Samba broadband dissolved and my already earned credit is now non existent

A couple of weeks ago, Samba broadband folded.

At least they didn't exactly FOLD.
What they did was to stop the service and email everyone to tell them that they had ceased trading.

They actually are still a company and apparently are running in another country but as far as the UK is concerned, they are no more.

Their email pretty much said that they could not negotiate future prices to be as competitive as they had previously been doing and so they were stopping .

I actually expected the broadband credit that I had accrued, to continue to work because I had earned that previously and as far as I was concerned, that would have been earned and credited to my dongle (run under subcontract presumably with Three mobile broadband) .

That is not the case however and my dongle which I hammered hard all day on the closing day to at least use up some of my credit (I had 15 GB saved on it) now does not connect to the internet with Three . I can get on Three's site but I apparently have no credit.
I guess I managed to use about 800 mb that last day.

Thanks Samba! You apparently did not actually have any kind of agreement then with the members but only with Three whom you decided not to pay out of your profits from my and a few thousand other peoples viewing of your adverts.

My 15 GB of non expirable credit stayed in Samba's pocket along with the major earning they got from all my viewing of adverts.

To put it into perspective, each video was 3.5mb that works out that I watched  4388 advertising videos.
A while ago I worked out that we were paid about 1.5 pence a video and so they had 65.82 of my earnings because they just wiped it out on closure.

Plus at least 65.82 they also earned as profit because lets face it, they weren't a charity, I think it was most likely more than that but so what?


I did email to ask about it but they only have an automated reply stating they are so sorry but they have closed due to mean old Three not letting them have such good prices any more.

I am one of the lucky ones.
My Sim cost me £1 and my dongle was free as we unlocked one we got from somewhere else.
Some poor saps had only just bought a Samba Dongle, literally the day before their 'closure' and some people were using their regular 'top up' with cash .

They stated they would reimburse the cash top ups if they had been bought in  that month .

Anyway..
I was not impressed by the deceit. They could easily have put up a message online to say they were closing and people would have used up their 'credit' and no one would have ordered more top up credit or bought a dongle for nothing.

If you are in a different country and Samba is offering free broadband for watching their adverts, think carefully about it before deciding to go ahead and certainly be very wary about actually buying anything from them with 'real money'.

.

Free mobile phone use,broadband use and cheap texting

I have been looking at my mobile phone usage and decided that  I could use Ovivomobile for their freedom package.
I didn't like Orange,they messed up all the time.
The website was buggy and they charged an arm and a leg for data use if you didn't top up your phone every month which I never do,so my credit would whoosh away just for a quick look on a search engine taking only a minute or two.

I already have samba mobile for free broadband on my computer.


[[UPDATED TO ADD OVIVO HAVE NOW GONE OUT OF BUSINESS SO DISREGARD  THIS BIT        MARCH  20TH   2014    ]]

OVIVO supply a sim for £15 and when it arrives and you put it in your mobile phone, it adds £15 of credit so basically the sim is free.
Then you are allocated..

• 150 mins of talk time
• 250 texts 
• 500mb Data

For free each month

Then when your allocated free credits are all used you can still call anyone else who is on ovivo for free or if you are wanting to call other numbers you can top up with real money or just wait for the new months free credits or just go for one of their paid for tariffs which are quite cheap too.

If you port over your existing number by requesting your FREE PAC code from your old supplier they give an additional £3 of credit.
You shouldn't have any trrouble getting your PAC code as they must give it to you by law in the UK.

They also do an ovivo data sim (750mb free a month) which I believe is £15 with the same amount added to your account as credit.

You can have as many sims as you want as you pay for each one so you could have 2 dongles to get 1.5gb a month  or two sims for your phone (would have different numbers of course)or two phones and get two lots of the free phone credits.

 If you use your phone a bit more than I do and have an older phone knocking around, this would work out very cheap indeed over a year...

2 phone sims, £30 one off payment would give you every month

300 mins talk time
500 texts
1gb of data

2 Data sims ,£30 one off payment would give you every month

1.5gb data

That is very cheap over a year  when compared with the yearly PAYG tariffs of other companies.

