Monthly Archives: December 2009

Snow storms suspend travel in UK

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Eurostar, the high-speed rail service linking Britain, France and Belgium has announced the suspension of its services for the third day in a row as snow is still steadfast in posing disruptions  to people heading off for the Christmas getaway.

The train company organized a review to look into the problems faced by the travelers after the train breakdowns over the weekend. It saw a whopping thousands of passengers stranded in the channel tunnel. The company assured the travelers that it will soon try and resume the services back to normal.

According to a statement on the Eurostar website: “We strongly advise passengers whose travel is non-essential to change their booking to a later date or claim a refund on their tickets.”

The company is keen to compensate the passengers for the problems bore by them due to stoppage and delays of trains. It has announced to disburse  £150 as compensation to every passenger in addition to a refund on their tickets and a free return ticket.

Meanwhile, Flybe, the budget UK airline has increased the capacity on its services and resorted to a larger aircraft from both Birmingham and Southampton to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport for the next four days.

The other low budget airline, Easyjet is also instructing passengers to check its website to track the departure schedule after 100 of its 1,000 flights across were canceled today.

Andrew McConnell, Easyjet spokesman said: “Passengers should be aware, given this is a busy time of year, there is little availability over the next few days, so passengers whose flights have been cancelled today may not be able to transfer on to flights for a few days.”

Conjointly, a large number of passengers were stranded at the Manchester airport due to the snow storm that had hit the city and the flights were stopped or delayed because of unfavorable weather conditions.

A statement on the Manchester airport website said: “There have been difficult weather conditions across Europe and in the USA, which have resulted in passengers experiencing delays and cancellations across the transport network. This is likely to continue during the run up to Christmas.”

“We are continuing to clear the runway, stand areas and taxiways of snow to keep the airport open. Extra staff have been on shift this weekend to assist both in the terminals and on the airfield and the airport is prepared to tackle further snowfall. We are continuing to clear the backlog in conjunction with our airlines, to get our passengers to where they need to be for Christmas.”

Indications are rife that the ongoing bad weather condition may lead to further delays and flight disruptions across Europe.

British Telecom slams Unicom’s claims

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British Telecom responds, on being agitated by the claims of its ‘stealth price hike’  for SME customers the rival Unicom group.

A spokesperson of the BT said: “A competitor has put together some figures to deliberately exaggerate the effect of some small price increases for BT business customers. These figures are not a clear reflection of the experience of our business customers,” said a spokesperson.

“The competitor has selected ‘a typical’ profile. The profile they have identified also appears to have some very strange calling patterns and therefore throws into question the validity of the whole bill impact.”

However, Unicom, the fixed line provider asserted that the price hike done by British telecom over the past 18 months lead to a significant rise in the customers’ phone bills.

Chris Earle, Unicom operations director said: “Over the past 18 months BT has drip-fed price changes to their customers and the accumulative affect of those has been a 53 per cent increase. We have won a significant amount of business from BT customers on the standard tariffs.

“They have changed bits all over the place. Most of the customers on BT Business are not aware of them, because the prices are not distributed to them in anyway other than on its own website. It’s impossible for a normal customer to understand.”

British Telecom reportedly increased the prices of its services on Dec 1 with off-peak landline-to-mobile charges increasing from 12.9p per minute to 14p per minute. Other increases were also made like the call set-up fee increase 12.5 per cent from 7p to 8p and local peak call charges increasing from 5.5p to 6.5p. The customers who are signed to a fixed-rate monthly deal, typically 12 months or more, are also impacted by the price increase.

British Telecom made an announcement earlier indicating  it plans to reduce capital expenditure by £1 billion with plans to cut 15,000 staff, around 10 per cent of its total workforce. The telecom service provider also revealed the plans of increased standard customers’ line rental by £1 to £12.50, unless they opted for online billing, affecting around 14.5 million customers.

The BT spokesperson said: “It is always our intention to provide a value for money, and a comprehensive and quality service to our customers. We recently launched a BT Business One Plan package, which combines unlimited calls with a range of options including broadband and mobile, to allow businesses to control their monthly communications spend.

“The BT Business One Plan Inclusive packages offer unlimited calling minutes to UK landlines, UK mobiles, international destinations and 0845 and 0870 numbers for a fixed fee of £15 per month.”

Phones4u invests in training and NVQ qualification of the store staff

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The retailer is training staff to help them handle smartest of mobile users and also plans to refurbish its 450 stores by the first quarter of 2010

Phones4u, the largest independent mobile phone retailer in UK has recently announced to make ‘much more’ investment in training and NVQ qualifications of its store staff. The retailer mulled over the investment after it got positive feedback from store staff about the current training scheme.

