Free sat-nav system with online purchase of car insurance

I have just found this new item on moneysavingexpert thought it might be helpful to people. The Co-operative Insurance are giving away 600 TOM TOMS sat-nav systems for free to motorists who buy their car insurance online. All you need to do is click on www.co-operativeinsurance.co.uk/tomtom and follow the simple instructions.

Jessops – Excellent customer service

Well if you have been bothered to keep up with my rantings on my blog over the past week, you will have read that I was challenging Jessops on some Internet advertising.

After a few emails between myself and Jessops they said that they would not sell the camera at the advertised price (£229) and that I would have to pay £299.

I decided to see if some angry blogging and some moanings on moneysavingexpert would change their mind. Could consumer pressure and the threat of bad word of mouth sway them to do the decent thing?

Well after some positive results on the angry blogging front and a 33 reply post on moneysavingexpert I received a very nice phonecall from Jessops Head Office. After looking into my complaint further they have decided to offer me the Panasonic TZ5 at £229, a nice £70 off the retail price, a bit of a bargain really, I think!

I now just have to wait for the camera to be released, they will then give me a call and take my order. I think this is excellent customer service, as legally they did not have to honour the purchase. They could have hidden behind the law, but have decided not to.

Well done Jessops, you have made me very happy. The only thing I will never know is, did my blogging and rantings on forums actually make them change their mind, or would the outcome have been the same if I had done nothing?

Jessops poor customer service – an update

PLEASE READ THIS, JESSOPS HAVE CHANGED THEIR MIND

There have been a few developments recently with my Jessops poor customer service Panasonic tz5 article, still nothing that brings me any closer to getting a reduced priced Panasonic Lumix TZ5 from Jessops. But I did receive a call from Jessops head office on Monday morning saying they were looking into my complaint. Now had they read my article? Had they seen my rantings on Moneysavingexpert? Or maybe they had Googled the said search term Panasonic TZ5 Jessops, and discovered I had taken top position, above their actual website! Now whilst I admit Panasonic TZ5 jessops is not a big high traffic search term it is pleasing for me to have achieved this. In addition to this, some other kind blogger a fellow Grumpy Affs69 has picked up on this and also agrees with myself, that in today’s ‘not fair culture’ how can a company advertise a product for a price that is incorrect and get away with it?

Well Jessops if you are reading this, I suspect you are, if you have one ounce of good customer service in you, all I want is a Panasonic TZ5 for the price advertised, if you want to throw anything else in to make me even more happy that is up to you.

Give me a call, you have my number and we can make this all go away.

Oh one last thing, Blog traffic had increased by 100% since this article was published, each day lots of people are searching for Panasonic TZ5 and finding me instead of you.

Jessops poor customer service – Panasonic TZ5 – false advertising

PLEASE READ THIS, JESSOPS HAVE CHANGED THEIR MIND
On 5th March I undertook a Google search on ‘Panasonic TZ5 jessops’ the advert at the top of Google was telling me “Buy the Panasonic DMC-TZ5 Camera from Jessops Online Only £229.99!” However when clicking through from the Google advert the website is expecting me to pay £299.
The Google advert clearly told me that I could buy the product for £229 and obviously I wanted to purchase/pre-order this product at this price.

The correspondence with Jessops has resulted in them refusing to offer me the product at this price and as such I have made a complaint to the ASA. The email I sent to Jessops.com customer service is detailed below

My email
Hello
I have just done a Google search on ‘Panasonic TZ5 jessops’ the advert at the top of Google is telling me “Buy the Panasonic DMC-TZ5 Camera from Jessops Online Only £229.99!” However when clicking through from the Google advert the website is expecting me to pay £299.
The Google advert clearly tells me I can buy the product for £229 and I would like to purchase/pre-order this product at this price. Please can you let me know how I can do this? I have screen grabs of said web pages as evidence of this, please see attached.

Jessops Response
Thank you for your enquiry.
Unfortunately search engine websites and other price comparison sites are often not updated as regularly as Jessops.com.
We would therefore not be able to offer you this camera at this price, and you would need to pay the full price of £299.99.
I apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Regards
Customer Support

I have since pointed out to them that the listing I saw was not in the natural search index of Google but in Google adwords, and as such it was an advert.

There has been other correspondence since this, but they are sticking to their guns and are not wanting to offer me the camera at that price. After asking around on forums I have been told I should not get my hopes up, mainly because they do not have to sell the camera to me. I find this quite surprising considering all the banks have been getting hammered by fucking idiots who can not manage their money, how come they are having charges refunded, charges that were laid down in their terms and conditions. But a retailer can falsely advertise a product and get away with it? To me this is nonsense.

