Utility Warehouse (Telecom Plus) Discussion

MillicentBystander

HappyMJ wrote: »

Is UW really that expensive. Many posters have said that it is really expensive but I still don't see this huge difference. I'm not with them myself yet....I'm just trying to find the best deal whoever I'm with.

UW Dual Fuel. East Midlands. 3,300kWh, 16,500kWh. 12 months with 10% discount on UW comes in at £1085. Medium electric and High Gas tariff. EDF is the cheapest standard plan with direct debit and duel fuel discounts at £1150. I'm still on Npower Price Protector which is £1024. First:Utility is the cheapest at £1014.
Broadcall Max. Unlimited broadband. Unlimited calls £24.99. Cheapest I've found is tesco at £23.75.
Mobile tariff is £10 for 500 mins and Unlimited texts. I couldn't find anything near this. Best I could find was £15 for 600 minutes, unlimited texts.
Plus a £1.50 monthly membership charge. All that comes to £127 per month. It's only £4 a month more than the cheapest possible of what I can find.

How can that be made lower if UW is supposed to be really really expensive? I want to pay the least possible and get the above services from whatever supplier or suppliers are cheapest.

Prepare to be accused, by the usual suspects, of being a UW distributor from now on And the problem is you are asking Cardew and Quentin to provide alternative ways of saving money compared to UW - something they are just not prepared to do. When I asked for a better deal than my UW broadcall all I got was interminable links to bb and phone line providers from Quentin. Cardew won't even go that far (probably because he's with BT even though he seems to see himself as some sort of money saving guru, lol).

HappyMJ

Meeper wrote: »

You're not REALLY doing it wrong! I was being facetious and trying to illustrate that the naysayers on this site don't like it when you post facts that support UW.

Anyhow, just using the cashback card in the retailers you already use without changing your spending, you save another £5 per month, which would be another 3.9% reduction off your bill. Very nice. That presumably doesn't include regular grocery shopping, for example. Could you do that in Asda or Sainsbury's and get another chunk of money off?

I had to check the t's and c's. The card costs £9.99 and £1 per month. I currently get 1% cash back on credit card purchases at the moment and 56 days interest free. So I would have to find £250 as it is a prepaid card (at a cost of £1 per month) and would also lose £1.25 per month from my current credit card. So the savings really are not much. I don't think it's worth it. After a year I'd only save £11.

I could shop more in Asda or Sainsbury's but the extra cost of getting to/from compared to Morrisons which is just around the corner would easily outweigh any savings.

Meeper

HappyMJ wrote: »

I had to check the t's and c's. The card costs £9.99 and £1 per month. I currently get 1% cash back on credit card purchases at the moment and 56 days interest free. So I would have to find £250 as it is a prepaid card (at a cost of £1 per month) and would also lose £1.25 per month from my current credit card. So the savings really are not much. I don't think it's worth it. After a year I'd only save £11.

Excellent - that'll be a good reason not to use it then! Perhaps worth consideration for something like Christmas, because if you're anything like me and you spend over £1000 on presents, getting 5% of that is reasonably worthwhile as a one-off.

But, kudos to you for doing your own research! Nothing like facts to bring a conversation to a sensible conclusion!

MillicentBystander

Actually the cashback card is good enough to be used as a 'one off' in some circumstances, for instance for making a large purchase (eg a new kitchen?) from B&Q or Homebase as the 5% cashback on a purchase like this can be considerable (AFAIK UW will pay any excess after the monthly bill is cleared into your bank account). Say you spend £4,000 on a new kitchen, the cashback is a not inconsiderable £200!

HappyMJ

MillicentBystander wrote: »

Actually the cashback card is good enough to be used as a 'one off' in some circumstances, for instance for making a large purchase (eg a new kitchen?) from B&Q or Homebase as the 5% cashback on a purchase like this can be considerable (AFAIK UW will pay any excess after the monthly bill is cleared into your bank account). Say you spend £4,000 on a new kitchen, the cashback is a not inconsiderable £200!

Can get 4.5% through Quidco and 1% cash back on the credit card. The hassle of having to find and then top up £1000 onto the card for 4 days in a row before purchase is too much as well.

MillicentBystander

HappyMJ wrote: »

Can get 4.5% through Quidco and 1% cash back on the credit card.

You can go through Quidco (4.5%) and pay with the UW card (5%). Win win. Total cash back £380 going the UW way. Total cash back going your way £220.

MillicentBystander

HappyMJ wrote: »

Can get 4.5% through Quidco and 1% cash back on the credit card. The hassle of having to find and then top up £1000 onto the card for 4 days in a row before purchase is too much as well.

You're still 'losing out' on a net £158.60 by going the Quidco/cashback credit card route, though. And no worries about being tempted not to pay off the £4000 immediately but instead incurring 20%+ p.a. interest charges. Credit cards can be dangerous things....:D

MillicentBystander

Oh, and another thing, HappyMJ. Don't expect Quentin or Cardew to even acknowledge the existence of UWs SIM only mobile deals let alone actually engage in discussion about them, even when directly asked to. I think that tells us that they are unbeatable in the marketplace....

HappyMJ

MillicentBystander wrote: »

Oh, and another thing, HappyMJ. Don't expect Quentin or Cardew to even acknowledge the existence of UWs SIM only mobile deals let alone actually engage in discussion about them, even when directly asked to. I think that tells us that they are unbeatable in the marketplace....

I think that's where most of the savings are.

500 minutes, unlimited texts £10
800 minutes, unlimited texts £15
unlimited minutes (fair use of 3000 minutes), unlimited texts £20

A quite strange fair use policy applies to have no more than 100 different numbers called or texted in a month. Max 75 minutes per call.

Are they really unbeatable?

MillicentBystander

HappyMJ wrote: »

I think that's where most of the savings are.

500 minutes, unlimited texts £10
800 minutes, unlimited texts £15
unlimited minutes (fair use of 3000 minutes), unlimited texts £20

A quite strange fair use policy applies to have no more than 100 different numbers called or texted in a month. Max 75 minutes per call.

Are they really unbeatable?

Ask Cardew and Quentin (currently viewing this very thread!). Try and pin them down. Good luck.

PS The fair use policy is, I reckon, to try and stop business use. For the 'average' private customer I reckon it genuinely does mean unlimited on the texts.