what really grinds my gears

DavecUK that’s not a data plan, that’s making it look as if you have a data plan 🤣

My mobile plan is to plan on not using mobile data … unless I really have to. Like when I set up to fly the drone. Come to think about it, that’s about the only time, ’cos I need location services turned on for auto-return. Everything else gets done via wifi.

But then, my plan for the mobile is it’s for little more than emergency contact, in or out, on an almost cost-less PAYG plan …. or Don’t-PAYG, in my case. Maybe Barely-PAYG.

Tight git? Wot, me? 😄

Cuprajake This pay deal reminds of the rough treatment our government has given to the Jr Doctors. These Jr doctors have been excluded from the recent pay deal of 5% to all medical professionals They just got 2% before Covid. One stays as junior doctor unless become a consultant. It’s not only joke and an insult to these tens of thousands of junior doctors who work tirelessly day and night to save our lives. Add the selfless service these guys since Covid, it is really rubbing salt in the wound.

It gets better.

• Another profession that gets insulted. Their pay was literally frozen since Mr Cameron became the PM and since then are being given 1% pay hike in between.
• A few years ago, the government allowed the universities to double the graduate medicine intake from 20 to 40 - since 2020 I think. The common sense would be to open up / create additional jobs in the NHS. No, why would we? We keep the job vacancies constant and make the extra (newly qualified) doctors sit at home, deny critical foundational trainings and leave them high and dry searching for a locum jobs.
• Why wouldn’t the NHS and the teaching profession be in a mess that we have created on our own?

Edit:

The current mess we are all in is going to require a divine intervention, if there is one. We need to save a few pounds here and there so that we can surrender them to the energy companies at a stratosphere rate!

PortafilterProcrastinator Don’t you have Virgin? Not necessarily cheaper but steady and stable.

If this is possible, you can rod of the Land line.

DavecUK i.smarty.co.uk/pP891J

Who are these guys? Never heard them before. I think it is powered by 3. The £18 tariff is a good deal.

My wife is with 3, who gets about 20GB for a tenner. Myself and my daughter are with o2. We pay £16.86 for 25G and £21.86 for 120G respectively. Super stable and excellent coverage even in remote places. I would hesitate to change, especially my daughter’s as her mobile is business critical in her daily doctors’ job. The last thing we need is a lack of coverage when she is at the hospital. :-)

Edit :

Their coverage in the UK

Cuprajake Soon as the broadband is active I get unlimited calls/txt and 20gb for £8 pm I didn’t think that bad tbh.

That seems very good….free roaming as well?

Plusnet seems designed for Northerners…who are even tighter than me 🤣

MediumRoastSteam I’m on payg with Three. A tenner a month for 4G of data, unlimited voice and texts also when roaming - I used data all the time whist in France, but didn’t make calls.

Now, 4G of data for some is a lot. I’ll need to look at the smarty plan!

1. If you are out of contract with VM, all you need to do is pick up the phone and you will get a better deal. No need to haggle or argue, just ask what they can offer. Last time I did this the price went down 30% and they doubled the broadband speed as well (currently paying £36 for 200 Mbps). This price includes a landline that I never use, but oddly enough broadband was cheaper with a landline than without it.
2. Do you still get free roaming on Three? We had 5 phones from them. On four of them they forced us to move to a new plan with no roaming - gave us no choice to keep the roaming. I therefore moved those four contracts to O2, who are currently the only network that offers free roaming in Europe. I expect Three to cancel roaming on the last line I have, and then I will move that one as well (unless O2 also stops free roaming, which won’t surprise me).
3. When I moved from Three to O2, for the same price I got 5GB of Data vs. 4GB from Three. In addition, when you have both VM + O2, you get Volt: your mobile data allowance is doubled (so we get 10GB instead of 5GB) and your home broadband speed is upgraded (so we get 400Mbps instead of 200Mbps).
4. Having said that, don’t overestimate what you need. Even my teenage and grown-up children only use a fraction of their 10GB data allowance. I regularly use less than 1GB per month (so more than 9GB per month are just wasted on me).
   As for broadband, we were in a holiday house this week. I asked the children what they thought about the internet speed and they said it was just fine. A speed test revealed it was 17 Mbps (and at home we have 400 Mbps…).