This old link on the BBC website goes some way to explaining why. If this is the case I am surprised for the sake of £70 that Jessops did not want to keep me as a happy customer and just honor me the purchase. As such they did not, so I will go to great lengths to not buy from them in the future and also spread the word that Jessops sucks.

Buying a camera in Japan?

I am off on my holidays in April to Japan. Our current digital camera (Minolta Dimage Z1) is getting a bit elderly. After four faithful years it is finally coming to the end of its life, not through not working (although the on switch is becoming a little stiff) but mainly because it is too big and bulky, only has 3.1 Megapixels and there are newer models coming on the market which look far more advanced than my Minolta.

I thought that whilst I was in Japan it would be a good opportunity to procure a new camera, in the belief that if would be a). cheaper or b). a far better model not available in the UK, or even both a & b. After lots of searching around the internet looking for information on what to expect, I only found lots of out of date links containing very little useful information.

So after reaching a dead end I asked on a camera forum for information about doing something I thought would be simple. After the usual “use the search” replies I had some useful answers, the main points I have listed below:-

• cash is king. Whilst some places are ok, a lot still don’t like foreign issued credit cards
• prices can be cheaper, but you (as always) need to shop around for the best deals
• lenses are generally cheaper than here, and cameras can be a bit less than UK
• at one of the big Tokyo camera shops, the Sigma 10-20mm* was £10.00 more expensive than I’d bought one for the week before in the UK. With the 5% consumption tax refunded, it would have worked out slightly cheaper but hardly a massive saving
• potential problems with non-UK chargers, instruction books, repairs under guarantee, import duty & VAT etc
• be prepared to buy another battery charger, as the Japan market ones may be just 100V input, they might not be set up for worldwide use.

Overall to me it looks like it is not worth bothering, potential savings don’t appear to be worthwhile the effort of shopping around for half a day looking for a camera, when I could use the time taking pictures and enjoying my holiday. Knowing my luck I would end up paying more for a camera and end up with no UK charger, an instruction manual in Japanese and a camera stuck in Japanese language mode.

I would imagine there are a few bargains out there, but only if you know what you are doing and put the time into shopping around. For me I would rather enjoy myself. If however you think I am wrong, please let me know.

Grand Theft Auto IV Xbox 360 Pre-Order Content

I have just been reading on xboxfamily.com that there will be exclusive Xbox 360 content for those of us that order GTA IV on Xbox 360. The full article is below, or you can read it here. If this is true it will be a nice little extra for 360 owners. Good work MS, let’s hope it is true.

The mysterious content that will be available to those who pre-order the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV is no longer a mystery. XF has found out exactly what you’ll get when you pre-order the game. 

Shane Kim has been very excited publicly about his belief that the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV would be the best selling version and deliver the most content.  We here at Xbox Family had caught wind of pre-order content that would be available exclusively to the Xbox 360, but had to guess what it would be. Automatically, we assumed it was one of the exclusive downloadable content packs that Microsoft paid an arm and a leg for.

While it’s not that big, Xbox 360 owners will still be getting some freebies as well as possibly getting even more. Those who pre-order the Xbox 360 version will receive a pack of 4 exclusive GTA IV gamerpics that they can download immediately and won’t be available to the general public. In addition to this, if you pre-order at brick & mortar retailers (real stores, not online retailers), you’ll receive an exclusive GTA IV game case which contains information on how to win a bevy of prizes from an upcoming giveaway that will be held on xbox.com.

The giveaway will only be available to those who pre-order the game. Inside of the case you receive when you pre-order the game will be a code to enter online for entry.

Giveaway Prizes Include:

-100 people will win an Xbox 360 Elite console.

-2000 people will win Grand Theft Auto IV apparel.

-10,000 people will win various amounts of MS Points ranging from 500 to 1600 ms points.

-10,000 people will win various XBL Gold memberships ranging from 1 month to 12 months.

So there you have it. That’s Microsoft’s big plan to seal up the Grand Theft Auto IV pre-orders. We would have preferred one of the downloadable content packs, but it’s still pretty nice to know Xbox 360 owners will be getting something for pre-ordering the game.

From what we know, this information should go public by at least mid-March. So you shouldn’t have to wait too long.

iPod touch new application software

An interesting new release by Apple this month were the new applications for iPod touch, once again early adopters have been screwed by the corporate, as all new iPod touch shipped from February 08 will have the software pre-installed. I am also willing to bet that within six months the new applications will become part of a standard download. Maybe I will be proved wrong?

As a like my gadgets I thought it would foolish not to pay for the software, £12.99 through itunes, this in itself meant I had to download the itunes 7.6 update and ipod touch software 1.1.3 update, which took a bit of faffing around. Not too sure what the 7.6 update did, but 1.1.3 update to the iPod touch made a few tweeks:-

• Added a grey background to the bottom four application icons (more about this later)
• Changed the layout of the features within safari

The safari update has made it a bit easier to navigate and the grey background has been introduced as a “home bar” indicator for those of us that upgrade the software.

