Price Comparison - Buyer Beware!

A quick change from the usual classic transport and travel themes of this blog to look at "U Go Confuse a Meerkat Supermarket" websites.

Although I was born in Hampshire and have lived here for all but about 12 years, the only great grandparent I ever knew came originally from Yorkshire and I think the gene for being a bit canny with the money must be dominant. I don't mind spending money, but I do like to get best value and really dislike being ripped off.

When we moved into the current house, we were put onto the standard variable tariff with the existing energy supplier for as long as it took me to find a better deal. Our energy supplier for the past 3 years has been one of the small start up businesses that undercuts all the major suppliers. The downside is that their customer service is rubbish, but they are getting better. We have an annual fixed price deal which we renew about this time of the year.

This year, I thought it was about time to Confuse myself by Going and Comparing the Market. As I have accurate consumption data for the previous years, this should be easy.

So, entering the usual stuff; name, address, postcode, electrical consumption, gas consumption, type of property, current tariff, inside leg measurement, etc, it quickly came back with a long list of alternative suppliers, all of which were estimated to be around £200 cheaper than our current supplier. Even the "Big Six" energy companies were cheaper with their fixed price contracts.

I was, to say the least, a little sceptical, so investigated further. What they are doing is a little naughty. Actually, it is nothing short of outrageous! 

As my current fixed rate tariff is coming to an end, they assume that I am going to transfer to the existing supplier's standard variable tariff and used that to make the comparisons. And they do not include any rates from my current supplier as they are not on comparison sites, presumably because they won't pay the commission. Even taking the cheapest of the suppliers proposed and comparing against the estimate from the current supplier, changing to a "cheaper" supplier would not save us the £200 suggested; it would cost us around £50 more!

I am sure that they cover themselves in the small print, but the bottom line is that comparison websites, even the ones with loud spoken consumer spokesmen who get themselves on the TV and radio are not helping you make an informed choice; they are making themselves a nice little commission from getting you to switch. 

Although to give some balance, if you are still on a standard variable tariff or paying quarterly bills, they will undoubtedly help you save money (lots of money in most cases), but if you are already on a fixed rate with a small supplier, be very careful about what is presented as a "saving", especially as you need to look further than the headline "you will save this much" headline figure to find out how much you will actually be paying. And if you are interested, our supplier is "Extra Energy" and they are based in Birmingham

We'll get back to the usual topics next time!

Holiday Planning - the Fred Pontin way!

Back in the 60s and 70s, holiday planning didn't start until after Christmas. Usually on Boxing Day, the holiday adverts would start, with the prime TV slot being about 2 pm. Frequently, the "winner" in the battle to get this slot was the holiday camp business of Pontins, rival to Butlins, Warners and Maplins (who were fictitious, but  summed up everything about those Hi-di-Hi holidays). Pontins adverts were famous because the boss, none other than Fred Pontin himself, reputedly the inspiration for Joe Maplin would encourage you to "book early".

Fred Pontin in his usual pose, encouraging you to "Book Early!"

Booking early is something that I like as well. When we were burning to a frazzle in the Arizona desert in the middle of a heatwave earlier this year, Ann said "can we go somewhere a little cooler next year? Like Finland?" 

We spent a while living in Finland between August and November 1981 - and celebrated our first wedding anniversary there - while I was working for Nokia.  At the time, no-one outside of Finland had heard of Nokia as it was before the mobile phone revolution, but they had a computer business and that was the bit I worked for. 

One of the new products was an electronic point of sale terminal, with some software that would deal with stock control and inventory levels as well as calculating the value of a sale and cashing up each evening. For the early 1980s, this was pretty revolutionary. My task was to create the documentation and manuals to widen the product to the more general market. As it turned out, it really was too revolutionary for the rest of the world who were stuck with old fashioned cash tills and manual stock checking, but it got us a few weeks living in the Helsinki suburbs.

So next year, we are going back to Finland and the last 24 hours has been a mad booking frenzy. Two rental properties, three hotels, a rental car and flights. We got a cracking deal on the flights: London to Helsinki by British Airways Business Class (regular readers will recall that Ann has been thoroughly spoilt over the years and doesn't travel at the back of the plane) with change from £400 for both of us, return, plus a wodge of "Avios" miles that I am still using from when i was travelling for work.

It is much too far to drive now that you can't get direct ferries to Denmark or Sweden and the only option is to drive all through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, then a ferry to Copenhagen, across the big bridge to Sweden to drive to Stockholm and then a further ferry to Finland. 

We'll stay local to the airport on the first night having picked up a rental car and have rented a cottage in the middle of the Finnish lakes about 20 miles north of Kuopio (Google maps is your friend). On the way, we are planning to revisit the home of probably the most famous Finn - Sibelius.

home for a week

View from the terrace

The cottage is quite small, but has a little covered patio for the barbecue and its own sauna in the small wooden building that can be seen from the terrace. And a pier and private beach on the lake. And a boat with a little outboard motor. I'll need fishing lessons.

