Mobile phones and car insurance
Mobile phone contracts..

I was recently on a mobile phone contract with Orange and was paying upwards of £60 per month for a £35 per month contract, i enquired as to why and they said i had consistently gone of my data allowance, despite never downloading files on my phone obviously visiting webpages all day everyday can cause large(ish) amounts of cookies to be downloaded, also streaming YouTube videos hammers it quite considerably too. So, after procuring my desired phone through work i decided to not renew my contract when it ended in September and went looking for a decent pay as you go tarrif and i found a network called Giff Gaff, these guys are UK based (call centres too!) and run on the O2 network but it is run by volunteers and so those savings made by not paying wages and outsourcing to India are passed onto us.

For £10 a month i get
-250 Minutes (i never use that in a month as i text all the time)
-Unlimited SMS
-Unlimited web access / downloads.

Not found a catch yet, done my first month and still have 235 minutes left to use, web still works and because it's pay as you go i dont have to worry about any nasty surprise on my bank statement.

Also working for a rather large Tech Support partner for an equally large UK mobile phone company i deal with the public almost daily, and a lot of their gripes with mobile phone contracts are that they are being billed to much, what they dont know is that even though they are not accessing the web through the phones browser, smartphones are almost always sending and recieving data to check for updates to things like Facebook, Emails etc.. and that will also ramp up your internet charges. You dont need to come off contract and join Giff Gaff to save money on this, just go into your mobile network settings and turn off mobile data when your not using it.

Car Insurance
also quite recently i renewed my car insurance, my previous insurer (Direct Line) wanted an extra £300 a year despite me having no claims since i got my licence, i enquired as to why and was told that the price for the previous year was an "introductory offer" so i dutifuly informed them that i would be introducing myself elsewhere. Wankers.

So i went on using these comparison websites except the one with the fat wanker yelling through his equally fat and fake moustache (because of him) and then did some calculations and worked out that the prices offered by places like confused.com et al were on average 30-40% more expensive than the insurers were offering directly (possibly their commision) so i found the best possible price over a number of comparison sites and narrowed it down to one insurer (Admiral)and went to them directly who offered me a massive £400 less per year than Direct Line last year, it's also worth mentioning the price they offered me was also £80 less than i found for them on the comparison sites (commission) so i signed up with them.

I also put about £100 a month away to save for insurance and tax so the following year i can renew it without worrying about my current wage packet taking the hit, and with my insurance always coming down by switching theres usually a nice couple of hundred quid left over.

It's also worth mentioning Direct Line AND Admiral told me that No Claims Discount is practically useless once you have 4 years worth, no insurer will ever let you save more than that on your policy despite what Michael Winner wants you to believe.

Apologies for length etc..
(Boiled_Tater is not the messiah, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 14:04, 6 replies)

Giffgaff are awesome!
You forgot to mention you get payback for pimping out SIMs, and helping users on their website (I've got £20 odd coming back next month).

And, being as it's the O2 network, you also qualify for the O2 moments :)
( snee held his breath since, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 14:27, closed)

I've just got a Giff Gaff sim. Just need to cancel my Orange contract and I'm all set :)

(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 14:49, closed)

Downloading
You do a lot of mobile web browsing and you think it's only cookies that are downloaded? Oh dear.
(ubergeekian, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 14:35, closed)

Car Insurance
Missed a trick there. A better approach:

- Use the Meerkat or other site of your choice to do your initial check.
- Check Quidco.com for the top 5-10 results. Most insurers will be on there.
- Go direct to the insurer via Quidco, buy through them, get the cashback.

Doing this last year got me a years TPFT for £20 (£80 premium with £60 cashback)
(bblgoose, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 15:53, closed)

What the fuck are
you driving?

80 quid insurance - are you a 63 year old moped rider?
(username failed moderation, Mon 14 Nov 2011, 16:14, closed)

nearly
31yr old 125cc rider with a full bike license. For some reason, insurance companies think you're sensible if you don't get a big bike as soon as you pass your test.
(bblgoose, Tue 15 Nov 2011, 8:39, closed)