The only reason why this is happening is because BT are losing grip on BT Wholesale (LLU or unbundled connections). They loved dominating the market by hoarding the GPO copper and selling them on through third parties. Now that BT aren't cracking the whip, they're feeling the pressure. Especially now that companies are installing their own equipment in cabinets and exchanges. Not to having to live under the "gaze" of ofcom. Personally I think OfCom aren't taking a strict enough approach to things. Fine they throw the odd £400,000.00 fine here and the odd £42,000,000.00 fine there but that has absolutely zero impact on the offending companies. The people at the end of that whip are the end-users, us. The loss in revenue is ushered across to us, dobbed as "necessary increases as OfCom fees increased".. I'm just waiting to see when someone will realise that they're just running around in circles. Didn't Albert Einstein quote: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”

As I work closely with Apple, I often come across interesting tidbits... Once o which saved me a LOAD of money... For a semi iPhone contract you'll be looking easily at between £40-£70 a month depending on your needs of voice and data etc... on top of that, your phone is only covered for 6 months by Apple and should be covered by your provider for up to a year. After that, if it dies, you're on. your own. Apple have something called the iPhone Upgrade program. That link will take you directly to it. here's now the money saving works broken down: - £33.45 is what the iPhone upgrade program costs per month.. - You're covered with 24/7 AppleCare+ so even if you send your phone to hell and back, they'll replace it as per AppleCare+ - Every year, you get the latest iPhone - At the end of the year, you give your old iPhone back to get. the new one at no extra cost (e.g. one off charges) So the £34 +£10 for a Data, Text and Voice plan (sim only, which I just saw on switch) you get more bang for your buck as to put it. So on top of saving the £10-20+a month, you'll also be covered by free insurance (no excesses either), free support for your phone (and all local call centres with Apple). The only hitch might be if you have bad credit.. Apple do check up on your financial conduct... Well it's not them, it's actually backed by AIG (some insurance firm)... Anyway, I hope this tip helps out! Ade

No not really. I think that everyone is over-stating what the situation really is. Fine the £ has weakened considerably, but I recently read a blog article which explained how blue-chip companies announce they make a loss. the way I understood it was: Company A makes £50 million profit in year 1, in year two they only make £40 million (below projection) so it's often announced as a loss. Anyway, The potential the UK has to bounce back s astounding. I think that we (everyone) got a little too comfortable with the EU's top-ups etc... The farmers for one are panicking as they'll be losing a lot of money which they receive from the EU... The fact really is, pre-EU they just had to work harder but were rewarded better. What is costing a lot of money are these "referendums" which quite frankly are a total waste of time.. The last time I checked.. A referendum wasn't concluded on the "best of 3 or 4" of them... That generally goes to show that there's absolutely no point voting in them anyway... I've heard of sore-losers, but ones which are that sore that they actually re-stag the match again? *sigh*... In regards to you saying that you should invest in gold etc... Looking back over the lat few hundred years, gold and other minerals (other than coal) are constantly going up in share. About the warnings, in the past I've been caught out without access to cash. I lived in the Benelux when the EU switched over from local currencies to the Euro.. It took about 3 weeks for that to sort itself out and it wasn't fun at all. Since then I've made it a point to always have a "get out of jail" somewhere to fall back on if all hell breaks loose. but really, I wouldn't worry.. The UK is resilient, so I'm sure that things will be worked out one way or the other.

I was just wondering... If it ever game to the govt. not agreeing to support long-standing EU residents and revoke their stay, how would that pan out if they had kids here? For example someone who's German, with a British partner (not married) but has kids which were born here etc... I got into a fairly heated argument with a buddy of mine about this so it'd be interesting to see where the views stand.

