OneGuyFromBarlick

I never leave my card details on web sites if there is a way to avoid it. Some places don't give you a choice and I find that irritating - it also lowers my confidence in their understanding of internet security. Have you not got a relative on prime who can order stuff for you and get it sent to your address? That's what we do.

No Peter. That's why I like Paypal, you don't have to give details.

Once I had Amazon off my back.... (they have conformed that I have cancelled Prim and noted I now do not have a card registered with them.
However one thing struck me, they reassured me that if I had any orders outstanding the card would still be used to fulfil them. Excuse me? How can they do that if the card has been deleted. That means they have not deleted the details from their system.
I've bought the deep fat fryer I was after, David is right, I want it for chips in dripping. I bought it for less than what Amazon was charging from a site that didn't want to tie me down, just sell me the fryer.... Bugger Amazon....

Bugger Amazon. In spite of all the warnings I've just bought some ethernet cable from Amazon. Free delivery mind you I wore my read slowly and carefully glasses at each throw of the die. Each time I selected the radio button for free delivery (non-Prime) another page popped up with the Prime option already selected. Re-set it to free delivery and guess what, another page with the same pre-set option. Finally I think I won. Feeling rather chuffed that I beat Bezos at his own game. And what's more I was playing black.

Later.
Bezos cheated he slipped his queen back on the board. So in spite of cancelling Prime three times I was booked in on a free Prime trial, Took the executive decision to cancel the FREE trial. E-mail received confirming 'sorry you have left'. Its a good job that I'm such a nice easy going person who likes a contest as long as I win in the end.

The intriguing bit of your post is this, is it thick Ethernet, thin Ethernet, CAT5 or CAT6? Are you expanding your Lan?

Exactly my experience Ken, in effect an automatic enrolment in Prime and then the waste of time and hassle cancelling it. My answer was to cancel my card and I shall never buy from Amazon again. Their loss.

PanBiker wrote: ↑26 Nov 2021, 22:50 The intriguing bit of your post is this, is it thick Ethernet, thin Ethernet, CAT5 or CAT6? Are you expanding your Lan?

As always I'm a bit of a thicky with internet technology. We dropped TalkTalk and changed to SKY. I don't watch TV but Mrs P likes all the Sky Atlantic type programmes. At £3 per month extra it was felt worth it to stop TalkTalk shutting our broadband down 3 times a week.
Sky package meant we had to go to voice over internet requiring a couple of DECT cordless phones. The 'master' phone only had 1 metre of wire to the from the router to the phone. I wanted at least 5 metres. Sent off for an extension RJ11 + RJ45 (I think) to give a better position. £4.29 (total cost)
Hope that makes sense.

Ha, RJ11 to RJ45 that will be a telephone extension then Ken for your VOIP phone not Ethernet.

It's a similar mistake to all vacuum cleaners being Hoovers regardless of who made them.

Usually I only sin in self defence.

Don't really understand the words. I went on the pictures compared to what was plugged into the router and phone. Tension mounts to see if I've bought the right one.

If it's a VOIP phone (Voice Over Internet Protocol) I assume it will have the same connector RJ11 as any other phone. The other end RJ45 will plug into your router. The one you have ordered should be fine. A picture can tell a thousand words.

`More than 17 million have used buy now, pay later services' LINK
That headline didn't surprise me but this statement from the article does...Platform Clearpay stresses it does not report late paying users to credit agencies. That creates two problems. First it removes a major incentive to pay debts and, second, it means that retailers and other organisations offering debt will no longer be confident in credit agency ratings. The borrowers might only be taking out debt for individually small amounts of money but in total it could be a very large amount.

That seems to be a way of attracting more customers, and the wrong sort. How can an organisation offering credit be serious if there are no sanctions? It's an invitation to anarchy.
We get used to hearing reports of banks misbehaving but this is one of the more unusual. See THIS BBC report of the Australian bank Westpac getting into trouble for charging dead customers and double charging on some insurance policies.

Large penalties and compensation for customers but what about the bank bosses - shouldn't they be in jail?
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`MPs back setting new-build house ground rent at one peppercorn a year' LINK
Quite rightly, Labour says ministers need to go further and completely ban the selling of houses without a freehold but they'll need to do something to protect people who own a leasehold house or they won't be able to sell it.