Tim whiting, the chief executive of Phones4u asserted that as the mobile phones are getting more and more complex day by day, it is important for the staff to know the features well so that they can face the queries of even the smartest of the customers well. The training will offer store staff the requisite skills to handle today’s mobile users.

Phones4u started imparting NVQ Qualifications and training in September last year for some of the staff. The retailer is know contemplating to spend more money now and aims at providing the qualification to all retail staff.

Whiting said: “Next year will be an exciting year for us. On top of the big investment in store refurbishments, we will be investing much more in training and the NVQ qualifications – putting much more into the scheme than before.

“Handsets are becoming increasingly less like traditional mobile phones and more like mobile computers so it’s important our staff can explain to customers what a much more complex mobile can do.”
Whiting also acceded to the fact that Phones4u is employing renovation of its stores. The retailer is hoping to see its 450 stores refurbished by the first quarter of the year. Till date around 80 of its stores are already revamped.

On responding to the possibility of incorporating products other than mobile phones in the refurbished stores like that of the concept stores opened by other mobile retailers that offer a wider range of products, Whiting said that ‘the refurbishment will not provide a method of introducing non-mobile products into stores’.

“Our focus will remain on offering mobile solutions. Although we will be providing additional services such as an extension to the prepay credit cards next year, we always concentrate on mobile as our number one priority.”

Free broadband offered by BE broadband to 46 groups

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It has been declared by BE recently that it is going to offer a free wireless broadband service to a  number of communities throughout the UK. According to the announcement made by the BE Broadband, it will offer connectivity  and will provide a free public WiFi service. It will also offer 3G connectivity for the purpose of creating free internet hotspots for local communities presently without current connections.

It has been stated by Freerunner that its community competition has been won by 46 areas, which received around 500 entries. Now it will get free internet at least for a period of three years.

Owen Geddes, Chief Executive Officer of Freerunner, said: “We wanted to start with those most in need so we put the call out and the response was pretty overwhelming.

“It is incredible to think that a small piece of relatively low cost technology is going to fundamentally change nearly 50 communities across the UK.”

The remote areas which are selected range from the Orkney Islands to southern Cornwall. The connections will be paid for through a mixture of advertisements and corporate sponsorship.

‘Unite’ declares fresh ballot

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After Court held off ‘Unite’s’ strike plan overt the 12 day long festive period, on the basis of invalid ballot, the crew members union at British Airways is planning to hold a second strike ballot soon.

The earlier ballot was termed ‘illegal’ by a high court judge that however received overwhelming support and votes in favor of the strike.

The ratio of vote was nine on one that if not stopped, would have hit the traveling plans of millions of travelers seeking to travel during the long Christmas and New Year holidays. The strike was scheduled to start on 22nd dec and continue till the first week of January.

The joint general secretaries of the crew members union, ‘Unite’, Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley said in a statement after the strike was called off: “We will move directly to a fresh ballot for industrial action.”

Organizing a ballot takes weeks, therefore the next ballot will probably take place in late January with12,500 British Airways staff members voting in favor or against the strike.

The two day long high court hearing conducted by Mrs Cox declared to Bruce Carr, the British Airway’s counsel that there were “serious and substantial irregularities” in the vote.

The main discrepancy that figured out in the voting was the people who had ceased to work with the airline also took part in the voting process.

However, the union reacted to the allegations and said that it had done all it could do to ensure the vote was conducted correctly.

Mrs Cox said in her ruling,: “A strike of this kind over the 12 days of Christmas is fundamentally more damaging to BA and the wider public than a strike taking place at almost any other time of the year.”

While BA said it was “delighted for our customers that the threat of a Christmas strike has been lifted by the court,” Unite called the decision a “disastrous day for democracy”.

The statement of Mr Simpson and Mr Woodley added: “Let us assure you that your representatives and the union’s officials did everything possible to comply with every dot and comma of the incredibly – and deliberately – complex laws designed to make industrial action very difficult, and we are shocked that the judge has made what is a clearly political ruling.

“We want to tell you unambiguously that the High Court ruling is not about the legitimacy of your case, nor is it about denying the strength of the majority feeling expressed in the ballot.

“It was simply and solely about British Airways exploiting a legal loophole concerning the balloting of colleagues who had applied for voluntary redundancy.

“We wish to make it clear to you immediately that this is not the end of the matter.  BA management must understand that it cannot sub-contract the conduct of industrial relations to the High Court.  The judge’s decision does not mean the end of the dispute.

“Only a negotiated agreement can ensure that.”

Both the disputing parties are claiming for long that they are ready for the more talks. However, no date has been fixed so far for the meeting to take place.

Meetings that were expected to take place between Willie Walsh, BA’s ceo, and the two union leaders were also not conducted in the end.

