Elite 11+ shopping and chat thread part 2½

pippo

aallank wrote: »

Well i've definitely made a dent in the freezer this first week of Froctober. But still finding i'm needing to buy fresh veg, lunch box snacks, milk etc so this first weeks spend isn't as low as i'd hoped, but hopefully going in the right direction

Well done.

How little you can get away with spending depends a lot on what you have in the house to start with, what time you have and who you have to cater for, as well as where you buy and what price. I do think it is helpful to really focus on what you do spend.

I'm starting to see some space in the freezer too which was my main reason for Froctobering! My real money spend is low as I'm using up the last of my APGs, only 1 more to go!

Turkey dinner agin tonight and I've found some OOD Latin American sauces (where they are from I have no idea!) so will try one those with the left over turkey tomorrow.

I have several contains of chicken stock in the freezer so have bought some 'cooking bacon' and will make broth in the slow cooker.

Tinyshoes

Savvybuyer wrote: »

She didn't have the original quote saved and locked in as valid for the next 28 days or whatever period? Her additional requests for further quotes from the same place have overwritten that:(? Otherwise, would a new comparison now come back with another insurer cheaper? (I'd listen to everyone else before messing with it further though - but nothing it seems to me to stop you doing other comparisons on other comparison sites beyond the extra time needed to look around for insurance again and filling in infomation needed for the quotes.) Beyond that I don't know; I am sorry not to be of much help.

If you are having to go for extra excess, then you are paying for that as technically if she has an accident (and we all hope we never have accidents when we buy the insurance) obviously she may end up paying out more (it won't be a mere technicality at that stage).

EDIT: I thought about clearing cookies - didn't want to lose anything that might be saved in cheaper though. Will still have to go through her correct name and address details that link back to her, as same person who requested a quote before, but clearing cookies may try to remove any direct landing to their website that may be pushing the price up rather than going though comparison.

Unfortunately Savvy it's in the small print that prices may go up and down on Compare the Market page. But I just thought would be a few pounds here or there maybe max £20 increase not £120 :mad:

It's just very annoying as I transferred the money to her today, well £30 extra for what I thought would be eventualities, so she could pay me back monthly rather than paying the insurance company as that originally added over £100 to the quote too paying in instalments. You just can't win.

mrsmac10

TS hope you get the insurance sorted with the help of other elite posters

I am very proud of myself I took an picture of an old photo and sorted it to load to Moonpig for a card. OK not super technical but this is not my strong point although I did post a picture on here last year :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Enterprise_1701C

Tinyshoes wrote: »

Thanks. Think this might be the problem, I've just been on chat to Hastings and they said we should have bought the insurance day quoted but we were using the quotes to make sure the insurance was affordable for DD before putting deposit down on the car. We originally put today as the start date but the dealer is putting couple of things right first and looks like it won't be ready until tomorrow now anyway.

This seems really unfair as you can't buy a new (well new to you) car and insure it before you own it can you?

I'll give it a go clearing cookies but she has set up a compare the market ac with her email so I guess getting more quotes through them would have same outcome. I've told her not to look anymore until we know definite day of pick up and we will try the other comparison sites first.

Such a shame as the original quote was so good with no voluntary excess just the under 25s compulsory one. And seeing it's going to be her first car and a decent one I thought keeping excesses as low as possible was the best option...

Tinyshoes wrote: »

Unfortunately Savvy it's in the small print that prices may go up and down on Compare the Market page. But I just thought would be a few pounds here or there maybe max £20 increase not £120 :mad:

It's just very annoying as I transferred the money to her today, well £30 extra for what I thought would be eventualities, so she could pay me back monthly rather than paying the insurance company as that originally added over £100 to the quote too paying in instalments. You just can't win.

Can she recall the name of the company and go straight to them, was it Hastings?

emerald21

Can anyone help here please.

My friends relative needs to get an electric wheelchair which he uses from one part of the country to another part when he goes there for an operation as he ll be there for 5 weeks apparently.

Can anyone suggest a way please ? They said about £300 by taxi but there must be places who do this sort or thing isn t there ?

curl_girl

Tinyshoes wrote: »

Unfortunately Savvy it's in the small print that prices may go up and down on Compare the Market page. But I just thought would be a few pounds here or there maybe max £20 increase not £120 :mad:

It's just very annoying as I transferred the money to her today, well £30 extra for what I thought would be eventualities, so she could pay me back monthly rather than paying the insurance company as that originally added over £100 to the quote too paying in instalments. You just can't win.

T'S.
Exactly the same thing happened last December to me when sorting son's first insurance.
I ended up paying nearly £200 more. :mad:

Similar happened yesterday looking at holidays.
£350pp then an hour later was £589pp
Shocking practice.
Needs Martin to investigate.

Savvybuyer

Tinyshoes wrote: »

Thanks. Think this might be the problem, I've just been on chat to Hastings and they said we should have bought the insurance day quoted but we were using the quotes to make sure the insurance was affordable for DD before putting deposit down on the car. [...]

