renew my talktalk broadband contract for another 2yrs

london 9.37pm 7C rain tuesday 2019

my broadband is expiring in jan 2020. i saw a tv program last night talking of how people overpay for their broadband because they stay with their provider instead of searching for cheaper ones . people are too afraid or too lazy to move. and today i realised i belong to one of those who are too lazy to move. haha.

i logged onto my broadband provider , talk talk, this morning, and they tell me my contract is expiring and if i wish, i can renew my contract on the same price as before. i am glad they are keeping the same price… in fact, in my mind, i was allready thinking of continueing with them if they keep to the same price. though recently they have imposed a new charge of 2p for everytime i retrieve a message on the answering machine. previously it was free. 

well that is really convenient, with one click of the button i can get it renewed for another 2yrs, and dont have to bother about it again for that length of time. both simon and i are quite happy with the speed we are getting,11MBS and it is unlimited broadband, so even though i found out that the post office  is cheaper,(£10 a month instead of £19.95 a month) i just felt too lazy to go through all the new procedures to shift providers, so i renewed the contract.

i think the postoffice doesnot include line rental, as it is too cheap… that price sounds like it is for broadband only, without the line rental. my present tariff includes line rental. i think if something sounds too cheap to be true, it is. or it might be just me trying to justify  my not shifting to a cheaper tariff. haha.

ah well, with the present provider, we get access to our tv programs, all the free view programs and catch up tv, which we are finding we like very much. the tv set up box is provided by talktalk, and we think we might lose its function if we change providers… who knows right, and that might be the reason why many dont like to change providers. the tv program last night told us of a lady who did not want to change from hers, she pays £70 a month, for virgin, just because she got an email address from it and did not want to have that cancelled. and it seems she will lose her email if she cancels the virgin broadband service. but the price she pays is very high, like £50 a month just to keep her email address.

fortunately for me, i have a hotmail, and a gmail email address, which are not reliant on the broadband provider. that lady was advised to get one of those, and tell all her friends of her new email, and then after about 3months, to cancel her virgin broadband account. 

i think talktalk have a email address linking to them, but i did not bother to use it. i think apart from the cheaper tariff with talktalk, i get to keep my landline number… and that is purely for nostalgia, as i dont use it to make calls, but have a pay as i go mobile phone sim card from asda. so that is what is keeping me tied to a landline broadband provider. so far the tariffs are quite cheap, but if it goes up a lot i shall get rid of my landline phone… and it might be what the future brings… i can well see a time when landlines will become obsolete. i read of something called VOIP, voice over internet protocol. that might be the future. who knows.

i am glad to be living in london where it is easy to get broadband at speeds that is functional. so now i can forget about this broadband thingy until 2yrs from now..hoho. 

added. 11.07am 7C cloudy

Free broadband? Free tuition fees? Free school meals? Cheaper train fares? We can deliver it for you wholesale, all at the same time, right away. link

(it looks like brexit, is the cause of the labour loss. in a convoluted way, those labour supporters in the midlands who voted leave blame labour for not voting in parliament  to get brexit done. and then during the elections want a 2nd referendum , it is like telling them all that they are too stupid to have voted leave the first time.

the quote above reminded me that labour giving away free broadband was one of their promises. and now they lost and we have to pay for our broadband… but it is interesting that i am not that bothered that we dont have free broadband. deep down, even i realise that there is no such thing as free, someone , somewhere will pay for it. not to mention free broadband means they will block us from accessing porn sites. like the library free wifi that we get now and which censors what they call porn websites..haha. and blanket labelling of porn  like that means we wont be able to access legit sites like  gay websites. so if they give us free broadband it will have exclusions, it means we still have to subscribe to private wifi anyway.

what is more, now we allready have free broadband, many businesses give out free wifi now. so we are getting free broadband now allready, without costing the govt any money at all. 

it costs a lot to call from my landline

london 10.21am 4C sunny (low this morning 1.6C) sunday 2019

i got a email from talktalk my landline provider, saying call charges are going up. 

calls to landlines will go up from 15p to 16p a minute. calls to mobile will go up from 15p to 18p per minute. our standard connection charge will go up from 20p to 23p. 

