Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Gas Price Calluding? Never!

I was amused to see that the competition bureau have now charged a bunch of gas station owners in Quebec with price fixing for gas. I am astounded how is this possible? (I really must learn what is the correct font for sarcasm) When every gas station has the exact same price in an area, what might cause that? Inelastic demand? No, I think price fixing is a little more likely.

Food Prices only up 1.2% Over Year

That is what Stats Canada is saying, that our food prices have only gone up 1.2% over the past year, which is interesting, given the cost of gas sky rocketing, where is this cost being buffered in the system?

Overall, consumer prices for food consumed at home in Canada have risen only 1.2% in the 12 months ending in April 2008. Food prices increased 7.1% in the European Union and 5.9% in the United States during the same period. Countries in Asia with rice-based diets are experiencing the fastest increase in food costs, as the price of rice doubled early in 2008.

Interesting.

Canadians Love the Internet

And I for one am glad of it. Keep going on line and keep visiting interesting blogs, like this one!

Among people who used the Internet at home, 68% went online every day during a typical month and 50% for five hours or more during a typical week. On average, men were online more often and for longer periods than women.

Nortel Sky Rockets

NT is up over $2.00 in the past two days on the statement that they will be doing as they said they would in terms of sales and they are concentrating on LTE wireless technologies (shunning Wi-Max). What does this mean? Hopefully Canada’s former tech darling is starting to get back on their feet and can stop being referred to as “The Former Tech Titan Nortel”. Stay tuned, no this is not me saying go buy this stock, I do hold the stock in a very small way.

Yahoo and Google Get Chummy

Yahoo is now completely killed the Microsoft deal, signing an agreement with Google about search technology sharing and such. This means Yahoo most likely will disappear slowly over time or simply become a part of the Google Monster. Interesting, at one time Google was the “up start” company and Yahoo was the Monster, High Tech is always an interesting world to watch.

I want an iPhone

Yes, the new iPhone 2.0 has been announced by Apple, and it looks really cool to me. They have resolved the issues that I had with it not having a high speed wireless interface (HSDPA 3G) but that is remedied and there are many other really cool applications too. Anyone wishes to have me do a review, please send me one, and I promise to run it through it’s courses (Mrs. C8j will not allow me to buy this High Tech toy, so that is my only chance for now). The cost of the data subscription rate is enough to make me cringe.

Best Cell Phone Deal one Opinion

My friend that was researching the best Cell Phone deal (for her and her family, I must stress that you must research this for what you want to do with your cell phone) and she has come up with her decision about the ideal Cell Phone service for her.

Survey said…… “PETRO CANADA!!” (Pardon?)

Didn’t expect to hear that one, but to quote her report to me:

$.20/minute, no fees, $20 top up lasts 180 days. Phones paid for by petro points.

$0.05 per text incoming and outgoing. You would have to know how many texts you send etc to compare to a $10 per month plan or 15 cents for sent messages only.

They don’t have auto top up

That is the report, which is helpful to me, as I am near wits end with Bell Mobility. It sounds like Petro Canada is the best to go with if all you want is a phone that you don’t use very much, and you are diligent about re-charging your pay per use service (no auto top up), but I suspect I will check out Virgin, President’s Choice and Petro Points myself.

More Competition Coming

That is the good news for Canadian Consumers, is there is another spectrum auction going on, so there will be more operators, and thus more competition in the coming years. You already see some new faces (OK re-branded faces, with Koodo from Telus and others).

My Cell Phone Woes

After my rant about I am Paying How Much for My Phone? I got some very good comments from my highly intelligent readers, where the folks who want to keep their money are going with pay per use programs as a rule.

• Jerry commented that paying for a Long Distance program with Bell is not a good use of money, as there are many much cheaper programs out there.
• Traciatim pointed out that Fido (aka Rogers) has launched an UNO program where you amalgamate your mobile and home phone systems (might be worth investigating too).
• George commented about his use of Virgin mobile and made the good comment: “…Cheaper options are out there. You just need to find them…”, point taken.
• Ram had some very good points:

- Turn off voicemail in home phone and buy an answering machine. The cost of the answering machine can be recovered with just 6 months of voicemail charges.

