-it-now or final value fees at all. God knows how they stay afloat, but the site does carry advertising and use PayPal.

      Gumtree: A great big online Classifieds section, where you can sell or swap.

And then there are the traditional ways of selling your old junk: Classifieds in the local papers or FreeAds, and car boot sales.

Any other ideas? Should I steer clear of any of the sites above, or should I just go for it? Are the buyers on these sites any more likely to pay up than my Ebay shysters?

 Steer yourself out of trouble..

Warnings have been circulated today regarding a banking Trojan virus purporting to be a news story about former Formula One World Champion Fernando Alonso.

The Trojan virus, disguised as a fabricated news article giving details of a supposed motorway accident involving Spaniard Alonso just outside Bilbao, carries the El Pais newspaper livery. Opening the link attached to this news story unleashes a banking Trojan which, when installed on your computer, will be ready to steal financial details when you log-in to your bank account or make online purchases.

The link promises you an ‘amateur recording’ of the non-existent crash and ensuing blaze, in which Alonso is reported to have perished. Opening this link will only result in the Trojan being speedily downloaded however.

Should you receive an email carrying this information, or see this news item advertised online, please don’t click on the link. It’s a phishing scam.

Unfortunately for Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso is very much alive, well, and preparing for the Hungarian Grand Prix next weekend.

 Genuine Pace

Morrissey would of course counter that headline with a dismissive ‘it makes none’, but his best days are behind him and (as far as I’m aware) he knows very little of the telecoms market. In fact, a more accurate response would perhaps be ‘it makes some, but not as much as you think’.

The fibre-optic driven broadband network capable of supporting 100Mbps speeds that BT have declared to deliver by 2012, would bring the UK broadband infrastructure bang into line with those of such broadband powerhouses as Japan and Korea. That means bang into line with download speeds enjoyed by Japan and Korea in 2008 however; by 2012 it’s highly anticipated many parts of the world will be revelling in 1000Mbps connections.

Will the UK be among this heavenly throng? Highly unlikely, although it’s worth noting Japanese broadband users suffer in much the same way UK users do in relation to broadband advertising. Up to 100Mbps broadband speeds in Japanese ads rarely means you’ll get a consistent 100Mbps connection. Speeds usually fluctuate between the 55 and 95Mbps mark.

Fast forward to 2012. The Smiths have reformed with Slash on lead guitar, Animal from the Muppets on drums and a visibly ‘heavier’ Morrissey finding that troublesome middle eight in ‘William, it was really nothing’ even more testing than usual. On a pertinent note, what will your broadband connection enable you to do?

Well, first and foremost, all the online essentials (emails, media downloads, Facebook housekeeping, shopping, paying bills etc.) should take ten times faster to complete in theory. Obviously a 100Mbps broadband connection isn’t going to make you type faster, but it will make data transfer (particularly involving hefty files) tangibly quicker.

The problem is applications such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube are optimised for 3 to 6Mbps connections, so the actual impact a 100Mbps connection will have on these apps could be negligible or, at worse, destructive. It’s the equivalent of trying to swat a fly with a rocket launcher.

100Mbps connections to the home should see Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) finally become established after years of dithering on the sidelines. Triple-play bundles will be significantly shaken up and redesigned come 2012, with the old phone-TV-broadband model replaced by Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), IPTV and broadband. A 100Mbps connection should be able to support 3 HDTV channels running simultaneously, and still leave enough room for a little messenger action on the side.

The big winner will be video conferencing and holographic video capabilities. 100Mbps connections could allow us communication tools only previously fantasised in 60s sci-fi movies; I’m talking interactive holographic video, handheld high-res devices, streaming HD video and real-time mobile video interaction with pause and rewind functionality.

Although everyone wants faster speeds from their broadband connection, the conversion to fibre and 100Mbps speeds could be a bumpy one. Are UK broadband users ready for 4G capabilities? Can they handle 100Mbps? When will they be able to use super-fast broadband to its full potential?

In the future when all’s well, as a certain bequiffed Mancunian might say.

 Bournemouth - The Promised Land

Tuesday 22nd July, 2008 - £8,810.98 in debt…

I recently asked around on some forums about services that make it easier to get out of debt, and was bombarded with links to Whatsthecost.com, which apparently is what all the cool people are using. I just went there for the first time, and I feel like I’ve arrived late to a party. A really nerdy party where the guests soberly calculate what order they should pay their credit card bills in, but a party nonetheless.

Just to recap, I have debts on:

1. Barclaycard
2. Capital One card
3. Tesco credit card
4. Barclays overdraft.

I’m paying off the Barclaycard first as it’s got the highest APR, and I’m paying a set amount on each of the others by standing order (£50 on Capital One, £75 on Tesco). I’ve been aiming to pay off £400 a month, but that’s not always possible.

Apparently, I’ve been doing it a bit wrong, but not too wrong. According to the snowball calculator on What’s The Cost, I should be setting up Direct Debits for the minimum on everything but the Barclaycard, and paying off £470 a month in total if I’m going to meet my deadline of the end of April 2010.

The best thing about the snowball calculator doo-dah is that it’s given me some fascinating facts to spur me on. For instance, if I pay everything off in my given time, in the right order, I’ll pay a total of £996 in interest. Horrified gasp. But, if I were just paying everything willy-nilly without (ahem) “snowballing”, I’d lose an additional £650.