i never use my landline to make calls nowadays, i use my mobile instead as i have a pay as i go sim card from asda, and it is only about 8p a minute to make calls (no difference in cost whether u call a landline or mobile) and 4p for text. whereas if i use my landline each call will cost me at least 35p now and 39p from feb. it is no wonder everyone has stopped calling from their landlines.

i think if not for the phone companies linking their broadband packages to the landline, we will all have abandoned our landline phones. in fact i remember reading that BT makes it compulsory for all their broadband packages to include line rental. 

nowadays you can get internet without a landline. and it is faster too. i have to admit for me there is an additional factor in keeping my landline … nostalgia really. it is a link to the past. it gives people information of where you live. the first 4 digits gives what borough you are in. it also seems like a more permanent link to my home. one that wont change, unlike a mobile , where it is so easy to change your mobile number whenever u get a new sim card.

you can ask them to transfer your old number of course to the new sim card, but it is a bit of a bother.

but i think if it is cheaper to get my broadband without a landline connection, and if it is faster too, i think i will eventually abandon my landline too. it looks like a landline is doomed and will be another old thing consigned to history.

i have been using a lot of broadband it seems

london 6.41pm 7.8C dry night tuesday 2018

i had been out and got back just now. it is a pleasant night out, dry and chilly but hardly any wind so quite pleasant really. i went to the age uk canteen in tavis house, to meet ian, and it was still light at 3pm, by the time we got out at about 5pm it was dark.

i received an email from talktalk saying i have for the second month, exceeded my broadband’s line capacity.  14x in the month i had exceeded the capacity of the wiring to handle the broadband it seems. presumably  so that it slows the wifi down though they did not spell out how it affect the viewing.  i asked simon if he noticed anything when he viewed it, but he said no.

talktalk suggests i pay an extra £5a month to go fibre which will give me 10x more, it seems and at speeds of 30 to 40Mb.  what they dont seem to realise is that i dont have fibre. it is copper wires coming into my flat. so what is the use of subscribing to fibre? fortunately they did say at the end of the email that there is no obligation to upgrade to fibre. 

luckily simon says he does not notice any slowing down of the service at present, so i shall ignore them and leave it be. if it ain’t broken there is no need to fix it.

i asked him how come we are using so much broadband, he said he downloads a lot of iplayer and catch up tv, and chose the HD option to see it…  and it seems HD(high definition) uses a lot of broadband. also he says he download a lot of stuff onto his laptop to watch later and delete afterward he has seen it.

in a way i am glad talktalk has kept to their promise of giving me unlimited broadband, and not complaining about that to me or terminating my contract. some providers place a limit on the unlimited broadband.

nowadays with so much stuff being played by iplayer and catch up tv, our use of broadband has really increase a lot. in the past i only used to use about 40Gb a month. 

talktalk dont tell me how much i actually used now,as they stopped measuring it so i dont know how much i have been using. 

 i got a notification from wordpress asking me to grade how much i would recommend wordpress to others. i said i would recommend it 100%, and it was only when i click that and sent it that i realised i am still using the old editor and have not tried the new one… i might change my mind about recommending it to anyone if i tried the new editor. haha. but i have a feeling i will continue to use wordpress really, and try to work round the new editor, because i think wordpress is the best there is amongst the  websites providing us bloggers with a platform.

 

phone saga

london 4.16pm 21C cloudy saturday 2018. in the cafe in tate britain.

this is the first time that i have been with talk talk, my internet and phone provider, (i cant remember how long i am with them, but it must be more than 10yrs)where the dial tone is completely gone and the landline is dead. and since our broadband runs down via the landline, that knocks out our broadband too. i called them and after quite a number of tests  they tell me they could not find anything wrong with the whole system, and thinks that the trouble is something inside our flat. and they tried to ask me to follow their instructions to find out the fault.

i handed the phone to simon to let him deal with it, because it involved unscrewing the phone box junction, where we slot in the telephone. but it seems the engineer told simon that inside the box there is another connection … when simon said he dont see any connection, the engineer ask him to look closely. well simon lost his temper and asked them to send an engineer … and ask them to call back when they get one. later they called back and i answered and they were very conciliatory, they will divert my calls to my mobile phone so i can get calls to the landline as it is out of order, they will make an engineer appointment for 14 aug, and compensate me by refunding the days i dont have service between now and 14th, £3.28. 

it looks like BT is not saying their substation has been hit and is out of order.

