the richest man in atherstone

I currently pay £23.44 per month for my ISP (Pipex). Although I feel I've had a good service from them, the cost is well in excess of the competition. Additionally, Pipex were offering new customers faster 2Mb broadband for the same £23.44 that I was paying for 512Mb. They wanted to charge me £15 to 'regrade' to 2Mb, which I thought was a bit cheeky as I'd been a loyal customer for over 18 months.

A little research and I found out that I needed a MAC number from my existing ISP to migrate to another. I called up Pipex and requested my MAC number. They informed me that they would like to keep my custom and offered me a free month while I considered my options. They also offered a free upgrade to 2Mb. As I hadn't got another provider lined up I agreed to their kind offer.

So, I will be getting this months broadband for free before I migrate to another provider.

I have been made aware of a telephone provider called Just-Dial. They are offering free evening and weekend calls for a monthly fee of NOTHING! I assume they are hoping that they will make money on all the other calls made by subscribers.

However, I can see no reason why I can't subscribe and only make calls in the evening and at weekends. For calls that need to be made in the daytime, I should still be able to use the cheaper Call18866 as I described in a previous post.

So, I've signed up today. I'll monitor the costs and get back with results in a month or two.

When I drive past a petrol station, I never look at the sign outside listing the fuel prices. That is until now. I've been making a mental note of the different prices and have realised that just a few pence per litre makes a significant difference when filling up and makes a big difference over the course of a year.

Without going into actual prices (oil prices keep changing anyway), I calculate that I could save £60 per year if I were more petrol-savvy.

A full tank on my car is about 60 litres and I fill my car up about once a week. That means I buy 3120 litres per year (52 weeks x 60 litres). If I buy petrol at just 2p per litre more than I could if I shopped around I would spend around £60 more than I needed to per year.

Obviously, it is not cost-effective to drive around every week looking for the cheapest petrol station. The extra petrol I would use would cancel out the saving I'd make.

Therefore, I made a shortlist of the cheapest petrol stations in the area where I live and work. Over the course of a few weeks, I noted the changes in their pricing as I was driving past and have now, ultimatly, chosen my petrol provider of choice. Surprisingly, the best deal is with Sainsbury's which is close to my workplace. They always have low prices and are the first to reduce their prices when oil prices decrease and the last to increase their prices when oil goes up. Other petrol stations seem to change their prices in reaction to Sainsbury's.

Along with the use of my Cashback Card earning me 0.5% cashback for petrol purchases, I should make significant savings over the next 12 months.

Following the success of Call18866 (cutting my phone bill in half) I did a few calculations on my line rental. I was getting free Local calls at evenings and weekends but it was costing me a fiver extra. I totted up how many free calls we made and worked out that with Call18866, it would cost about £2, so I downgraded my BT line rental to BT Togther Option 1 (costing £11.50 instead of £16.50). This saves £5.00 a month. I also reduced the line rental by a further £1 per month by selecting to pay by Direct Debit.