Less of the boring geek stuff and on to the software. It has the following additions:-

Mail – allows you to use an iPod touch enabled mail client or POP mail, rather than having to login via the web browser, this should come in pretty handy as Yahoo mail can be a little bit awkward to use within safari. Also Yahoo mail is one of the supported mail clients. This will probably get the most use from me.

Maps – allows you to use Google maps to obtain directions and strangely enough, maps of cities and towns. Apparently it will cache the map you need, so you can download where you are going, then refer to your iPod for a map. This should be pretty handy too.

Weather – again, nothing amazing about this, but it does save you going into one of the various weather websites to obtain your latest forecast and as all the British are obsessed by the weather, it should get some good use from myself and some of the population.

Stocks – Useful if you have shares as it details all your favourite companies and markets. As I don’t have shares it may not get much use. Maybe something for the future.

Notes – A bit like electronic post-it-notes so helpful if you forget everything, like I do. I will have to see how much use this one gets as I prefer to write things down.

Home screen – This allows you to edit which icons you have on your screen and in which order they are in, you can also have the top four applications located in the grey bar at the bottom. You are also able to create multiple home screen pages so when the screen is too full you can scroll right to obtain more applications. In addition you can make quick links to your favourite web sites, again reducing the time it takes to boot up safari and find your favourite site from the bookmarks. The fun thing about this is the editing, as when you hold your finger over an icon it makes all the icons wobble, allowing you to move them around the screen, a nice bit of functionality.

The software also allows you to view lyrics of the song you are listening too, not too sure how useful this is and how it obtains the information, I hope I don’t have to type it out??

Conclusion
+ I am pretty happy with what I have got for the money, the mail, weather and maps applications will get the most use from me, with mail being the main reason I decided to part with my hard earned cash.
+ Reduces the need to jailbreak your iPod
+ Makes your iPod touch as close to an iPhone as you can get.

- The only downsides are that all iPod touch shipped in February 08 will have the software for free, but in the grand scheme of things this is no big deal. This becoming a free download in six months time would make me more angry!
- Also why are us Brits charged £12.99, when in the US it is $20.00, going off current exchange rates we are paying just under £3.00 more, rip off Britain all over again.

Bank Charges, Not Fair?

I see the the high court test case regarding bank charges is due to start this week. As usual it is the bank’s fault that customers are charged for going over their agreed borrowing limit. How can this be? In the Terms of your account it quite clearly states that if you go over your agreed borrowing limit you will be charged a fee. How can this be not fair? If you can’t manage you money then you deserve to be charged, what people do not understand is that nothing in life is for free, banks are not there for the well being of people, they are there solely to make money, they are a business after all, are they not?

If this case puts a stop on bank charges then I think we will see a rise in paid banking as the banks need to obtain the money from somewhere to keep everything ticking over. That means the likes of myself who manage their money carefully will start to be charged just for having an account. Brilliant, so all the dullards who can not use simple maths to work out how much money they are likely to have in their account will make banking a misery for everyone. FFS it is not as if people don’t have access to their accounts, what with online banking, mobile banking and text alerts if you go near your overdraft limit, what more do people want?

I hope the judge throws this out and rules in favour of the bank, the greedy population who want everything for nothing need to be taught a lesson.

xbox 360 ultimate?

There are some new rumours circulating the Internet at the moment that Microsoft are about to release an improved xbox 360, potentially called the xbox 360 ultimate. It is alleged to have a massive 320gb HD, built in HD-DVD drive, wifi and a near silent fan. Lets hope it does have a silent fan as mine sounds like a 747 taking off and generates enough heat to fry an egg.

This sounds like a wish list rather than what it would have, but who knows. It really would be a kick in the teeth for the elite purchasers, especially as premiums now have HDMI as standard. Never really saw the point in the elite, unless all your gadgets have to be black.

We’ll have to wait for Bill’s announcement next week to see what is in store.

Xbox live Video Marketplace 300 for 100 points – ripoff

Well the day finally arrived where I thought I would take up Microsoft on their wonderful promotion of downloading 300 for 100 XBL points as promoted below

The only problem being, it is 100 points for the standard definition video and it is a massive 540 points for HD, humm let me think about that, no I won’t bother. Nowhere in the email do they mention it is only the SD version, plus it does not even say the usual “from” in the copy or in the small print. Overall what a giant con by microsoft, will I bother downloading stuff in the future, not a chance, they can stick it. How much money would they really lose if people downloaded this? Overall 0 out of 10 for Microsoft, poor show.