the engineer they are going to send is a BT engineer… hmm, i hope that guy is not going to find something just to get BT off the hook. after all, if it is BT’s fault talk talk will be billing them thousands for lost service as well as bad feelings from all their customers. the thing is if the engineer finds fault with our equipment, talk talk can charge us £65 for the call out charge…

or maybe it just need a final adjustment  by a BT engineer before the equipment will start after it has been knocked out by the storm. talk talk even said their manager will call me on the 15th to find out what the result is and if i get back my landline working after the BT engineer has come.

i met my neighbour yesterday and i should have asked him if his phone is working again. just to confirm it is a general problem and not one specific to my flat. i forgot to ask him. but anyway, we will just have to wait till 14aug for the engineer to do his work and hopefully correct it. 

well, all this is a minor problem really. it wont kill us not to have broadband for a bit. 

phone call plans

london 12.03pm 10.2c sunny thursday 2018. brilliant sunshine outside blue sky too.

yesterday, i was reading the metro newspaper, it is free and i saw talk talk, my broadband and telephone provider offering £19.95 a month 24month contract , reduced from their usual £27 tariff. but i got that same plan for £23 a month now. ( it includes line rental)however, i have another 5months to go on my contract ( i had allready used up 12months of that contract) and thought i better shift to this one, as it is £3 cheaper,( and only realised after the call, and rereading that advert in the metro newspaper that the offer expires today. )added. 29.1.18. saw another advert by talktalk in today’s metro giving the same offer but saying it expires 2.2.18. so it looks like it is a rolling offer with extending end time. haha.

so i called them and got someone who told me she is talking from south africa… from her accent i knew she is not from the uk, and thought she might be from india. anyway, she assured me i could move to the new contract without any penalty and so i told her to go ahead. it includes  free mobile phone calls of 200mins and unlimited text. so that is the same as what i am getting now.

so that is good, i had intended to pay about £20 a month for the service so this contract seals it. and saves me £3 a month. haha. not much but saves me £74 for the 2yrs. but it also locks me into this tariff for 2yrs, which is good considering bt and sky have been increasing their tariff constantly which makes me know that the tariff is likely to go up in future. when she told me when the contract ends, 24.1.2020, it gave me a bit of a turn. 2020, sounds so futuristic.

nowadays i cannot do without broadband as it not only allows me to surf the net, but it ties in with my tv, so that we can get iplayer and all those play- back programs on tv, and freeview on hd which was not possible if i just use the ordinary aerial on our roof to get the tv programs. on the whole it makes the tv picture clearer  even without the HD (high definition).

talk talk was wise to link the phone plan(with its free unlimited broadband) with the tv, and giving free mobile calls and txt as well, it makes me more willing to keep my landline and to stay with them. i kind of have nostalgia for my landline number as well, so i am glad to keep it just for old times sake. 

added. i read in the papers online that talk talk has been one of the worst for complains… haha. it seems when they stopped using india as their call people, they got a lot of problems handling people who call up to complain. i have no complains, because i dont call them up for anything. if the internet is slow, or as some have experienced when their broadband switches off…not in london but it seems it happen outside london, in the sticks somewhere . i dont ring up, because what is the point? to tell them there is no internet? why? they know there is a problem, so let them get on with it. to ask why it has stopped? so what if u are told the reason, it does not make the work get solved quicker does it? that is why i think it is silly for people to call up and complain. just let them get on with solving it and in the meantime just get off the internet yourself and take this opportunity to do other things. it wont kill you if your internet is down for a bit. 

more ways to get fooled by hacks

london 7.56am 13.3C (is this mild or what!!) friday 2016

i got this from my overspill in my wordpress reader. it was talking of a worm that warns you your phone is 28.1% damaged and says download this google app and it will clean up your phone.

the writer of the article  says ‘As any user of Android will tell you updates from Google are non existent, and anything that could infect your phone, well is pretty much your problem’.

well, that is news to me, but then i am not a smartphone user, but i am so used to chrome automatically upgrading and correcting my chromebook, i assume android , being owned by google will also do so. but i have to admit i got fooled when i read that instruction to download the worm. it looks so authentic. i am glad i dont have a smartphone so dont have to deal with all this. and what if it infects all the devices that are connected with it now that google allows you to synch every device u have together with each other?

