Steve Litchfield

Now, let me emphasise the quotes above - what I'm describing (ok, ranting about) here isn't illegal, it's simply.... misleading. And I'm not singling out any one phone network here, I'm simply using Three UK as an example - all the others do the same. Look, I get the idea of contracts, especially at the upper end of the price spectrum - you get a nice, cheap, subsidised handset, you get more minutes, texts and Megabytes than you need, and all is rosy. You're paying £30 or more a month, but you're happy and, essentially, sorted. However, down at the budget end, there's little or no subsidy in terms of hardware, yet there's massive possibility for swinging overage charges. Let me explain. I'm looking at a Three UK run down of plans. They offer one at £6.90 a month. Which sounds great. 500MB of data, 200 minutes and 5000 texts. Perfect for a teenager, perhaps? Maybe. Except that you can bet he or she will occasionally go over, with 'that...

After a number of years on eBay, you learn the danger signs, the whiff of something not quite right. I won't quote actual eBay usernames here because I'm only 99% sure and not 100%, but I thought the procedure was still well worth writing up. The task for me: to buy an item, in this case an iPhone 5, a high value item, we looked at it, at £190 or so with a day to go, with local collection (which was OK for us, it was only 20 mins away) and put in a max bid of £290 - the idea being that eBay would auto-increase this if needed, as other people bid on the item. In hindsight, we rather overvalued the item and should have pitched in lower, as will become apparent. The task for the seller: the sell us the iPhone for as much money as possible while dodging both PayPal AND eBay fees. And he almost managed it. Here's the scam: He specified cash only on collection. Uh-oh. I queried this. It was to avoid PayPal's 3.4% fee, he said. Hmm.... OK, let's press on though.....