Canadian Personal Finance Blog

I was in Niagara Falls (Canada) this past weekend, and I think I may have done myself financial damage without actually knowing it.

For those of you who do not know, Digital Roaming is what your phone will do, if it does not find a strong radio signal from your Cell Phone company (in my case Bell Mobility), it will try to contact other carriers in the area, which may or may not have agreements with your Cell Phone Provider, and if they don’t typically calls made while roaming can be expensive.

I had not noticed until Sunday that my phone was telling me that it was Roaming (not that there were any Buffalos around, but we weren’t far from Buffalo, but I digress). Why? Niagara Falls Canada and Niagara Falls, New York State are side by each and in fact I was less than a mile from the U.S. border, which meant I was most likely less than 2 miles from American Cellular Radio towers. What was happening was, most likely, the area I was in was part of the directional beam of one of the U.S. towers, and thus it’s signal was stronger than the Bell Mobility tower signal.

What does this mean? More likely than not, my cell phone bill next month is going to be a whopper in terms of charges. Any incoming calls I took, should be at the normal Bell Mobility rate, as they had to come in using the Bell network, however, any outgoing calls I made, might well have gone through whomever’s network I was connected to at the time, and that might rack up a large amount of charges.

How can you not have this happen?

1. Know where you are going especially if it is near the U.S. border, this is where this is going to happen, since all the Canadian Cell providers have interoperability deals already.
2. If you are going to be in an area, where you suspect you might roam, see if you can turn Roaming off on your phone itself. If you don’t know how, go to your cell phone providers store and ask.
3. Look at your phone BEFORE you make calls, to make sure you aren’t roaming at the time either.

I’ll keep you posted about how badly I get dinged with next month’s bill. –C8j

Stats Canada reports that inflation is starting to rev up, thanks in part, to higher Gas prices. I think I keep repeating myself here, but don’t we all remember the 70’s well enough? Anybody who thinks that if Gas prices stay this high, there won’t be inflation, please stand up, and mail me $10, I promise to send it back if it doesn’t happen (some time, in the next 5 years). This now marks an “upward trend” in Inflation month over month (February Inflation was around 2%, now we are even higher), two months makes a very short “trend”, but a trend none the less.Here is the scarey part of the article:

Canadian consumers paid 10.0% more for gasoline in March than in March 2006, the strongest 12-month increase since the 16.1% increase in July 2006. Strong demand for gasoline in the United States translated into a continual decrease in American gasoline reserves over the last seven weeks. This was an important factor behind the rise in gasoline prices.

If our American friends do not start curtailing their animal lust for Oil, I think we are all in for a tough time ahead with prices continuing to sore!An interesting High Tech aside was the Blackberry network crash yesterday. I have many friends who are Crackberry Addicts and cannot go 5 minutes without checking for their latest e-mail (yes I would be the same way, if I could afford one), I just wonder whether there was a cataclysmic drop in business during this time, or maybe, people got a lot more done, without constantly interrupting themselves to check the Blackberry? Just wondering.

As I suspected, investors and the analysts, sometimes create their own versions of information about stock, witness Yahoo and it’s sharp drop on delivering the exact numbers that they said they would deliver. No one believed that their numbers were going to be as they said they would be last quarter, they figured they were “low balling” it and so went on a buying frenzy based on unsubstantiated rumor (hey it’s like it’s 1997 again), and now they are upset that Yahoo delivered what they said they would? Let’s get a grip people, and stop trying to find the “next big thing” and get back to investing basics (like reading results and working on the basis of that, and not the latest “hot tip”).