and this bbc article says talktalk instructions to us not to worry about changing our password is astonishing. i dont agree with that article actually. they feature in the photo the same router as my old one. i was not hacked in that it worked and i did not lose my broadband. but it seems it is vulnerable. one wonders whether it could be used as part of that internet of things (IOT) that has been used to bring down websites. mine is not on all the time, which kind of sidestepped the whole issue really. seems to me they should be advising everyone to switch it off if they are not using it for a long period.  

hmm, i got a new router from talk talk when i got this new package with them. so they are gradually changing the router anyway. i can understand them not telling everyone to change their password. i bet they dont want to trigger that and having to deal with lots of us novices attempting to change our passwords and messing the whole thing up. leading to a lot of irate customers, creating this problem that will be quite difficult to solve online. 

even now i dont know how to change my password. i just use the one printed on the router itself. this new router i got dont have anything printed on it to tell me what the password is. i have to rely on a card sent with it. lose that card and you are in trouble. so i make sure i copy that password in my telephone book and in a file in my chrome drive.

i think talk talk is just being practical, and not blanket call everyone to change their password. after all, i was not hacked, so to disrupt so many of us just to correct those few that got hacked… seems rather an over reaction. and even if they say those people have their information taken, what can those hackers do with it? nothing… really . it is not sensitive info like bank accounts is it? none of that is in the router. why should it?

talktalk has this really useful chat line when u log onto your account online. you can actually chat (by that i mean write messages) to someone in the company who will answer your queries and even change packages, and discuss what is best for you). i like that.

i was thinking if u get  a phone call from someone saying they are from talktalk, you could log onto your account and ask them did u send someone to talk to me on the phone? and verify it. 

 

no one shouted at  tesco bank when it had so many of its customers having money withdrawn from their accounts by hackers. that is serious…money was stolen from accounts. is that serious or not? but they all kept quiet and no one condemns tesco bank for poor security to allow it to happen. will tesco bank be fined heavily for it? i bet not. so why all this shouting over talktalk handling this? sounds these media are biased.

lets face it, if u are foolish nowadays to give your bank account details to some one on the phone who just ask you for it, you are a real fool, and deserve to be parted from your money. there is no hope for you. kick yourself hard and go and stand at that corner with a dunce cap on your head.

gadgets

london 8.39am 12.1C cloudy thursday 2016

i have the overspill on my wordpress reader and this morning it delivered something new to me. well actually it always delivered something new haha. but this time it is about gadgets. specifically it talked of how making gadgets has become so easy but also a great idea can be copied easily too. but it make me realise there is a company that sells cheap razors online. and mattresses online. its strange that i have not heard of them. it is because they advertise in facebook and word of mouth via social media. and i dont haunt social media. but then i am not  in the market for those things.

come to think of it, i consume a lot of tv and the internet. so talk talk has come into my life and established itself with me. i am their type of customer i think. though they must hope there are more of me but who would spend more money on watching films on netflik and their other services. they will be able to find those people too, because so many like watching films and the latest films too. and so many like to talk on mobile and use smartphones. 

i have always noticed razors are very expensive and have got round it by buying from the £ shop where disposable razors can be bought 5 for £1. though i have noticed that seems to be getting limited choice now. now i read that this company does a subscription service of $1 a month to try and then $3 a month. (it is in america, dont think they have come to uk) and they send u the razors every month. its great if u use up a lot of razors, but i dont.

a 5 for £1 razor pack can last me a year. haha. i reuse each razor many times. and i dont shave everyday neither. looking at the website of their supplier, dorco, they still cost a bit. £6 or so for a 4pack. so my poundshop £1 pack is still the best value for me. makes you wonder how that £1 shop can do it, giving us such cheap razors and still have to support all those stores with staff costs and rent. and for us no need to bother about postage costs or having to hang around the flat waiting for the courier to come. perhaps they cannot do it anymore. remember it was quite some time since i bought those razors, still using them, and at that time there were quite a lot of those £1 shops, with different owners. now i think there is only one, poundland.  i have not been to that shop since i bought those razors, so it might be they are no more sold anymore in any £ shops. certainly when i was in poundland in brixton, i could not find any of those razors. 

added. 12.08pm 13.9C cloudy. a courier came and delivered the new router that talktalk says they will give me when i started the new broadband package. lucky i was in to open the door for him, because the package was too big to slip through my letter box.

