Super funds prove less than wonderful

HUNDREDS of thousands of superannuation investors would have been better off forgoing the government's tax breaks on contributions and putting their money in the bank, internal industry figures have revealed.

Email from Vodafone

Hi Alan,

We're investing $1 billion to bring you better indoor coverage, faster downloads and a stronger signal than before from Vodafone.
We've been busy working in your area upgrading sites, replacing network equipment, and building a new 850MHz network great for smart phones and mobile broadband. There's a lot happening in your area - we hope you're noticing the difference. Check out the maps below to see what's happening where and when.

We've also been busy improving our customer care services, to make it more convenient for you to contact us and give you more control over your mobile and your bill.

Balance Alerts – now you can keep tabs on your bill with SMS Balance Alerts. We'll send you an SMS when your next bill is getting close to your chosen limit. Click here to activate.

24/7 Customer Care – we're now keeping our care centres open day & night, so you can reach us anytime on 1555 (free from your Vodafone mobile).

More to come:
We're not stopping here. We're committed to keep improving our network & customer care services for you. So keep an ear out for more improvements & new services coming soon.

Regards,
The Vodafone Team

Yes…I am a Vodafone customer. Thing is I have not had any problems with them, admittedly I am a light user of phone, TXT and MMS. I have the $20 SIM card with 50MB of data. This is GPRS not 3G and works well for my needs to read news and weather. I can even access my CCTV DVR system at home:

Above: Live CCTV camera video over the web from home.

Example of Camera 3 monitoring the backyard on my Nokia E63  over Vodafone GPRS accessing my CCTV-DVR PC at home on BigPond cable. You can see the system here:

http://alanm52.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/8ch-home-pc-cctv-system-dvr-card/

http://alanm52.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/cctv-dvr-updates/

Update: Telstra Home TV Bundle

One of the things I did back in July 2010 when I retired from work (nice) was to rationalise and consolidate all our finance stuff like banking and super, household utilities and – entertainment. After a bit of research decided to sign up for the Telstra Home TV bundle for $198/mth which includes HomeLine Reach, BigPond Elite Cable 25GB and Foxtel Platinum iQ.

Since then the bundles have been upgraded, 25GB is now 100GB,  so I jumped onto Whirlpool to see if people were getting free upgrades – they were. Rang Telstra and arranged for the upgrade to 100GB without any issues and was informed it would take 4 –5 days. That was on Saturday, today received a email from Telstra that the upgrade was complete and we are now on 100GB for the same monthly $198 – happy with that!

Sneaky smart-meter price hike on Melbourne Cup eve | News.com.au

MONEY-hungry power companies will hit households an extra $1.1 billion to install smart meters after winning approval for hikes on the eve of the Melbourne Cup.

 

The decision will lead to bill increases of about $60 a year just in meter charges, and will take the gloss off any interest rate cut tipped to be announced today, the Herald Sun reported.

The Australian Energy Regulator has been forced to back down on efforts to limit smart meter installation costs to about $760 million, between 2012 and 2015.