The site has even done a good job of justifying my first act as a debt-payer-off: Getting rid of the comparatively cheap NatWest card debt first. “Sometimes, emotionally [rather than financially], it makes sense to pay off the smaller debts first. This can be a great incentive when starting to deal with your debt.”

The calculator is easy to use if you’ve got your debt information in front of you - interest rates, minimum payments, balances and interest-free periods. You’ll also have to tell it how much you can afford to pay back in total per month. By tweaking this, you can find out how much you need to pay to meet your debt-free deadline. 

The results page tells you exactly how much to pay off month by month on each debt. Supposedly, you can then login to save your results and come back to them, but this facility wasn’t working for me. Never mind though - I just saved the webpage instead.

The site is full of similar debt calculators and gadgets, and I can see it being really useful over the next 21-and-a-bit months. Now I’ve just got to encourage my friends to join me for a debt reduction party.

In other news…

Yes, I did sell my soul to the Mail on Sunday for £1.50, but it was worth it. I also got a bit carried away this weekend and fell off the wagon, budget-wise, when I booked two concert tickets. But, at least when I’m starting to chew my own knees off with boredom in November, having spent almost nothing for five months, I’ll be able to cheer myself up by seeing McFly in Bournemouth. Simple pleasures.

 We’re pulling rabbits out of hats…

In response to the deluge of mail we received regarding the complexity of submitting meter readings to British Gas, here at Consumer Choices we are pleased to announce we’ve cracked the code.

For the inside track on how to successfully submit a meter reading at britishgas.co.uk/meter, take a look at the latest instalment from our very own Consumer Spy, Becca Talbot.

Having liaised with British Gas itself, Becca has constructed a step by step guide to help you through the process, designed with newcomers to the world of online energy tariffs in mind.

So stop tearing your hair out, hitting your head against the wall or, worse still, thinking about reverting back to paper bills, and use Becca’s guide to take the sting out of online account handling.

The Consumer Spy - Meter Reading Made Easy

 Right on!

Having entertained statues of John Lennon, art installations sympathetically dedicated to America’s loss during 9/11 and rock concerts by both the Manic Street Preachers and now defunct US supergroup Audioslave, Cuba is about to experience a new phase in 21st century cultural development.

Broadband is coming to Cuba, bueno!

The service will be delivered via undersea fibre optic cable from Venezuela, completely bypassing the US. A 1500 kilometre cable is to be laid connecting Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad to the rest of the world, using La Guaira as the conduit.

Cuba currently relies heavily on high-latency, lo-fidelity satellite access, but this new pipeline with allow for high speed broadband capabilities. With the state loosening its grip on citizens by allowing mobile phones and PCs to be imported for home use, public demand for broadband services is strong.

The clamour for popular culture in Havana, Santa Clara and all the way down to the Bayamo has become fervent. In May 2005, Audioslave played a free show to a crowd of over 50,000 star struck fans in Havana’s sprawling, open air La Tribuna Antimperialista José Martí plaza (loosely translated as ‘The House of Anti-Imperialism’, which surely makes the Milton Keynes Bowl sound pretty meaningless by comparison).

Similarly, the Manic Street Preachers entertained a 5000 strong crowd at the equally brilliantly named ‘Karl Marx Theatre’, where the most expensive seats in the house cost 25 cents (17 pence) each.

CVG Telecom (Corporación Venezolana de Guyana) and ETC (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba) will be implementing the bulk of Cuba’s broadband infrastructure, which aims to improve on the current slow and unreliable dial-up access.

   “Is that super size madam?”

After being encouraged to eat our greens, count our calories and watch our waistlines, it seems more than a little hypocritical that those who choose to live unhealthy lifestyles could actually prosper from bigger pension payouts.

But if plans from Legal & General, Britain’s biggest annuity provider, come to fruition, then that’s just what will happen.

It won’t be just shirts bursting at the seams, but wallets too!

On the proviso people with a high Body Mass Index (BMI) will have a shorter life expectancy than those who look after themselves, the good people at Legal & General are putting the finishing touches to a pilot scheme in which a person’s occupation and BMI will be used to determine how long they are expected to live, and calculate the resulting annuity payout.

Annuity policies exchange a pension holder’s savings for an annual income, a guaranteed payout for every year they remain on this planet. With payouts being calculated using the person’s life expectancy, effectively, if you live longer than predicted, you’ll be in the money.

Annuities are one of the few financial products that thrive during a period of financial downturn. Due to falling corporate bond prices, anyone looking to cash in their personal pension this summer will be significantly better off than before the credit crunch kicked in.

Until last year, when the insurance giant started the ball rolling in assessing annuity payout rates more accurately, standard annuity rates were only based on the age and the sex of the pension holder.

Legal & General haven’t been the only one to change their annuity payouts to include lifestyle as a factor however, and from November of this year, Norwich Union will be including clients’ postcodes, marital status and smoking habits as criteria for pricing its annuities. I’m pretty sure Jack Priestly, who has puffed his way through 153,000 cigars and more than 700,000 cigarettes, will be kicking himself that the new annuities assessment criteria didn’t arrive sooner.

I never thought there would come a day when being overweight would actually be a plus, as well as being a plus size. After careful consideration, I’ve decided I will have that very unhealthy chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle for lunch. If the saturated fats don’t kill me now, they’ll definitely kill me later, but in the mean time I’ll enjoy it and hopefully the wad of cash that will come with it.