 it is easy to set up and now we are both online with it. they say it is faster, but i cannot see the difference. though simon did say he noticed it is faster in his windows laptop.

ah well, now we got a spare router that works fine really but it is nice to have a spare, just in case.

talktalk says  i should keep this router on all the time. i am thinking whether i should ignore that and do what i normally do, switch it off when overnight, or when i go out. maybe if they are kept on all the time, the speed will increase. there used to be a button which when pressed tells u what speed you are getting. but i cannot find it now. or maybe it does not exist in this chromebook.

i am old fashioned thinking these gadgets need to warm up and catchup on the speed, but i think that is old hat now. they should all work instantly… so i dont think keeping it on all the time will improve the speed.

 even in the old router the speed was tolerable, it is not instant, in that it takes a slight delay for the page to come up, but not very much delay, the main text appears and it is the adverts that take some time to download and i am not bothered with the adverts really, so could not careless if they take their time to download.

 and the tv programs works well on the tv, they can be seen without any freezing. 

 

 

 

new broadband plus free sim card calls with talktalk

london 3.54pm 7.4C cloudy monday 2016

today i just agreed on a new package for broadband and free calls on mobile with talktalk. it is £22.95 a month. includes the line rental.  for that i get unlimited broadband, plus 200mins of chat, unlimited text, 500MB of data. and they will refund the balance of the lump sum payment i made to pay the line rental, so i dont lose out. even factoring in the cheaper line rental i was paying before, £15 a month, as opposed to about £19 now, it still works out cheaper. and i get the free chat on mobile. 

i suppose it is the best i could get. though my previous package cannot be beat. it is free. haha. but i suppose it is not possible to get that again. i consider it a gift from talktalk. i actually contracted to pay £5 monthly for a broadband only package. a day later i wrote to ask if i can get it free, because i just read their advert saying they are giving it for free to new subscribers . and they kindly said they will give me a free discount. and it was a really great offer, because subsequently that monthly fee increased to £7, and then recently to £9 and it was all discounted so that i got it free for about 18months. really amazing.

this one they promise the price will be fixed for the duration of the 18month contract. that means it will expire june 2018. ah well, previously i only got broadband, no free calls on the mobile. this one includes free calls on the mobile and other things. and i get a new router too… maybe after that hacking of the router in the news recently, they must have decided they better give us a more secure router. but lets face it, whatever the price, i cannot do without broad band anymore. haha. i am in thrall to broadband now. i consider it indispensable now. they were clever to link it to the tv… with it we can get HD, (high definition) and that really makes a big difference to the viewing experience.

i have a friend who watches a lot of films, and is not on HD. he says he does not miss it. well, it is because he had not seen it. i think once he has experienced it he wont go back. but right now he gets to be able to record the films on his tv(his tv is still the old fashioned kind with the fat tube sticking out at the back) on his digital recorder. he says by doing so he is able to fast forward any adverts.

the HD tv wont allow him to record films on that digital recorder. or at least i dont think so. certainly my video recorder has long ago been thrown away because it cannot be used once we changed to digital tv. well,

it does bring home to me that i am living in the future. so depandant on wifi, and these electronic gadgets. it is wifi… that one has become a big game changer. it is hard to think of that time when we were perfectly happy to have no wifi signals. 

talktalk tariff

london 7.22pm 12.9C (is that correct!! seems very warm for this time) dry,wednesday 2016

i got an email from talktalk telling me they are going to raise the tariff in november. this is for the broadband package.

for my package which is just broadband and nothing else really, it is going to be raised from £7.50 to £9 a month. well i actually get it free now. until 16.2.17 when it expires. it was rather nice of talktalk to let me off paying for 18months. when i first got onto the contract, i did not realise it can go up. it started at £5 a month, then £7.50 now £9 a month. but luckily the next day i saw an advert from talktalk saying new customers can get it free… so i just asked if i could have that instead. and theycame back and said they will waive the fee for the 18months that i contracted for. so it turns out to be just as well. otherwise i would have locked myself into an 18 month contract on a monthly tariff that kept rising… so i am grateful to whoever decided to let me off.

and since i got 18 months free with them, i dont think i mind have to pay the £9 come feb 2017… but i am hoping i can persuade them to let me on their cheaper package of £22.75 a month, including the line rental. i dont know how it will apply to me as i have just recently paid a lump sum for the line rental to get a cheaper rate. so i shall enquire nearer the expiry date.

but we are now so used to having broadband at home, it is unthinkable now to get rid of it. it gives us  hd tv and catch up tv as well as the broadband. nowadays with so many having mobile phones, no one makes calls on the landline anymore. haha. my telephone is never used unless we forget and make a call by mistake. it is more expensive to make calls on it now than on just an ordinary pay as i go mobile phone.

 modern life has changed for us. this is the future coming to us now. everyone have their own personal phone now. no sharing it with others.

