Recently i have been have discussions about pricing with some of my business associates. Coming up with that delicate win win balance that is not only financially agreeable to both, but also factors in enough to allow for all the little extra’s that truely make a product / service a great experience such as after sales services, product/service support, ease of use etc. In the end it was decided that “Something is only worth what somebody is willing to pay for it” and everything has multiple values depending on the experience associate with it. See my next post…
Are Irish banks falling behind in competitiveness? Take credit cards for example. In the uk you can get incredible Cash Back Credit Cards which can return as much as 4% of your spendings to you. I don’t know of any such comparable deals here in Ireland. So why don’t we have these deals on offer here in Ireland??
Jim suggests in his blog that all the following should be paid with a cash back card:
1. Cable/Satellite TV Service 2. Internet Service 3. Telephone 4. Cellular 5. Newspaper 6. Magazine Subscriptions 7. Insurance Premiums (Car, Life, Renter’s Insurance, etc.)
As you can get a rebate. Ofcourse you want to be sure you clear your balance at the end of every month. But the pennies do add up.
Got my bill with vodafone today and noticed that I’m being charged 5.99 per month for insurance against my will! GRRRR. For those of you who read the blog you’ll know i hate phone insurance. 71.88Euro a year for a phone which is now a year and a half obselete. No thanks!
Tried to ring the customer care team, was told the queue to talk to someone is over five mins, a conservative estimate i guessed and hung up.
So why the hell am i being charged Insurance. Well it was given as a free sweetner when i bought my phone and agreed a 18 month contract. They did send me a notice to offer to renew the insurance for a fee – took one look and into the shredder No thanks!
Then i looked over the bill, which i have to admit i only occasionally do. Three days of being in the UK, While signed up to their “Passport” deal – texting costs 31.41Euro. Not such a good deal, i should have texted from the laptop in the hotel or used my Roam 4 Free Card.
I think i’ll chat to O2 again sometime next week… having read about their new Broadband usb key, that they don’t charge higher rates for international texts and that their rates are nogotiable i may just move all the company accounts to them.
Had a Ryanair flight back to Ireland yesterday and had to laugh at a comment i heard. When arriving into the luggage area there were was no information on which area to go to to pick up the luggage from our flight. Clearly a fellow passenger wasn’t a Ryanair fan, as everyone looked at the screens hoping to get some direction a bloke turned to his wife and said “see this is the problem with cheap flights – they wont even spend the money to tell you where your bags are”! It wouldn’t have been so funny if he wasn’t deadly serious.
Eventually i found my bag randomly under a madrid labeled flight, i was in from the UK.
Here’s another interesting luggage story – Damien Mulley was signed up for gay dating sites and traced it back to Dublins airports baggage handling team!
I had an email today asking about Talk Talk’s cost to 1520 numbers. Googled it out of interest and it took a while to find info so i thought i’d do a quick post.
TalkTalk are charging 21/25c (noone seems to know for sure) per minute and billing by minute, as opposed to second to ring 1520 numbers. Eircom set the rates for 1520/1530 numbers as they are premium rate numbers, however other companies are entitled to set their own. O2 charge 20c, Vodafone 25c and Meteor have recently upped their prices to 30c – which i can understand since their mobile operators focused on winning the foreign national market who benefit most from using 1520 numbers to call abroad from telecoms like my CheapChat business. Saying that Meteor have really great rates for international calls, which is definately a step in getting people to realise how ripped off they’re getting on paying for international calls from other providers.
What annoys me about talk talk is there inability to let customers know their prices to these numbers. Funnier still is that they are the winner of the 2007 award for Best Customer Service Management Team. I rang their customer service team some months ago and the girl had never heard of 1520 numbers and just like on their web site she had no information about them on her computer. I think companies should be required to list ALL their prices on their website in an easy to find manner – Hidden charges should be made illegal.
New Lexus is a self-parking car! ‘Select reverse in the Lexus LS460 and the big saloon will steer itself in to a parking space’. Ok so this is completely unnecessary and probably not worth the extra cost – but its a cool party trick and is just another step in the direction of cars that drive themselves (due in a hundred years or so). What is cool is the active cruise control that will sense a slow car ahead of you on a motor way and alerts the driver. Hasn’t got night vision like the new Mercs but erm, lets not encourage people too much to take their own eyes of the road.
I’m a big Lexus fan cause here in Ireland they don’t have the smugness of driving a Merc and arent as common as BMW’s. There a lovely drive, very comfortable and mine always puts a smile to my face when im in it.
Had my first offical Plato meeting this evening. For those that don’t know its a networking and support group for SME business owners. Meeting went well and the group seems pretty intelligent. I’m looking forward to the second meeting next month.
Had a conversation today about phone insurance. I was recently asked to renew my insurance policy (the first one came free from vodafone as an incentive). I definately won’t be opting for new insurance, even though i had the need to call on the insurance. I just believe that the price is insanely inflated for the value involved. Unless your complusively forgetful or desperatly hate risk and need piece of mind.
Buying from the phone companies direct is at least double what the cost of approaching an insurance agent directly would be. I can’t help but think people just opt in for Insurance as a last minute thought without really giving it much thought. Since you can legally buy a pay-as-you-go phone (subsidised by any network) and unlock it. Is phone insurance really a cheeky way of stealing customers money?
Eircom is to reduce the prices it charges other operators for using its network by around 10% from July following a review by the regulator ComReg.
The cuts are in the Interconnection Call Conveyance Rates, which Eircom charges other phone companies for initiating or terminating calls on its network.
The reductions will mostly affect other fixed-line operators, but will also affect mobile companies, which pay a charge to Eircom for calls to land lines.
As i type this i’m watching “Badger or Bust” on Sky One. I’m quite into this “Unreality TV”, I find them quite inspiring and usually get idea’s for my projects by crossing over idea’s from other industries into my various projects.
These shows are educational while being entertaining. Ruth Badger’s main skill is sales. And everyone has to sell everyday – even if they dont know their doing it. People need to sell themselves, sell their opinions to their peers, sell their self worth to others. In many ways they make business sexy and encourage others that if people who are that incapable of running a business team can still succeed then maybe by just making a few positive changes at work we too can make major turn arounds.
