This week I have been thinking about how to lower our phone and broadband spending. It was prompted by the fact that we have lots of unspent minutes on our mobile phone plans, which offer up to 250 minutes for free as part of our £5 a month deal. I have only recently been gifted a mobile phone and I do not use it much, but it seems to be an expected thing for the course I'm on, so I was grateful for the gift. As a result of all those unspent minutes I decided to cancel the Anytime free calls deal we have with our broadband and phone package, this would save £8 a month. Since the billing works a month in advance the change won't take effect until May, which will be just 1 month away from when we can switch. This prompted me to have a look at other deals available.
It was serendipitous timing as the following day I got an email from our current provider to say that the deal price was increasing by £1 a month in June. I definitely do not want to pay more, so used the moneysaving expert website to have a look at how much it would cost to get the same package we have now somewhere else. I did not sign up for anything, as I still have more than a month to decide.
Well, the day after that, I got another email from our current provider saying that if I signed up again for 18 months then not only would I avoid the price increase but would save £15 a month as well ! I was very tempted, as sometimes switching can mean that the service is a bit intermittent for a few days afterwards and the switching date is right in the middle of MasterShoestring's exams, so no internet access for getting at past papers, revision materials etc. would be very inconvenient.
However, I made myself calculate how much this wonderful new deal would cost over the course of a year- just under £300, whereas I could switch to another provider and get the same services for under £200. This is too much of a saving to ignore, so I deleted the email promising the wonderful saving and closer to the expiry date for the current deal will use the figures I have collected to call them and see if they will match the cheapest deal I find at that time, if not I'm switching !
Well done. I've given up phoning my media provider asking to save money as they only offer me more channels "free" for 6 month in the hope that we'll miss them so much when the 6 month deal expirers that we'll start paying for them. I'm paying them the same amount per month as my Gas & Electricity bill combined!! I can't help thinking that Media packages are a rip off and would seriously consider scrapping the whole package if the rest of the family would allow! Julie Wales :-)
ReplyDeleteHi Julie, Yes, I do think the whole area is designed to make price comparisons difficult and to suck you in to paying more !
ReplyDeleteNice deal, Thanks for sharing this helpful post.
ReplyDeleteCompetitive landline and broadband packages
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