So after a week here, we'll head off to Savonlinna, closer to the border with Russia. It's a festival town with regular musical events and a renowned Opera Festival. We've booked a hotel overlooking the harbour on the lake.  

A couple of pictures of Savonlinna

Following that, a couple of days on the outskirts of Helsinki to give easy access to a few places to visit and then a rented apartment right in the City of Helsinki for 4 days to do the sights.

And the timing - the first half of June, so it will be light until about 11 pm and dawn will come again at about 1 am.

One of the places on the visit list is Hvittrask, formerly home of three world famous Finnish architects and designers in the same sort of style as Charles Rennie Macintosh and William Morris. There's a museum and restaurant; its about 20 miles west of Helsinki

Seurasaari - an island open air museum of buildings from all over Finland. Everything from turf huts to palatial farmhouses.

The Orthodox cathedral on the harbour front. Taken in 1981 during our long stay

A very young Ann aged 24 at the base of the Cathedral

You'll notice a lot of blue sky in the pictures. Although it is a long way north, the weather in early summer is often very good with bright sunny days and quite reasonable temperatures in the mid 20s Celsius. winter, though, is a different matter. The worst I experienced when visiting was -40 Celsius. That is the sort of weather when you are very pleased not to be a brass monkey...

And to "finish", a couple of tourist board images of Helsinki.

Off his Trolley!

Regular readers (assuming of course that I actually have any) will know that there is a book on the subject of the buses and coaches produced by Guy Motors in the works at the moment. Progress is good with the first draft of the text almost finished.

A coupe of weeks ago, we headed up to Carlton Colville on the outskirts of Lowestoft to the home of the East Anglia transport Museum. Lowestoft has two claims to fame: first it is the most easterly point of the British Isles and second, it was the home of Eastern Coach Works who built the bodies for thousands of buses, mostly on chassis produced by Bristol Commercial Vehicles.

The museum is quite special because it has an operational trolleybus circuit and a fleet of buses to run under the wires. Being just about old enough to remember trolleys running in Portsmouth, I have always found these electric vehicles to have a fascination all of their own. With all the current hysteria on low emission vehicles and the impracticalities of running public transport on batteries, I don't understand why we don't look again at the trolleybus. Although I am writing this at the same time as the former Great Western Railway line is closed for the weekend so Network Rail can check they have got their wiring right on the latest electrification scheme. Let's hope someone has a shilling for the meter.

But getting back to our topic... Lowestoft is quite a trek from Fareham and so it took us just about four hours to get there. As this included a half way round trip on the London Orbital Car Park Motorway and the Dartford Crossing, that probably wasn't too bad. The plan was to arrive in the early afternoon for a spot of photography and the highlight of the weekend - twilight running.

So here are a few pictures from the event:

The only remaining operational Portsmouth trolleybus is 313, which did actually run on route 5 and 6 along Copnor Road and was one of the routes that I went on as a child. We look after the prototype Portsmouth trolleybus on behalf of Portsmouth Museums in our "collection", but there is little or no hope of it ever running under its own power again and it's hidden away in a corner, so can't even be seen easily. It would be so much better if it were here, even if not running.

A yellow trolleybus with doors at the front - so it must be Bournemouth and this one is from a batch that was right at the end of production. Bournemouth Transport actually took the very last trolleybus that was built for the home market

This one was new to Reading Corporation, but when their system closed, it found its way to Teeside who kept their system running a little longer. It has recently been thoroughly restored and repainted for its first public appearance at this event.

Upstairs on the Portsmouth bus trying to hide behind one of the poles is a familiar figure! This one was restored some years ago at Carlton Colville and is still in spotless condition. At one time, Portsmouth had a degree of civic pride and this was reflected in the Corporation transport fleet that was always turned out clean, although the seats became rather grubby over the years

Now for some twilight running. South East London didn't have the tube, but it did have an extensive trolleybus network, so after a good night out, we'll take this one to Woolwich. Many of the LT fleet found second lives after that system closed with some going to Spain or Portugal.

And after a night out at the seafront, we need to get home, so the trolley from South Parade Pier to "The Tivoli" will do nicely and we can walk along Chichester Rd a little way. "The Tivoli", which was a cinema in Copnor Road close to where the Co-Op dairy used to be, had long gone when I was a child, but was what one asked for when paying the fare.  New conductors must have been very confused with passengers asking for fares to places that no longer existed!

I don't suppose you'll have seen one of these before. This is a "half decker", an early attempt at getting a large number of people into a low vehicle. You can see from the window positions how the seating is arranged in groups of four. The upper deck passengers leg space was between the seat backs of the lower deck and steps were needed to climb up or down into each compartment. The design was not a success and this is believed to be the only surviving example of about twenty to have been built. My interest in this is that the prototype was built on a Guy chassis

Apart from a general interest in trolleybuses, the Bournemouth and Reading / Teeside vehicles, plus a few others running on the day, were built by Sunbeam who were the largest builder of electric vehicles in the UK. In 1948, Guy Motors who had previously also built large numbers of trolleys bought Sunbeam and Karrier (both businesses having been previously sold by the Rootes Brothers) and decided to sell everything under the Sunbeam brand.