- Turn off unwanted features in your phone service. I use only call display and call waiting in my home phone - and additionally voicemail in my cell phone

- Try subscribing to services from the same vendor, that way you can negotiate for a better price

As usual my readers show me the way, and give good advice.

A friend is doing some number crunching trying to figure out which is the cheapest Cell Phone plan that she can get that fits her needs, so her and I have been discussing various pay per use plans (I know something about them because both my daughters have those set ups), I am not sure what her final decision was (I will post it when I know), but this caused me to look at my phone bills and I was flabbergasted to see just how much I pay per month for my phones.

The total this month is $190.00 (approx), for 1 home phone line (with a long distance package) and 2 cell phones all from Bell.

I leave that in a paragraph by itself because I am astounded at that number. That is more than I pay to heat my house and it is about 80% of what I pay in Electric + Natural Gas, this is ridiculous, and I am now banging my head on my desk realizing this is one of my major expenses every month.

I am getting nailed for the long distance plan on my home phone, but I am getting obliterated by long distance charges and text’ing charges on my cell phones. My wife and I save long distance charges by sending text message, however, evidently we send too darn many.

This is my new target for controlling costs, as this is a crazy expense. Anyone care to comment on their cell phone expenses and how they keep this expense down, I am open to suggestions (two tin cans and a piece of wire is one of my ideas right now).

Carnivals This Week

I am sending in posts to carnivals again so you can read some of my previous works at:

• The Carnival of Debt Reduction #141 has my post Debt Reduction is like Teenage Sex.
• The Carnival of Debt Management #53 has the same post up too.

Last month we finally replaced my wife’s phone with Bell Mobility, due to it being “old” and it also didn’t work reliably (odd battery habits and tended to not answer a lot either). We chose the “free” phone (I can do a whole article on the concept of “free” phones, but I will hold off), so there would be no extra charge (however we did sign up for another 2 years with Bell Mobility, again, another article), at least we thought it was going to be free.

The young lady who served us told us that there would be a $35 “activation” charge (that’s not what it’s really called, it’s something like a Hardware Activation and Authorization Fee, but close enough for Jazz). Since I saw the young lady “activate” the new phone herself on line I asked what the charge was really for, and she said I could call a special number and ask for it to be refunded (given I was a customer of good standing). I smelled a chance to save some money, so as soon as I got home, I called the number but the chap who I spoke to (in Mumbai, I believe, since it was Saturday) said no such charge had been added to my account YET. He suggested calling back when my bill arrived IF the charge appeared.

That response alone suggested I should persist, so I waited for my Bell Mobility bill to arrive, and it did on Thursday, and sure enough there was the $35.00 charge on it (about a 50% price gouge on my monthly bill). I leaped into action called the number and got a very eager young chap, who introduced himself, and then proceeded to tell me that this charge was NON-refundable, and that there was no way I was ever going to get that money back, and that whoever told me I might get the money back was wrong and I (the customer) should go tell them that.

I was ready for this onslaught (previously I might have flown off the handle and question the young man’s parentage, but I have learned that never works), and I then proceeded to tell the young man on the phone:

• I worked for the company that built their network and this activation fee was completely artificial, because all the work had been done in the store, by the young lady on her computer.
• I was a customer in good standing for over 5 years, and if this monolith of a company views regular customers with such disdain, maybe their competitors would enjoy my business.
• What else could he do for me, if this fee was truly nonrefundable, surely there was something else that could be done?

It’s always important to give your victim an “out” and he took it from there. He realized that I wasn’t just going to hang up and forget about it, so the young chap said he might be able to do “something” for me. A moment passed as he checked, and he came back and said, while he couldn’t refund my $35 fee, he could credit my account this month for $30 for my monthly bill and free call display and give me free call display next month, which added up to $35 total, and asked me if that was satisfactory? I said yes it was, and now I have been refunded my $35. I don’t care if you call it a “one time because you are a pain in the azimuth fee”, just give me my money!

The moral of the story? Stick to your guns, stay polite and point out that you are a good customer, and a lot of the time, folks will do good things for you. If they don’t want to do that, then be ready to move on to where someone appreciates your business (unless you are dealing with a a plumber who is fixing your flooded basement, then I am not sure how to proceed).

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