 

a small backpack will do

london 11.52am 15.6C sunny sunday 2016

i had bought a ikea shoulder pack recently but i find that it is too bulky and i dont really need to be carrying so much. so i found this sleeping bag cover in the flat. and it serves the purpose of carrying my chromebook, a water bottle, the charger and a folded umbrella. and that is really all i need. a gym bag would be good too, but i dont seem to find any around the flat. i thought i had a number of them collected over the years but they have all disappeared.

Digital StillCamera

added 8.55pm 13.1C dry sunday 2016 i went to chinatown as i have booked to join a dim sum workshop in the community centre there. i thought we were going to be taught how to make siu mai , har kow, chee cheong fun, but today it was how to make egg tarts. it was well attended with the others who must be regulars as they were all equipped with the equipment for it. and the chef was talking in cantonese which i dont know. haha;. so i just said to him i shall watch. secretly i did not really want to make them, just eat them, haha. and also i had wanted to make the har kow, etc.

after his instructions, they all set to making it and i just found a settee to sit down. they were all standing at the table to make it. well i decided i dont want to wait for the tarts to get cooked, and left. it was rather a nice look in to what the old folks are doing. it was a so called silver sunday… so i assume it was set up for the over 50s. though there were some younger women at the table.  on other tables there were lessons in making a fish out of old red chinese new year packets (ang pow). and another table how to write chinese script on red paper.

i popped into the grocery shops in chinatown and saw pure sesame oil 150ml , (the same brand, astor, that i bought before),being sold for 99p instead of the usual £1.99. when i bought them they were £1.70. just because the labels were stained. not from the contents because they all had sealed bottle caps. so i bought 3. it should last me some time. i was running out too, so it was a lucky happenstance. now everything i cook will have a dash or three,or five of sesame oil added to it. haha.

i got an email from talk talk, saying they are increasing our free mobile sim plan. from 100 free talk to 200mins, unlimited text and 500MB of data a month. i enquired the chat help line on their website and found out my contract where i get it free expires on 7.1.17. and it would cost £5 a month after that if i want to continue. i am thinking of not continueing. so must remember to give 1 month notice on 6.12.16.  

but someone i got in contact with in the older person gay website told me i should get a smartphone as it is so much better. its a pity i dont have anyone with a spare smartphone to lend me to use just to see if i like it.

he got a spare but he said it is very old and unreliable, and he does not want to lend it to me or i will get the wrong impression with it. he has a point i suppose. though it surprised me that smartphones have such different performances. he mentioned he could get grindr, skype and whatsapp. well if that is all , i doubt whether i will be impressed. i am not a big fan of them. i suppose he could say instagram, twitter, facebook… all those social media, but i dont like any of them. so what else?? come on, there must be more than that to make all those smartphone users so obsessed with it.what can it do that my chrome book cannot, even assuming  it is something that appeals to me in the first place. i think not. people may get the feeling they are missing out if they dont get smartphones. after all they keep hearing their friends on it and shouting its praises. but i dare say a lot of it is hype.

i see some people using it to find when the next bus is coming. well i suppose that is useful to know, but then, you have to take that bus anyway, so what is the use of knowing when it comes? if there is an alternative bus to take that might be useful … but it really does not save u much time, esp in london where buses are so frequent.

added. i have noticed that they are replacing some of the bus shelters with new ones that are longer. so preparing for the cold weather to come i suppose. but they have removed the side glass partition, that provides some wind break. is that an improvement i wonder. ? i would have thought it quite important that wind break. perhaps it is early days, and the side glass partition is on the way and will be installed. or perhaps it is only the bus stop opposite the victoria coach station. that stop must be a busy one.