12 Months Free Line Rental – NOT!

Im writing this post in a bit of a rage having been ‘screwed’ on a so called free line rental deal!

A while back I ordred a new mobile phone… as the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

But then… greed kicks in, the possibility of getting something for nothing is very alluring, even if things ‘dont feel right’.

So, the deal is, I bought a new phone contract from a well known retailer, who shall remain nameless, for now at least, who said that if I wanted a really cheap deal they could give me a phone contract completely free of charge.

They said they had some special promotion on whereby they would refund the total cost of my phone contract to me over a period of months some way into the contract.

It all sounded a bit complicated at the time to be honest, I guess I should have paid more attention.

Anyway, the long and the short of this is that I though I was getting a “12 months free line rental” deal, but fell fould of a few (of the many!) technicalities in the contract and was not actually paid anything :(

Worse still the phone ended up costing me more than if I had just walked into my local store and bought at their standard rates (online is usuall cheaper).

I had a look online for more information on these free line rental deals, and very few of the sites actually point out the problems with them… surprise surprise…. I mean most companies are trying to sell them.

Ironically, one site that does give advice on 12, 18 and 24 months free line rental contracts actually has the deals in the name… if you read that page you will see that there are a load of things you have to watch out for… and more besides it would seem!

The thing is, I have nowhere to go with this now, its all perfectly legal… I have no redress.

I guess its no big deal really, I still got the phone and the minutes I wanted… I just hate knowing I screwed up and could have got it cheaper elsewhere.

Im not sure what to do on my next phone contract… whether to play it safe, or go double or quits and try to make my money back!

Thoughts on the Kindle

In my last post I mentioned that I’d bought a Kindle recently and love it – I thought I’d follow up with a quick review of why I’m so pleased about buying it.

The best thing about the Kindle is the electronic ink system that it uses. After a few minutes of reading it for the first time you forget that you’re actually looking at a computer screen rather than a real book. If you’ve never seen it before, the e-ink screen means that the Kindle isn’t backlit. That reduces the glare from the screen and makes it like reading a normal book on paper.

The other great feature of the Kindle is the Amazon Kindle store. You can access it at any time, buy a book and have it ready to read on your Kindle in less than a minute. The downside to this is that it makes it very easy to get carried away and buy loads of books.

When you combine these things with daily newspapers, cheaper prices (although not by as much as you’d expect) and free 3G connection around the world the Kindle really is good value for money. I’m glad I chose it over getting a tablet – it’s built specifically for reading and it shows. I’d definitely recommend getting the official case with light too, although it’s quite expensive compared to other options.

New Flexible Smart Phone

An interesting new piece of tech that’s going to be released soon is a flexible smart phone. Apparently it is powerful enough to do things normal smart phones do, such as playing music and reading eBooks (as well as all the phone basics that you’d expect) but you can also get it to do different things by folding it up. I’m not sure when it’s actually going to be released, but the guy who made it seems to think that all phones will be like that in a few years.

I can see some of the positives – phones are getting bigger again as people want bigger screens, so it would be great to have one that was a bit smaller and flexible enough to store easily. Also, the technology used in the phone is the same as that found in the Kindle eBook reader. I’ve bought a Kindle recently and love it (have a look at my next post when I get around to writing it) so I’m pleased that the same ink system would e used.

It’s only a prototype at the moment, but hopefully in a few years the technology will be available on the market. I don’t know how consumers are going to react – after all there’s something satisfying about getting a new phone that looks great – but it’s a very interesting technology nonetheless.

Is FaceBook Unbeatable?

Me and a friend were recently talking about whether Facebook would collapse in the near future. He thought that it would, with the argument that previous big social networks such as MySpace have seemed unbeatable then gone into sudden decline.

I don’t think it will happen soon for a variety of reasons – the main one is that Facebook is so entrenched in the everyday lives of not just computer geeks (who’re more likely to move onto the next big thing) but of normal people too.

The main difference between Facebook and MySpace is that Facebook has continually improved, whereas MySpace got worse and worse very quickly. The ability to customize your own MySpace profile led to huge numbers of profiles being barely readable, something that FB will never have a problem with.

That doesn’t mean I think Facebook will be around forever though. In the future I imagine an internet where a social network site isn’t required – you’ll be able to connect with friends and family directly to share photos, status updates etc without needing to visit a site like Facebook. Whether this will ever be allowed to happen or not is a different matter – a lot of people have huge sums of money invested in the development and success of social networks as we know them today.

We all know this isn’t a guarantee for success though. There have been many internet companies with a lot of money behind them that have failed. I think the biggest threat to Facebook is themselves – if they get too greedy with advertising then users data may be compromised too much.