Hey, I just thought I'd throw this out there... I spend a lot of life at work so when I come home the last thing I want to do is cook! I've found that I can kill two proverbial birds with one stone! On a Sunday afternoon when I'm busy cleaning up the house and catching up with the weekly chores, I start cooking big "one pot meals" like Bolognese, Stews, Casseroles and things like that. Intentionally, I cook enough to feed about 5 or 6 people! (and all for a great reason)... I snagged some plastic punnets from the 99p store (which look oddly like the ones you get if you order a Chinese), but they're the perfect size for a portion. Once everything is cooked, I pack it all up in a bunch of punnets, set them to once side till they're cool then freeze them. That way, in the evenings (or nights) when I get in, I can nuke the punnet in the microwave (usually about 5-8 mins on 60%) which gives it just enough time to flash build some veggies, pasta etc... I you live alone, this is an amazing way to save some cash as you won't have to fork out for cooking very night, plus you can eat healthily with the delight of it being "Fast food"... Hope this helps! Hasta la pasta! Ade

I know I'm coming in a little late to this conversation, which out of interest are you using optical mice or more with a ball in them? It might sound like a silly question, but that can be the cause of it. I for one use an optical mouse and every now and again a piece of paper gets stuck in the optical aperture and makes everything go awry. Can you confirm that this also happens in "safe mode" e.g. when you boot windows without drivers and all of the others "odds and sods" which are loaded when it boots? This link will show ou how to boot into safe mode in Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10... http://support.eset.com/kb2268/#W10 Just a fore-warning... When you boot into safe-mode the screen will appear a lot different from what you're used to, so don't panic... It's part of the process. You might also find that there's no sound, or things like the printers or wireless/bluetooth devices won't work. This too is normal... As your mouse (mice) are USB they should work fine.. UNLESS... If you're a bit of a power-user and have a custom system where you've dabbled with things like IRQ's and DMA's.... IF that last sentence went over your head... Then don't worry... If your find that the mouse behaves as per expected in safe-move, but continues to be a problem in normal mode, then it'll probably be a driver interfering with the mouse... If not, then there's an Haddon which interacts with either the mouse directly or the USB ports. Out of interest, would you happen to know if you have USB2 or USB3 ports? (if both, they're usually told apart by being different in colour if you look at them).. usually red and yellow or purple and yellow. Mice get cranky in USB3 ports. Another thing I thought of was does this happen with a bluetooth mouse too? You can get them for a £5er from wilko's. Fine, it won't be the best quality mouse, but ti'll be a good indicator as to where the problem is (or isn't)

really? I know I used to be able to but I think that a long absence between 2007ish till 2012ish lost me some privileges

Ample is just as bad.. Being an apple developer I tend to notice things like that too... I think my machines phone home about 100+ times a day. Don't forget that mobile devices have a lot of caching services, so they often call home (and to other sites, URI's) to get and store information for future use. A good example is my iPhone caught me unawares, as I noticed it only asked me to enter in my pass-code (not finger print) for payments when I went to somewhere totally out of the norm... It seems that companies are stepping up their game with security!

Bear with a sore head? Could you elaborate as to what you see? Error messages? Notifications etc...? As far as I know (well not since I've been back) you can't upload images directly to the forums... You need to upload them to a third party place e.g. dropbox, google drive etc.. (I personally use tinypic.com) Once you've got it up there and get a web address for.. if the image is already on the web e.g. you can access it with http://www.wherever.com/... then you just need to press the button above the chatbot that appear like a picture of a tree... The button looks like this: I just uploaded that now... So on that note... I'll show you how I helped an angry bear... 1) Took a picture of him (biig mistake!) 2) Uploaded it to a website (I'll use tinypic.com as an example).. 3) go to tinypic.com (totally free). And you'll be presented with a screen asking you to choose a file and upload an image (see below) 4) Once on this site. press the "Choose file" button, and make sure you choose the happy bear picture you want to upload. 5) Once you've done that, press upload... It'll ask you to type some random garble in to make sure you're not a robot, but the is commonplace on the internet... 6) Once it's uploaded you'll get a screen similar to the following: .... Yep I uploaded the elated bear a moment ago! 7) Now what you want, is one of two things... i) If you're going to paste the image in directly to a message (rather than pressing the button) then you'll double click on "IMG Code for Forums & Message Boards" What that does is, literally bypass the need for you to.. press a button.. ii) If you're daring and want to press the button, then you'll want the but under "Direct Link for Layouts" 8) either way, you just need to click on one or the other (yep just click on the text itself and it'll automatically copy itself into memory) If you've chosen to paste it into the chat willy nilly (it won't appear as an image to you whilst you're typing but will appear as one after you press POST, then just get your cursor where you need the image to be and: Windows: On the keyboard, press `Control+V` to paste the text.. Thats it.. or, if you're a mouse fan and on Windows, then right click in the general area you want the image in the message box, then click on paste If you're on a Mac and want to use the keyboard , then as per the first one, just press Command+V (not control!) If you fancy using the mouse then either Control+Click on the area, then paste, or right click on the area then paste... In regards to the button.. It does exactly as the above has done...All you do is press the button as I've shown you earlier... And paste the text into the box that pops up... Hope that helps... Cheers, Ade