Of course the longer you use it for ,the cheaper it would be .

So if your uni course was 3 years and you bought two sims of each kind(£60 all together) ,it would be £20 a year for phone and internet.

They don't provide the sims or phones in that price plan .

You can pick up very cheap unlocked phones and dongles on ebay or ask family for their spares.

Ovivo sims work in Nokia's symbian  phones  as well as apple and android and window phones.

The only criteria seems to be a phone that can get 3G and needs to be unlocked.

I have been waiting to change to OVIVO for a while because I still had about £7 credit on orange but then I found FISHTEXT which is an online texting thing. You can pay for the texts with mobile phone credit (eat that,orange) and allocate your mobile number when joining.

Then you can text from your PC or using the app on your mobile and the texts are 2p
International texts are very cheap .
They give you 20p credit (0.30euros)  for joining so you can try it out (10 standard uk to uk texts)
Texts to other FISHTEXT members are free using the PC or a wifi signal on you mobile or the free data from ovivo and their app is very low data usage anyway.

Any replies go to the mobile whose number you have used for your member number.
You can also pay to have a phone number online without needing a mobile phone at all.

The texts are cheap and they can be used internationally with a price guide being shown for each option and length of text when actually texting.

So for a bit of hunting around, I now have a free monthly mobile 'rolling tariff'  with £18 of credit
Plus a £5.20 credit on Fishtext

(£23.20 for the cost of £20) a 16% profit :P

without the Fishtext add on credit £5 it would have been £18.20 for the cost of £15 (a 21.33% profit)

These two things would be ideal for a student who must pay for their own phone and internet.

If you and your friends joined FishText the texts from your pc would be free according to their bumph.
Join Samba mobile to get free broadband to use with it or additionally.
Join ovivo and have free texts and calls and mobile data
Get someone to buy you the samba sim an ovivo phone sim and an ovivo data sim (750MB free a month) for your birthday or xmas  and you will have lots of free broadband and phone data.

Get yourself a copy of joikuspot for your phone and use the phone data to get wifi on either a tablet or PC
Log into samba mobile website whenever there is free wifi available (maybe in a takeaway or cafe,a library with wifi,uni) and watch the adverts to keep your account topped up with data.

Use the dongle or your tethered(joikuspot) phone to run skype so you can instantly message your family at home when you are away. The messaging bit of Skype uses very low data.

Then if after all that, you still run out of calls and texts etc, you can still have your family ring you,because phones work both ways and you don't pay to accept incoming calls or texts,only outgoing.

Incidentally,  I have been topping up my SAMBA SIM every day by watching the adverts I haven't  used the data much, we got it for our ten day trip away in the spring (I think I bought it at the end of Feb for £1 using a code from moneysavingexpert and used an old dongle  I unlocked free)when it was used daily and it has been used about 3 or 4 times when the home wifi was being glitchy. (about 2gb usage all together maybe)

I have 7.8gb sitting on it waiting for my next bigger outing.
If you were going to be off to uni next year and bought a sim now or asked for one for a present, you could accrue a lot of data on it in the time you are at home and avoid paying for the internet when you are away

If you want to get yourself one, you can click on my referral link here to save yourself £2.50
http://www.sambamobile.com/Signup/BecomeMember?memberKey=0x5C0A8DD4F4DDB8E7FC6D4BD659FB8AD5

And the sim will be £2.50 instead of £5 or a dongle with a sim will be £22.50 instead of £25

I haven't got a referral to share for OVIVO because it would be  my name and phone number which obviously I'm not going to broadcast to strangers on the internet.
Fishtext is also not really a referral based thing. click here to get to their page or just search the name

Success!

The DS has passed his driving test YAY
He took it yesterday.

