Articles - Broadband, Home Phone & Mobile Phone
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Are you sick of telemarketing calls on your home phone?
Picture this, you are about to have dinner & the phone rings. You rush to the phone only to find a stranger trying to sell you something. Does this scenario sound familiar to you? It happens all the time in households across Australia. Sometimes you can get a number of such phone calls during the week which can be extremely annoying!
Did you know most telemarketing agencies get your contact details from 2 different sources:
a. Using the phone book to locate your details
b. Purchasing lists from third parties
I am going to share 3 strategies which will help you in reducing annoying phone calls to your home dramatically.
1. Most people don’t know this but you can pay your local phone company a small fee to make sure your phone number is not listed in the phone directory. This feature is called a “Silent Number”, and this will help you reduce telemarketing calls. In Australia most phone companies charge $2.93 per month to remove your name from the White Pages (i.e. the local phone directory).
2. List your name in the “Do not call register” – This is a very effective way of minimizing the number of phone calls you receive. You can list your Australian home phone number on the Do Not Call Register, provided the number is not used for commercial purposes. The website where you can register your details is https://www.donotcall.gov.au . This will not stop all telemarketing calls to your number because charities, non-profit organizations & market researchers operating in public interest are exempt from this. After registering your details on this website it takes approximately 30 days for the calls to start reducing.
3. Be selective on who you give your phone number and contact details to. For example, don’t enter competitions which require you to give your personal details in return for entering a prize draw. Only do this if you feel you can trust the company & they have a privacy policy in place which states that they will not share your data with third parties.
I hope you will find that by using the above 3 strategies the number of telemarketing calls to your house will decrease dramatically.
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3 tips to save money on your home phone
1. Choose your line rental plan carefully – Most people end up choosing the standard line rental plan offered by the phone company. But you need to be more proactive with the home phone plan that you choose as this determines your phone bill at the end of the month.
For example you could choose between a standard line rental ($29.95) in Australia & this line rental offers standard rates or you could choose a cheaper line rental plan ($19.95 per month) as long as you make at least $20 of calls every month. This works out at nearly a 30% saving on the line rental component of your phone bill.
Another option available for people who use the home phone frequently is choosing a plan with “No line rental component”. A number of phone companies in Australia provide this option. Therefore as long as the customer is willing to commit to a minimum amount of monthly spend on phone calls (approximately $59 per month of phone calls) they can end up saving the entire amount they spend on the line rental component of the phone bill (which is essentially dead money).
2. Research the market before choosing your home phone provider –This is the most common mistake customers make. There are a number of phone service providers available, for example, in Australia people have a choice of using Telstra, Soul, Optus, Primus, AAPT and a number of smaller service providers for their home phone service. However, since Telstra is the default phone company therefore most people end up connecting their service with Telstra without doing their research and therefore end up paying a substantial premium on their phone bill.
3. Landline Handset Rentals – Don’t pay extra monthly charges to rent a handset from your phone company, instead purchase your own handset and you will save a lot of money. In Australia a lot of customers prefer to rent their landline phone handset from Telstra & this must be a huge revenue earner for Telstra. They charge $3 to $6 per month per handset that a customer rents from Telstra. That is an average of $4.50 per month. I know of a lot of customers who have been renting a handset of Telstra for 10 years. For example, Handset rental $4.50 *12 months= $54 per year.
You can purchase a brand new handset for as low as $20 these days, why would you pay $54 a year to Telstra?
And for the people out there who have rented a handset for 10 years, you have just given Telstra $540 for something that you could have bought for $20. Get on the phone right now & return the handsets.
Tip- Make sure when you return the handset that you get a receipt for returning the handset.
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Excessive use of mobile phones can lead to cancer!
Recently I have come across a number of reports in various magazines, newspapers & even on the Oprah Winfrey show that have referred to a link between the use of mobile phones and cancer. One of the articles I read in today's paper identifies a link between Mobile Phone usage & increased chances of Brain Cancer - http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/03/31/1206850768836.html
I have summarised the main points made by the Australian neuro surgeon below:
Dr Vini Khurana (specialist neurosurgeon at Canberra Hospital & Associate professor of neurosurgery at ANU), who conducted a 15-month "critical review" of the link between mobile phones and malignant brain tumours, said using mobiles for more than 10 years could more than double the risk of brain cancer. He has called for "immediate and decisive steps" by industry and governments to reduce people's exposure to invisible electromagnetic radiation emitted by handsets .
Dr Khurana, who since 1994 has received 14 awards, said the time between the commencement of regular mobile phone usage to the diagnosis of a malignant solid brain tumour might be in the order of 10-20 years.
Here are a few more links to various studies & articles on this topic:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones
This is the National Cancer Institute of America’s website. They are also advising of the link between mobile phone usage & cancer.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1062578/We-ignore-links-mobile-phones-cancer-like-did-tobacco-scientists-tell-U-S-Congress.html
In this article Professor David Carpenter, director of the Institute of Health and Environment at the University of Albany told the committee: ‘Society must not repeat the situation we had with the relationship between smoking and lung cancer where we waited until every “I” was dotted and “T” was crossed before warnings were issued.
http://environment.about.com/od/healthenvironment/a/cancerphones.htm
This is a Swedish study & is one of largest & most comprehensive study done on this topic. According to Kjell Hansson Mild, who led the study, heavy users of mobile phones have a 240 percent increased risk of developing a malignant tumor on the side of the head where they press the phone to their ear.
Some of the things you can do to reduce your chance of getting affected:
- Whenever possible use your landline phone instead of the Mobile phone
- Keep your conversations on the mobile phone short.
- Please make sure that children are not allowed to use the cell/mobile phone as they are the ones who face the highest risk.
- Use SMS messages instead of using the mobile phone wherever possible
Use the hands free capability of your mobile phone to increase the distance between the mobile phone & your body
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