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Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot

Cost of living crisis.

By Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot, in General Chat

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grobyfox1990

grobyfox1990

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, RobHawk said:

You have to cancel and wait for the retentions team to get in touch to get a half tidy deal. 

 

I have in the past cancelled and signed up as a new customer in my wife's name and then back to me again, but this can be a bit of a pain in the ass for a few days.

Yeh. The internet salesmen they have on the streets are always useful for internet hustle sign ups, they’ll give you more as they’re on commission. Renewed to talk talk via one of them as a new customer called joe bloggs with a massive discount, then changed my name on account to my own a week or so later

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yorkie1999

yorkie1999

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

In other news, has anyone else been looking at their bank statements and now that things are getting a bit tight realised how bloody careless they've been?

 

I've just realised that Amazon have been taking 9 quid a month off me forever for Prime membership. This would be fine, but I don't remember ever agreeing to this and was under the impression I was sharing my wife's membership, who is also paying for it. Their customer services have offered me a refund whilst clearly not understanding the issue

I've been careless with the energy bills. Pay the monthly direct debit and trust them to sort it out, so since the prices going up and the predictions etc. i started looking into it. We've been on dual units for electricity for ever, i just assumed that if you were lucky enough to have a meter with economy 7, it gave you cheap electricity at night and that's it. never questioned it until i started looking into it. So, it turns out you get cheap electricity from 12 till 7 in the morning, but more expensive in the day, something to do from when electric storage radiators were popular, we've never had electric storage heaters! just a higher rate in the day and a cheap rate when we don't use electricity. so from april, i've been paying 47p a kwh in the day and 6p from 12 onwards and the new price cap would have meant i still paid that, god knows what it would have gone up to from october if the government hadn't have stepped in.  I rang the supplier up and asked them would i be better off going to a single tariff based on my usage over the last year and they told me i would so i told them to change it to a single tariff which means i now pay 33p per unit, so from what i can work out  i'm making a saving of about 30%, correct me if i'm wrong, so if anyone's on eco 7, it may be worth looking into it. What's annoying is with all this cost of living crisis and increased energy bills, you would sort of expect them to contact you and say, look you'd be better off doing this or that because i lways under the impression that customer services was to help the customer out. Maybe that's the problem with being too trusting these fvckin highwaymen! Hope this info helps someone out

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FoyleFox

FoyleFox

Posted
Posted

Very useful to know regarding dual versus single rate. The house we bought last year came with a dual rate meter and I have wondered if we'd be better off on single rate tariff. With all of the recent increases I'll be checking that when our fix ends next year. Our rates are reasonably favourable though, it's 24p day rate and 14p at night. 

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Bellend Sebastian

Bellend Sebastian

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Daggers said:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/05/over-330000-excess-deaths-in-great-britain-linked-to-austerity-finds-study

 

 

910F3159-3345-42D3-BADB-9BAE8B5CBA8E.jpeg

It's like we're living in an episode of Logan's Run where the selection for death criteria are much more complex and even less fair.

 

And there's more outdated and impenetrable cultural references where that came from (which should probably be my catchphrase)

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dsr-burnley

dsr-burnley

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, Daggers said:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/05/over-330000-excess-deaths-in-great-britain-linked-to-austerity-finds-study

 

 

910F3159-3345-42D3-BADB-9BAE8B5CBA8E.jpeg

Is there a link to the study?  Crude mortality rates are dropping, in England and Wales at least, and age adjusted mortaility rates are dropping - 2010 was the last year when age adjusted mortality rates were over 1,000 per 100,000 population.  Every year since then (until covid) was lower.

 

I'm not saying they don't have evidence that death rates should have been dropping faster than they were, but they are talking about 7% of deaths over the 8-year period that were caused by cuts to public spending and benefits.  It's an absolutely stunning conclusion if correct, and needs examining carefully because it looks far too bad to be true.

 

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsintheukfrom1990to2020

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lcfc278

lcfc278

Posted
Posted
16 hours ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

 

I've never been aware of Alexa doing anything like that, but it's a bit random how it sometimes says it's playing something from Spotify and then the next time you play the same track it says it's coming from Amazon Music. Find it hard to believe the kids would have done it accidentally as Alexa generally ignores their incoherent nonsense requests

It does happen. My kids have signed me up to Amazon Music on 2 occasions, by asking her to play certain songs they've said yes when asked if we wanted to sign up and boom, Alexa has just done it and I've been billed after a month.