Maintenance on the remote dwelling 


OH finally found a plumber to sort out the water at the flat where DD is living while she is at uni.
It is our flat ,DS lived there for 3 years while he did his studies too and the water always took an age to heat.
The plumber said the cylinder and thermostat are at least 40 years old.
He fitted a new shower but couldn't get the electric to run to it so OH will need to get a sparks to sort that out.
DD broke it when she slipped in the bath and grabbed the shower to stop herself falling.
Good thing it didn't electrocute her!

Smooth surfing 

We are now running on Sky LOL
The swap over from BT internet was smooth.
BT was running till 3pm on Monday and then cut out so we unplugged the modem and plugged in the new Sky modem.
It was all up and running in moments.

I have a new wifi dongle that I bought for my laptop as my wifi signal was not brilliant, the new dongle is wifi n which can take the faster speed sent by the modem.
It is running through at 144mbps instead of the 54 it previously ran at.

Left overs Friday

Today is Left overs day as usual.
When we have Bolognaise, I make the usual 4 portions just as though DD were here, then put one aside for DS to have today.
I generally have left overs curried with a baked spud or rice.
OH is back tonight instead of going to Police and we will have curried liver and bacon left over from Wednesday.

No Poo

I have gone back to washing my hair with bicarb.
It was too much bother last year when I was working from home but now I have time to faff about with it again.
It is quite easy and my hair has more body because of not being stripped of all oils every couple of days.
You put about 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate into a bowl, mix in some hot water and swirl it round, it goes cloudy and when you cant feel the granules(almost at once) you wet your hair with water and then work in the mixture.
Give it a good massage and wash it out.

Chilly Mondays, more books and the new TV Box

It was pretty Snowy last week.
We thought it was well and Truly over, only to wake up to a new sprinkling on Sunday.
The DS was narked because he has a Driving test this week.
OH was narked because he wanted to Motorbike into work instead of driving up there, it is more expensive for petrol for the car.
I was narked because I usually drive to the big supermarket on Sunday but I wont drive in snow.

So anyway, OH drove me to Asda and it turned out that our road was snowy but almost all the main roads were clear.
We live in a cul-de-sac which means that there is no through road to go anywhere , consequently the council never grit our road or the one leading to it as they aren't heavily trafficked.   I believe this is a mistake as we and many other residents of the town,there are numerous Cul-de-sacs due to the estate layout, must still get our vehicles TO the main roads in order to benefit from the gritting.
OH needed about 100 yards of clear road to get his Motorbike out last week and only managed it on Friday when the thaw began.
Today is warmer and we are set to have mild weather this week so hopefully DS will get his lessons and test after all.
OH buzzed off happily on the bike and said he might even get a cycle in .

R.I.P. (rest in pieces)BT Vision box

On Friday, our new free-view box was delivered by the courier. This is a non subscription box that I bought from Amazon.
It does everything that the BT vision box did , except,because it doesn't access the internet, it cant get BBC Iplayer. We can always hook up a laptop if we want to watch Iplayer though.
DS connected it up when he finished his driving lesson.
It took about 10 minutes.
We had to move the TV table forwards,de- cable the BT box from ethernet, TV out,TV in and scart.
Then we put it on the floor, put the new box in its place and reinserted TV out, TV in, scart and plugged it in to the power.
THE TV in comes from the Aerial, TV out goes through the DVD recorder, The scart goes to the Big Monitor on the wall as far as I remember.
Anyway,we turned it on and it just worked.
No faffing about.
We scanned for channels and it has the same channels as BT when you watch freeview.
The remote works and now we can use the volume control (BT's volume control was useless),instead of having to get up and go to the HIFI and turn it down.
Our HIFI is the volume on our TV because the screen is a Monitor not a Television.

The old BT box is on a table in my bedroom. I have opened the case and there is an IDE hard drive inside.
That will come out ,I will most likely salvage all the motherboard components using the Dremel and the rest of the box can be scrapped.

Tomorrow we switch over to sky for our internet and will plug in the new modem we got on Thursday and set that up.
We have a phone ready for getting our calls and can discard the rubbish that BT  were allowing us to pay £36.25 a month to use despite the fact that both home hub and phone were faulty units.
Ironically we have had a few calls on the BT phone and haven't been able to answer any as it cuts out the minute you remove it from the hub. I do hope they were from BT with offers to keep our custom.