The easiest one and widely open source (comes with Linux is available on Mac, and windows too with some perseverance. it\s called `wget` In short its a command line web client with the capability to recursively download content so it follows links. If I remember rightly the `wget -f http://www.ineedmysiteback.com/` will recursively download the site.

Hey Bakfodder! Long time no see! Anyhoo, you can indeed do that with Echo, Siri and quite a few other devices. As you're local (to the UK) the easiest is to go get Hive from British Gas (https://www.hivehome.com/alexa) .. What "hive" is, is literally a secondary device (much like your router) that connects to a bunch of other devices like thermostats, adapters that your kettle could be connected to.. The gimmick in question would be: https://www.hivehome.com/products/hive-active-plug How is works is.. 1) You have an internet connection, so can connect to the "hive systems" 2) You get a Hive hub, which is pretty much like a router, but it plugs in the mains, the back end of it plugs into the internet router so it can talk back to hive. 3) All the Little devices you get e.g. light bulbs (I'm not kidding), mains adapters, thermostats, movement sensors etc... All collectively talk to this new "hub". They get told to be turned up or down, switched on or off by it. 4) You need to download the hive app (from the apple App Store or google play store), sign up with the serial number of that hub so they know it's you and not some stranger. 6) When the app is up and running you turn your devices on and off, thermostats up and down by sending messages from your phone / tablet, via the internet... The hub in turn checks its queues messages from your and actions them... VOILA... Instant cuppa tea in Dymchurch whilst you're in Angola. As lovely as IoT (as they call it, Internet of Things) is, and I'm an advocate too. The Proof of concept has been proven time and time again that even someone so much as uttering "Alexa ..." "ok google" "hey siri" over the television is enough to get it to react. Anyhoo, hope this helps in some way Cheers, Ade

I've literally just posted something about the vaping side of things http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?477514-I-just-had-to....(4-Viewing)-nbsp I'm totally shocked at this ban (or shall we call it a drive for health? *yeah right*)... DO you guys reckon the government is angling to slam the tax on the e-liquid side o things? I mean when you look at what the HMRC was getting: Cigarettes 16.5% of the retail price plus £4.16 on a packet of 20 Cigars £2.59 on a 10g cigar Hand rolling tobacco £5.24 on a 25g packet Other smoking tobacco and chewing tobacco (eg pipe tobacco) £2.85 on a 25g packet I'm just wondering when we'll get a 5th addition to the list...

I had to pop in here to see what the state of "smoking" affairs was like. I gave up a few months ago and on the night out over last weekend, I was met with a friendly lass at Sainsbury's cigarette counter telling me that 10's aren't sold any more, nor are the smaller pushes of tobacco. Did I hear correctly? Luckily I shed away as the only thing on offer was Marlboro (£10 quidaroo a pack!)... As glad as I am that I'm not smoking (I'm vaping though), I think that this move for the government is absolutely ludicrous. I assume they state that it's for the better health of things, but get real... If someone wants a cigarette, they'll usually just splash out for it. Personally I wonder if this is a move to start taking the e-cigarettes. I've personally saved fortunes with my lil e-giccy. It's odd how it co-incides with the new regulations to the e-cigarette liquids which came in a few months ago... Anyway... rant over... Happy cagging and stay safe! Ade

Thanks, I'll update this thread when I hear back from them.

Thanks. Were they supposed to reassign the debt in the first place as I had already told them that the charges and balance were in dispute. It sort of feels like they've ignored that and passed it on as they can't be bothered.

