If you have long ago signed a long term contract for home phone line service and are wondering what you might do to save a bit on monthly expenses, you might want to take a look at that contract and see if it has expired. Because fully 50% of all United Kingdom home phone customers have never looked into switching companies the phone line providers tend to sit back after a contract has run its course and let their customers pay premium rates month after month. We tend to stick with a phone company if the service is good and the price is manageable. But there is a way to keep your current company and take advantage of special offers as well. We do this by using a home phone or other home telecoms comparison website. No, you don’t have to switch suppliers to reap savings. But you will need to make your current one treat you fairly. We do this by looking at all the offers from every company serving our home area and making our current company match those offers. If they do so we are then willing to give them another long term contract. If not, well they may lose our business. With a little research you can renew with your favorite company at a great discount. In essence you can come back to BT without ever having left.

United Kingdom energy supplier Eon has teamed up with RAC so as to include base level breakdown cover as part of their Home Care and boiler cover protection. Their premise being that these two services are in some way closely related. Much has been written about breakdown cover as a “throw in” with other types of services and deservedly so. You can purchase an addendum of breakdown cover while buying your groceries or as a contract extra for your mobile phone service. But is this a wise decision and doesn’t it simply make it more difficult to compare breakdown cover. The offer from Eon appears generous enough at first but as with all add on breakdown cover options we are left limited in our understanding of our level of roadside assistance. Indeed, RAC offers a 30% discount on coverage prices above and beyond the basic values given with the Eon boiler cover plan. These types of packages and bundling are, to be frank, completely untenable.

A spokesman for Eon states:

“It can be just as frustrating if your boiler breaks down as if you’re left on the roadside waiting for help. So, when you take out our Central Heating Care you’ll also receive complimentary RAC Breakdown Cover making sure you’re completely covered home and away.”

If you are in need of breakdown cover or boiler cover then by all means compare prices and service for them. A valid breakdown cover comparison is essential if one hopes to match their driving habits to their cover needs. If your boiler is a bit dodgy protect yourself with cover for it. But don’t tie these two items together. What will be next then, motorbike breakdown cover attached to a health plan? Actually, that one might make a bit of sense.

A recent promotion from a Mobile Broadband comparison site seems to point us in the direction of T-Mobile as the best overall provider of mobile broadband on a pay as you go basis. Indeed T-Mobile is noted for their overall speed. The test took place on a 350 mile train trip. Features judged were speed and coverage. This was tested by performing conventional upload and download tasks while on the move. T-Mobile was judged the overall best at these functions.
One would question whether this information is sufficient as a measure of “best overall.” The best mobile broadband company in the United Kingdom can never be set as one specific company. Unless the T-mobile favoured test just happened to be on a train route you regularly use and unless the pricing and download structure was exactly the same as you prefer it is impossible to say that any one provider is best. If one were simply examining dongles for laptops, yes it would be simple to say this or that device worked best. And in this case an examination of pay as you go dongles would prove helpful so that you could compare both pricing and service provided. This was no doubt the purpose of the train test. No doubt the T-Mobile test is helpful as is any competitive challenge. Some items and features are easier to compare than others. We can easily compare free laptop deals from the leading UK mobile broadband providers by simply looking at the equipment offered and its price. But an overall comparison of mobile broadband would take more than a train ride to accomplish.