Bookish Monday

This weeks book is Thief of time
By Terry Pratchet

I had a bit of a struggle getting into the first chapter as it seemed quite disjointed but once past that, it falls together quite well.
Each scenario fits a time-line and you must see them in entirety before you can really get into the story.
One of my favourite Pratchet Characters is DEATH.
He turns up in every book I have read so far and leads away the dearly departed whether they like it or not.
In this book ,he is a little more active and I just love that.
He even has a tiny little helper of sorts.

Anyway I mustn't spoil the story

Who needs criminals when we have the utility providers?

We have been with BT Broadband for a number of years.
We get their Broadband and telephone and also have a TV box ,although we got the box to watch freeview only, we don't pay for any programmes on it.

The hub which is a fancy name for their modem,is glitchy.
It cuts you off in mid telephone call.
It turns off when you are surfing the web.
It leaves you watching buffering on the TV screen.
It displays an unsecure network when it actually is using encryption.

After many ,many moans, including the OH being quite insulting more than once to the telephone 'customer service' in far off India, we finally got the operative to admit that we have a fault on our hub.

'Oh right' says OH, 'so finally you agree it is the hub that is broken'!
'Yes,it is the router' says the operative.
'When will you be sending out a new one'? says OH.
'No it is your responsibility to get the new one' she says.
'You must take out a one year contract and we will send you a new one'.
.........................................................................!
'Okay' says OH, 'so what you are saying is, we are not in a contract any longer and so must either...
Sign up with a new one year contract where you will supply us with a new modem,everything else remaining exactly the same ...
OR
Not sign up with a contract and not be able to get your services which we are paying full price for...
OR
Sign up with another provider for £200 less a year, get a new phone and a new contract with them and they will give us a new modem'.

Decisions decisions!

Can you guess what we chose to do?

The operative had a long think and then said, 'no you are in contract'.
'Oh' says OH 'so when will you be sending us our new replacement modem'?
'No no',she says, 'we cannot give you a new modem unless you sign up for a 1 year contract, if you are not in contract, we cannot help you'!
ARGH!
This conversation went around and around until she admitted she was wrong (or right Hee hee) and we were no longer under contract.

Just then the phone cut out rather sealing the deal and we just laughed.

We decided on a new provider.
To connect with a new provider we had to ring the old one to request the MAC Code ,something like migration agreement code I think, so we can keep our phone number.

A smug sounding Brit came on the phone and asked very treacle voiced ,why on earth we should want to leave.
OH who is a bit gullible sometimes started to explain but I said 'look just ask for the wretched code'.
OH said he would get his wife to talk to the operative :P
He handed me the phone and I said 'We aren't interested in listening to offers any more, just give me the code please'.
He tried to talk over me but eventually the code was read out over the phone and we rang off.
His last words were ' we will be sorry to lose you'!

YER RIGHT!

Who was it told us to like it or lump it?....

I think the phrase is 'We will be sorry to lose your revenue'.

The new contract is all signed for and paid for etc and we are awaiting the new arrangements.

Incidentally , the TV vision box will not work once we don't have power to a BT Home Hub, they have it hard coded so that while it can connect to their servers, it will update its EPG(program guide) and allow recording schedules but as soon as you are not paying them, your free free-view box is a piece of Junk.

Shrug, who wants to be shackled to them just for a free-view box?
We have a new one on order to replace it with as we are not going to subscribe to TV with the new provider.
The new box should do exactly what the old one did without the need to be plugged in to the faulty home hub.


The new provider works out as £60 for the year for Broadband and £147 for the phone line with the free evening and weekend call package (same as BT eve/ weekend calls),so £207 all together.
Instead of £272 for the broadband +£159 phone=£431

Saving      £224

I decided to use some Amazon vouchers to buy a new free view PVR box.
It was £69.74 including delivery.
That still leaves us £154.26 richer.