 

Worst was the second time as somehow it charged it to my company card and I got hauled into Accounts to explain why I was charging the company for it.

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FoyleFox

FoyleFox

Posted
Posted
36 minutes ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

I'm pretty confident that's not what's happened to us, as I think I set it up to not take accept requests for billable things, and I don't think our Alexa is even linked to my wife's account anyway

I'm confident I have no idea when it comes to Alexa and her mysterious ways :D Ours pipes up with random things when you've not asked anything....I'm saying no more, she'll know....

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Sly

Sly

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, FoyleFox said:

I'm confident I have no idea when it comes to Alexa and her mysterious ways :D Ours pipes up with random things when you've not asked anything....I'm saying no more, she'll know....

They’re vampires devices though. 
 

I’ve got 6 of the things around my house and they’re costing about £7/year each. 

 

Apparently other vampires devices :

 

TVs on standby - £24 / year

Sky Boxes / Set top boxes - £23 / year

WiFi router - £18 / year

Microwave - £16 / year

XBox / PlayStation / Switch - £12 / year

PC / Laptop - £12 / year

Shower - £10 / year

Dishwasher - £8 / year

Tumble Dryer - £6 / year 

Washing machine - £5 / year

Phone charger - £1.50 / year

Smart bulbs - £1.00 / year

 

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Bellend Sebastian

Bellend Sebastian

Posted
Posted

Got a refund of 12 months of Prime payments, so a good start.  They've also refunded my Missus' Amazon music subscription although that only started a month ago so that's only a tenner coming back.

 

My mystery Prime membership started in 2018!  I've managed to find an email saying I'd started a free trial (don't recall doing that, would have had no reason to, was already sharing my wife's) but in my Amazon account history there's no record of me ever signing up, so the mystery is not quite solved yet....  

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, Fazzer 7 said:

Just to add to the misery Opec have announced they are cutting oil production. Just to force the price back up no doubt. 

Yep.

 

It's almost as if continued reliance on oil as a means of energy generation is not a good idea economically as well as for the general future of human civilisation.

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Fazzer 7

Fazzer 7

Posted
Posted

I read something the other day and damned if I can find the article, but no doubt you’ll know the answer. I can’t remember the exact figures but it stated, that since the start of this century the world has spent something like 5 trillion on green energy initiatives to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and obviously reduce greenhouse gases. So far we are using only 1-2% less oil and gas. 

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
28 minutes ago, Fazzer 7 said:

I read something the other day and damned if I can find the article, but no doubt you’ll know the answer. I can’t remember the exact figures but it stated, that since the start of this century the world has spent something like 5 trillion on green energy initiatives to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and obviously reduce greenhouse gases. So far we are using only 1-2% less oil and gas. 

I can't find hard information on spending figures myself...however for me the matter itself is a red herring because it could be ten times the amount you say, perhaps even a hundred times, and it would still be cheaper than the cost of inaction in the form of having to respond to vastly increased incidences of famine, war, drought and migration as a result of it. I'm not really sure how that isn't clear.

 

As for oil and gas use, according to Our World in Data we're actually using more fossil fuels now than we did in 2000, but that's because of an overall increase in energy consumption, rather than increased reliance on oil and gas itself - their share has decreased since then, and that of renewables has increased rapidly. I'm interested to see how fission power has been sidelined in that time, too - which is a shame because it is an integral part of the solution for me.

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted (edited)
24 minutes ago, Fazzer 7 said:

@leicsmac I know nothing of your background, but you seem incredibly knowledgable on this subject. What are your feelings about nuclear fusion. Do you think it will ever become reality?

Science communication is (part of, hopefully more soon) my stock in trade, so keeping tabs on that stuff - or finding good sources when I don't know something - is something I take seriously.

 

Regarding nuclear fusion, I can understand folks being sceptical about it, it's been "20 years away" for 50 years, but we are making progress on it and it's something we really have to succeed on - it's so far ahead of anything we have right now in terms of power and sustainability.

 

NB. I appreciate the vote of confidence in what I know, thank you.

Edited by leicsmac
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