The whole controversy stated to take off when British Airways announced to cut jobs and costs due to reduced demand during the recession period. The airline declared that it was planning to plummet the equivalent of 3,000 jobs though voluntary redundancies and staff switching from full to part time work. Also the salaries of the staff are also expected to freeze for two years.

The staff members union objected to these changes also they refused cutting cabin crew on long haul flights form 15 to 14, saying that it would impact the quality of service to the passengers.

BA has refused to change its mind and said there would not be any altercations in the proposed  working practices.

BA declares legal action against Unite’s strike threat

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Amidst controversies, the UK based airline British Airways has further announced to resort to a legal battle against the threatened 12 – day strike that is scheduled to start fro 22nd dec and go on till 2nd January by the cabin crew members’ union ‘Unite’.

The airline has questioned the validity of the ballot and filed a court case against the same. After the hearing of the case by the court, the airline is mulling over to sit for official talks with Unite for the  first time since the strike was announced.

BA said: “We are commencing legal action in an attempt to protect customers from the massive stress and disruption threatened by Unite’s decision.

“We have written to Unite, highlighting irregularities in the union’s strike ballot, which we believe renders the ballot invalid.”

The union of the crew members ‘Unite’ will also be made to attend the hearing that is set to rule out the validity of th ballot. However, the union said the accusations were “completely unfounded”.

“We’re going to attend to vigorously defend our balloting procedures, and we are confident that they will be found without fault,” a union spokesperson told ABTN.

Once the hearing gets over, the BA officials and Unite’s joint general secretaries Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley are scheduled to sit for an official meeting.

One of the British Airways spokesperson said that the airline is planning to conduct the meeting on the understanding that there were “no preconditions”.

The strike would inflict immense harm on the airline as it would lead to cancellation of journeys of about one million passengers during the busy festive season from Dec 22 to Jan 2 over the Christmas and New Year holidays, when most people travel for fun or to meet with their relatives and loved ones.

British Airways also stated clearly that in the event of stoppage of flights, the other flights that are scheduled to take off during the 48 hours before and after the stoppage would also be affected.

The altercation between the two parties started after BA announced to cut cabin crew from 15 to 14 on long haul Boeing 747 flights.

The union is upset with the decision, as it was a change in the working practices and the crew members were not consulted prior taking the decision.

The union has also commenced its own legal action against the airline, which is due for hearing in the coming year.

Unite conducted a ballot of its 12,000 cabin crew members to ascertain the number of crew members who favored strike. The result of which clearly revealed a nine to one majority in favor of striking, on an 80% turn out.

Unite’s assistant general secretary, Len McCluskey said: “We have taken this decision to disrupt passengers with a heavy heart and we are hoping that the company can still avoid it happening.”

However, British Airways also stated clearly that is looking at redundancies and would not back down on its stance.

The airline which reported a £292m loss in the first half of its current financial year said it was “extremely disappointed that Unite is planning massive disruption for hundreds of thousands of our customers over the Christmas/New Year holiday period.

“A 12-day strike would be completely unjustified and a huge over-reaction to the modest changes we have announced for cabin crew which are intended to help us recover from record financial losses.

“Unite’s cynical decision betrays a total lack of concern for our customers, our business and other employees within British Airways.”

The airline stated in a statement that it is offering “very fair and reasonable” deal to the cabin crew  members adding: “It reduces no-one’s terms and conditions, and gives most crew pay rises of between two and seven per cent this year and next year.

“British Airways’ cabin crew are already the best rewarded in the UK airline industry.”

Willie Walsh, BA’s ceo, said: “A strike is senseless – and we urge Unite to draw back. We will not be reversing our changes to onboard crew numbers.

“They have allowed us to accept more than 1,000 requests for voluntary redundancy – and those former colleagues have left the business.

“Unite must understand that there can be no return to the old, inefficient ways if we want to ensure long-term survival in the interests of our customers, shareholders and all our staff.

“They have no justification for threatening such extreme action. It is very sad that they are seeking to use the Christmas holiday plans and family reunions of hundreds of thousands of people to try to pursue their case.”

British Gas has Introduced New WebSaver 5

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The latest online deal from British Gas- WebSaver 5, has revolutionized the energy best purchase tables, winning the crown for the cheapest and affordable energy tariff plan in six regions.

British Gas (www.britishgas.co.uk) has replaced its famous WebSaver 4 tariff with the new, more affordable WebSaver 5 tariff.

WebSaver 5 is an online energy tariff plan which is ensuring to propose prices at least 6% lesser than British Gas’ standard tariff plan until 28 February 2011.

This tariff is now has become the most affordable and low cost dual fuel tariff plan provided for average consumers in the following six of the UK’s 14 energy distribution areas:
SWEB
Scottish Power
Scottish Hydro-Electric
Manweb
SWALEC
East Midlands Electricity

In various other areas, OVO Energy is the most cost effective dual fuel provider for average consumers.
WebSaver5 is only helpful to the users who wish to pay by monthly direct, it is not like WebSaver4, that was offering users various methods of payment to the consumers.