Ground rents however small means that if the property is demolished the ground reverts back to the original owner. A bit embarrassing if it goes totally up in smoke.

plaques wrote: ↑30 Nov 2021, 09:28 Ground rents however small means that if the property is demolished the ground reverts back to the original owner. A bit embarrassing if it goes totally up in smoke.

The ground owner retains all other rights presumably, one of the costs is things like wayleaves to lay cables for phone lines or any other similar things one could think of, plus service charges for landscaping , insurance, of common parts, and possibly restrictions on the building of extensions (upwards, downwards or outwards)

I agree with you Peter about the application of prosecution for the bank executives. It is a scandal that the bank bosses who engineered the 2008 crash escaped all sanctions.

My attitude to the practice of selling houses leasehold is quite simple. It is a feudal practice and should be abolished. This includes all present leaseholds. The owners of the ground rents have made plenty of money out of them and should not be compensated. Piddling about with peppercorn rents is useless, it is the concept that should be destroyed, not the amount paid. All houses should be freehold.

Another step forward in exploitation by the tech companies...
`Microsoft Edge buy now pay later scheme met with criticism' LINK
`Microsoft is under fire from angry users after announcing plans for a built-in "buy now pay later" function in its Edge web browser. Such schemes let buyers divide payments into smaller chunks over time - but have been criticised for their risk of users getting into debt. Microsoft has added one provider to the checkout page of shopping sites as a default payment option. But users have accused Microsoft of greed and a "cashgrab" mentality. Thanks to a user-based tagging system, those accusations have been turned into tags on the official announcement. As a result, Microsoft's blog post now features tags such as "poor leadership", "exploitative", "garbage" and an "embarrassment".'..

And so it is. Everything is geared to getting more control, more customers locked in and greater profits. I suspect the locking in of customers because of their obligation is the main factor.

This is a festering bubble based on debt...
`Care homes: Following the money trail' LINK
`The finances of some of the UK's biggest care providers should be investigated by the competition watchdog, according to the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt. Three of the UK's biggest care home groups are owned by private equity companies and are saddled with significant amounts of debt. BBC Panorama has been looking at what this means for people living and working in the homes run by two of those groups, and for the future of care in this country. "It's the Wild West out there," says Mr Hunt. "We need the Competition and Market authority to make sure that market is operating in the interest of consumers, particularly the very vulnerable people who need that sector."....

I commented on this in another topic Peter. Hunt is right, this needs more than just 'looking into', it needs correcting. As it stands (and this applies to any sort of company) the owner (Usually a foreign based hedge fund) 'lends' the company a large sum of money and charges a rate of interest high enough to wipe out the annual profits. This means that they pay little or no tax in the country where the company is and is taxed on it inn the country where they operate from, always a jurisdiction which charges less. All totally legal and the effect is that the profit is magically sucked out of the company. This is not just care home chains, many household names like Heathrow Airport are run like this and look at Utilities and transport firms. Billions of Pounds of tax are lost annually by this ploy and in some cases like rail franchises and social care chains, the taxpayer (us) subsidises the operation.

Warren Buffet's right-hand man, 97-year-old Charlie Munger, is always good for common sense and pithy quotes!...
`Charlie Munger goes off on crypto, says China made the right decision when they banned it' Fortune.com

I can't visualise a currency that doesn't actually physically exist. I agree with him, include me out!

I can't visualise a currency that doesn't actually physically exist. I agree with him, include me out!

But we are using them every day, they call it money. Pratchett explains it all. Then we have 'quantitative' easing. Printing electronic money that doesn't exist and lending it out to create the impression that books balance when they don't. A situation that would find people in gaol if they did it without government connivance.

I know that Ken but have the comfort blanket of being able to carry a representation of it in my pocket which to a simple soul like me is comforting. Bitcoins and 'non fungible assets' are way out of my comfort zone.

I think this is the right place for this because to my mind it's questionable practice. The ONS tells us that inflation is running at 5.1% which is bad news. However what isn't voiced is the fact that the price rise on the list of goods and services bought by the poorest is far higher than this so reassuring comments about the rate of pay rises is useless and misleading.