I think that's the problem with buying close to the date she needs the insurance to cover her - we need to pick the optimum time as per the MSE advice which is not too far away but not left too late (because late customers who forget are likely to be more risky); however this is difficult for a car you don't yet own.

As the car is one day later than expected however, a quote one day later is now the same time away and the start date should be changed if starting afresh as it's the same time period but maybe their offer is no longer available the following day and insuring very soon before insurance starts is going to put the premium up. If it was already in place, I would not try to amend it as amendments are costly. I am not sure about the reply of should have bought it on the day quoted because you can shop for insurance a good time in advance (not too far in advance) and a have a low price quoted at that point which can, on some sites, be retrieved later.

Savvybuyer

curl_girl wrote: »

T'S.
Exactly the same thing happened last December to me when sorting son's first insurance.
I ended up paying nearly £200 more. :mad:

Similar happened yesterday looking at holidays.
£350pp then an hour later was £589pp
Shocking practice.
Needs Martin to investigate.

I have my own story of my car insurance cost going up:(. I actually rejected a renewal from my then current insurance company, because insurers always put the price sky high up after a year don't they and it is always cheaper to switch?

I then searched around and couldn't find anything really cheaper and decided the best place was the insurer I was already with. By then, their quote through the comparison sites had gone up from something like their renewal of £300/£400 to over £660:eek:. I rang them up and they refused to give me back their initial renewal price. So goodbye then if you won't insure me for the price you originally offered:mad:. I then searched around and found some cheap off-the-shelf outfit, that I disliked throughout the one year I was with them, that wanted so many forms of verification that nowhere else requires, that insured me and think I ended up paying more than the renewal off my original place. I disliked the new place so much I got rid of them at the first opportunity. However there was no chance in me staying as, for that next year, they wanted something ridiculous like four times as much! They went from about £300/400 to over £1,200:eek:! Absolute no chance and don't know how they thought I would stay at that price. They didn't seem bothered at all when I ditched them straight away (in the sense obviously of the insurance ending at its one-year expiry date and not pulled immediately by me on my phone call day with days to spare still on it to run).

Savvybuyer

Is the quote through your laptop putting you as a named driver? Which you are as you will be driving her car from time to time. Insuring anyone who is young to drive a car is terrible, but adding a legitimate named driver with experience may help to bring it down.

Savvybuyer

Perhaps 1st November can be renamed "Morrisons Day":j. That's the day I will be free of Asda:rotfl:. Hopefully M will then have (but then so will T, S and A itself) the Hallowe'en stuff on cheap price:money:. Some of it lasts through till next Hallowe'en or else can be treated as if it was named Christmas and then used for then.

I have just come back to this thread after my computer, or the MSE site, suddenly decided that every screen should be blank or else was telling me I have been logged in for too long. Landing on a page with old APG comps. of times past is not very happy. On the upside, I will now be in Morrisons able to snap up those Hallowe'en offers on 1st November, a Thursday which would not have been my normal day. However some or many of them may need to be waited on for a little longer than that, to go down even cheaper on RTC or else, knowing me, everything will have gone at cheap price on 31st October itself:(.

The whoopsie yellow sticker stuff is definitely something to be paying more attention to now. I'm not currently planning on keeping any attempt at comprehensive pricing from M as that was written down to do the comparisons, because I wasn't necessarily buying it straight off in M when another place offered "10% cheaper than..." Now I will have to be careful I don't just take items in M that seem to be good price, as they still need checking online and looking at other retailer's prices to see if they are:mad:. I may post from time to time RTC items that I notice in M, although I probably won't be visiting every grocery aisle anymore. The problem is you need to trawl through an entire store to see what's good and don't identify the offers that are in another aisle - that's where my list was good as it was all there and RTCs that I had found, from visiting every aisle, were posted. You'd know as soon as something went down in the frozen fish area (as long as I updated soon). If the good item was in the tins and cooking area, you'd see that.

We still need to know competitor prices (of everywhere) in order to identify the cheapest place for each item. In fact, we probably now need it even more. A will not be telling us through an APG, even though it will be as fully aware of the information for itself as it can be and keeping it to itself. If it's about regaining trust, I think I nowadays have no trust, and have to double-check and triple-check at all competitors everything they are saying - prices so often cynically change simply because a store is matching a competitor. It was the competitor that brought their price down, not them. They sometimes - given a chance - will put them up too, in order to try to test the waters and see if the others follow one by one - if one or more then does, then the price is kept up for everyone.

Stores won't direct us to the best items. The tannoys will promote items on offer that are worse than a previous offer on another product and I've never heard any of the cheap RTCs announced over tannoy advertisements or on television advertising. Indeed there is misdirecton in stores sometimes, to try to direct us to items that cost us more. We have to find those non-advertised deals that they have that most probably work out better for us.

Of course, if previous years are guides, we should be able to look forward to cheap vegetable offers, that will be advertised, that are loss leaders to get us into the store. They want our full Christmas shopping at this busy period which is the time when they make the most money! We must only buy the cheap veg. and then exit the store: plus we need to reject initially 30p and 29p prices on things like parsnips as a week later, competing between themselves, the stores will be 19p.