It is provided as a dual fuel, electricity tariff or gas-only tariff. There is also a termination charge levied on the users who will switch the tariff before 30th June 2010, which is decided as an amount of £30 per fuel
Chris Eagle, commercial manager at Energychoices.co.uk, said: “British Gas has stormed back into the energy best-buy tables, and it will be interesting to see how other energy suppliers react.

“The cheapest tariff for you depends on both the area you live in and the amount of gas and electricity you use, so to find the best deal, it’s essential to do an accurate energy comparison.”

Record high profits by energy firms

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Even after making huge profits, energy firms are claiming, they are losing money

In one of the energy price report of Ofgem, it is said that it is the consumer bills, on the basis of which energy suppliers are making historically high profits. The reports says that profit margins had increased sharply this year.

It is also pinpointed that dual fuel and gas-only profits were up from £20 in February 2009 to £85 per customer now.

On the other hand, it is said that electricity-only profits are around £20 per customer and profit margin dipped to as low at £5 per customer during the summer.

One of the industry expert says that “If energy firms will not do the right thing by their customers, it is time for an investigation into the industry by the Competition Commission.”

In the report of ‘Big Six’ announced few days back, it is quoted that they are making very scanting amount of profit from their consumers. Their figures reveals that they are earning annual profits per customer of £9 for electricity, £10 for gas and a loss of £1 for dual fuel customers.

Comparison of annual profit claims

Type of customer

Ofgem says…

Big six say…

Dual fuel

£85 profit

£1 loss

Electricity-only

£20 profit

£9 profit

Gas-only

£85 profit

£10 profit

As per the quotes of ConsumerFocus, it is revealed that consumers who have only seen tiny cuts to their energy bills, while wholesale prices have plummeted, will find it laughable that the suppliers say they are making such miniscule profits.

One of the industry expert says that the average consumer has little faith in the UK energy industry as it is, and seeing organisations release conflicting reports like this will surely damage their trust.

Increase in energy bill by £4.30 just begun

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Enery bills are going to rise by £4.30 a year to pay for betterment of regional electricity networks, however, experts say this just the first price increase in several.

Energy regulator Ofgem (www.ofgem.org.uk) has announced that suppliers can rise the average energy bills by £4.30 per year for a period of five years to pay for improvement of the UK’s electricity networks.
The energy bills are only going to get more costlier, unless we take a step to control now and decrease the amount of energy we utilize.

There is a requirement of around £7.2 billion investment over coming next five years in the 14 networks which were developed in 1950s and 1960s. It was said that there would be an investment requirement of  £6.5billion that would cost £3.76 a year to the users additionally, when Ofgem offered the network improvements in August this year.

While the amount is still not huge, experts expect that this price increase will be the first of several as the government’s plans to protect the UK’s long-term energy supplies, decrease the carbon emissions and introduction smart meters are predicted to cost £233.5billion.

These plans would increase £548 every year to household bills for the next 15 years, according to Ernst & Young and calculations by uSwitch.com said that energy bills could be as high as £4,733 per year by 2020.
Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at uSwitch.com, said: “£4.30 a year may seem small fry, but in fact it’s a wake up call for us all. This is just the beginning of a huge investment process that will lead to significantly higher household energy bills.”

one of the expert said: “Our energy bills are only going to get more expensive, unless we take control now and reduce the amount of energy we use.

“Energy efficiency is the way forward, and from getting into the habit of switching off your lights to investing in installation, the actions you take now will make a difference to your energy costs in the future.”

Three months free Plusnet Broadband

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Recently, Plusnet broadband has introduced a three months free broadband service for the new customers, when they sign up before 31 December.

The users of the plusnet broadband can avail this deal on any of the Plusnet’s home broadband packages. In order to avail the value 8MB Broadband package, the users are required to pay around £5.99 per month. It is available with a download allowance of 10GB.

Apart from this, latest  Premium package is also offered by the Plusnet Broadband. The users can avail it by paying just £11.99 per month. It is available with 20Mb broadband along with a huge 80GB download allowance.

While signing  up online,  you just need to enter the promotional code friendsandfamily in order to qualify the offer.

Plusnet’s packages supports  a 12 month contract as well as free connection or sometimes it comes with an option of no contract Broadband option in case a £30 set-up fee is paid.

Michael Phillips, Broadbandchoices.co.uk product director, said: “Plusnet has a broadband package for every type of user – its Value package is the cheapest standalone package on the market; the fast speeds and high download allowances of the Premium package are perfect for high-end users and it even has a dedicated gamer’s package – Plusnet Pro.”