Clive the flying ostrich: Amateur Polymath | Chief Heretic.

So I haggled and I won!

I'm getting a beast of a phone: A Samsung galaxy Note II LTE.

I reduced my monthly bill by £1.

I will pay £70 for the phone but they gave me a 16GB memory card for free.

(and I can trade in my old phone for £62.50)

Pay heed my fellow hunters of bargains. Shop around and give them the challenge of making you a better offer.

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Details:


EE's initial offer was I £50 upfront and £37pcm over two years.

The issue was Phones For You were offering a better contract (500 minutes, Unlimited texts AND data) and a special offer for the free 16GB memory card and £70 on downloads.

There was all for a Galaxy Note II as a much reduced upfront value of £29 and £26PCM compared to EE's above offer.

I gave that to the guys in EE and asked them to make me a better offer.

What they came up with was this:

£26 PCM for 300 minutes, 500 texts and 1GB of data.

iI might be helpful to know my averages over 3 months were a mere 99 texts, 159 minutes and 850MB data used. (I'm obviously a heavy internet user!)

So this offer did not meet P4U in terms of capacity BUT what it did offer was to INCLUDE calls to 0800, 0870, 0844 and 0845 numbers (i.e whenever I call the EON to ask about a bill and sit on hold - that will come out of my contracted monthly minutes.) on P4U's offer I would be billed for this. It also includes free calls to UK landlines, so calling home basically., which P4U's offer didn't.

Then we come to the issue of cost.

After much nudging, EE dropped my PCM charge by £1 to £25. This you can view as an over-all saving of £42 over the two years or you can take that and theoretically subtract it from the cost of the phone (£69.99) so the phone effectively "cost" £27.99

Is one way of looking at it.

After ringing the area manager to get approval, they also gave me FOR FREE the 16BG memory card.

So on balance, I think that EE came up with just the better offer (P4U's thresholds far exceed my usage and don't include any of the fringe benefits) and my PCM bill is cheaper than I currently pay and what P4U wanted me to pay.

Oh and in case I didn't mention I'm going to get out of this a 1.6Ghz quad-core with 2GB RAM 5 " HD AMOLED screen with Android Jelly Bean (4.1)

- for **LESS** than I am currently paying.

I call that: winning.

Hallelujah!

He is everywhere, in the heavens and the Earth!

He is noble, abundant and fills the universe!

He can lift you into the sky!

He is invisible and yet appears to us in many forms.

He can help us to heal.

He can create and he can destroy.

Praise be - to Helium!

Originally taken back in September 2012 of my trip to the south coast, but only processed this weekend, the events surrounding this photograph were as follows:

Day #2 of my holiday I spent around Portland. The day had been beset by heavy cloud, dark skies and strong wind. As I drove back to Weymouth cursing the gods of weather, I noticed the clouds were all headed out to sea. Taking a chance, I detoured to Chesil Beach. hoping I might at last glimpse the sun.


Alas, I was disappointed more grey skies.

As I looped round the one way system to head back to the hotel - the skies literally parted - and this amazing sunset erupted into full bloom. I never seen the sky so golden. If you'd dropped it, it would have fallen to the ground and gone "clink!" I could scarcely believe my luck! I parked, (probably illegally) grabbed my gear, ran up the pebble mound of Chesil beach. Set up my tripod - and this was the result. Enjoy!

P.S The storm to my left, was heading in-land and I got thoroughly wet about 5 minutes after this shot was taken. But it was worth it. ^^


http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardhealy450d/8563230180/in/photostream/lightbox/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardhealy450d/8562574633/in/photostream/lightbox/

Found out late last night (from his missus) my oldest friend has a double brain tumour.
He's in for surgery today ("brain surgery" - I find I keep testing out the phrase: two words i'm familiar with suddenly seem conspiratorally more daunting or rather requiring reassurance ....)

One is trickier than the other; wound round his optic nerve.

Last I checked in he was complaining of headaches and bemoaning having to get specs for the first time in thirty years.
My glee at him joining the myopic amongst was, it now seems, premature.

That's another thing: we are the same age. A trivial fact when you think about it (we were at school together) but being a few days my senior I always joked and called him old man especially as we weren't - where he went I was bound to follow.

I don't begrudge you this journey Ste, but I will be thinking of you and your family and hoping for some good news.

I've started dating Alex Holloway. We met on OKCupid and have been seeing each other for the last few weeks with the prospect of more to come.