Does the email from the exec team not serve as a notification of assignment? Which act "section 78" are you referring to? Sorry it's been years since I dealt with any of this. Cheers Ade

Hi, Some time back, I had an aqua card from NewDay. At first I was keeping up the payments, but it all got out of hand when they started to call me several times a day and constantly added multiple £12 charges to the account for late payments and unauthorised over limit fees per month. Eventually I blocked their numbers due to the alarmingly high number of times a day they called me and let them be for a few months. Over the weekend, I sent the Chariman an email asking to offer monthly token payments whilst I investigate the state of the account but received back an email which read: The account is in dispute due to the charges, their staff were told this but they moved the account on anyways. I fully intend to contend the extra fees and interest thereof but I'm not quite sure how to approach this now it's with another company. Could someone advise me as to how I should: 1) Respond to the email to ensure that the account remains with Newday whilst I look into the charges etc... 2) Ensure that debt collection activity is ceased whilst this is being investigated? Any help would be appreciated. Cheers, Ade

Well a few replies before I update this thread and hopefully "pinch this one off" >> No they were not failed DD's, I intimately cancelled them because I was planning to leave and due to some billing inconsistencies. These were because payments were received on or more than 10 days (nor working days) after the billing date. (date of invoice/bill issue). Out of interest, I just logged on to get a few confirmations, and my account balance is £0.00 with a nice red warning at the top reading: and just below that: This might have something to do with my connection moving over to another ISP in a week, but as far as I know I've given them 6 weeks notice and paid up to date. for brevity I got a shot of what shows up on the bill itself:

Is there a particular procedure to claim it back? I've got a few dating back a few years too which I just thought about!

Do telco agreements also come under the FCA?

Apologies for the late reply, thanks for that. I'll pop a few of these letters off now.

Hi, Looking back at my TalkTalk bills, I've seen a few late-payment-fees of £10 as I pay my CC after I've inspected the bill. The problem seems to be that TalkTalk only give you 7 days to pay the bill or you get docked the fee. As it stands, I should only be paying £17.99 a month for my contract, making the Late Payment penalty a whopping 56% of the actual bill. INHO 7 days is an unreasonable time-frame. Can they enforce these charges? In some cases, the payment is only literally 9 hours late and *zap* I get another £10 fee. This seems to be a new trait of TalkTalk as I was with them for 6 years and never had this issue. I left for a year and come back to this. I'm quite happy paying the 50 pence payment method charge, as that is reasonable when it comes to Card Payments. Regards, ade

Is there a blanket letter/template I can write to CRA's to NOT give that information out no matter what? Personally it seems like an area which is open to some serious abuse. On top of that, I feel a violated as some stranger out there had literally my whole financial and account information at his fingertips. Surely I've got the right to put a so called "gagging order" on a company when it comes to personal information such as this? It appears that I might as well post them my entire filing cabinet.

Hi, I've just ordered something over the internet and had a call back from the company in question to confirm my identity. They apparently used Equifax to do this, which is fine. What concerns me is that the person on the phone was able to see some very very specific details about me e.g. Broadband Accounts and Balances Banking Details e.g. which bank, when I openend the x number of accounts at them Old CC Accounts Are they supposed to be giving any of this information away? Furthermore, are those companies in question e.g. the banks, broadband providers supposed to be allowing Equifax to pass my details on to third parties? This is EXTREMELY disturbing... Is there anything I can do about this? I understand that there's a need for credit reports, but I was categorically told by Barclays that all that's ever shared is a "probability number" rather than personal details. Any input would be handy.... Regards, Ade

There's been a progression... As I've picked this up, and have pursued it, the council aren't too impressed... My last response was: I do realise this is a little late, but I've kept it within the parameters of the statute... Anyway (as far as I know), I never conceited to my detail s being shared between the counties, nor did I understand why they were allowed to pull arrest details on a court writ which was applied for incorrectly i the first place. When the court papers came though, I was no longer resident, so I didn't know about the writ; and a few months after that I received a letter demanding the amount, which I agreed to pay in instalments, which I did. After a time, as mentioned before, they decided that instalments weren't enough and that they were to apply for an arrest warrant due to my debt. Im now challenging this, and they're not happy... Any way to respond to this? I'll scan a copy of the letter in later, but any incidental help would be handy in the mean time.