The UK Mobile Report

Tax refund for you

Yes, I too am attracted by that title.

According to the BBC the latest 'social engineering' scam consists of an email that tells you you are due a tax rebate. All you have to do is provide your bank details.

Yeah right.

OK, most people would smell a rat but it's well timed at the year end and suitably enticing. Just when you think you have heard of all the good scams, they (whoever they are) go and come up with another one.

Warning on Amazon gift vouchers

Online traders have a habit of being economic with the verity. In the old days we used to say 'Read the small print'. But online finding that can often be a real challenge.

My latest discovery is that Amazon's gift vouchers are not as useful as they might seem.

I recently ordered a mixture of new and used books only to find that the voucher was only partly used. When I questioned this Amazon informed me that gift vouchers cannot be used to pay for 'used' items.

That's fine but shouldn't this be made clearer from the beginning? Here's what Amazon told me:

"Because orders from third-party sellers are not fulfilled by Amazon.co.uk, gift certificates cannot be accepted as a payment method on Marketplace, Auctions and zShops transactions, nor can any balance available in your Amazon.co.uk account be applied toward such purchases.

"I apologise if this was not clear at the time you placed your order."

Hmmm. Wouldn't it be better if it was made clear on the voucher itself?

Is BT living in the past?

For most of us VAT has thankfully been reduced to 15 per cent.

But if you buy a domain name from BT you had better think again.

BT is charging at the old VAT rate and when asked about this by a customer (er, that's me) gave this rather strange reply:

"We apologize for your inconvenience but our management team is looking into this but at this time the VAT does remain at 17.5%."

Oh dear.

I feel a call to the VAT office coming on.

Nuance preps the tapas

I can almost feel the sun on my face in Barcelona* already.

And now those nice people at Nuance want to get me even more in the mood with a tapas session down at the lovely Sala Meza, Wardour Street, London.

The price?

Listening to Nuance wax lyrical on its dictation, mobile search, text-to-speech, and predictive text technology. All to be seen at Barcelona naturally.

Fair trade? They are even throwing in a free bottle of Rioja to all who bother to turn up.

You decide.

*Mobile World Congress, 16-19th February http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/

Funniest mobile moment of the year

OK, there weren't that many.

But my favourite was when I decided to join a queue for the new iPhone at my local Carphone. There were about eight mobile geeks in the queue and despite this high geek quotient it was quite sociable (unlike most queues I have been in).

We were about to be let in the store when a white van (builders perhaps) drove past slowly. The passenger wound down his window, took one look at us and shouted 'WANKERS!' at the top of his voice.

It gave me an idea for a media studies student assignment.

First wave iPhone buyers - Wankers or trend setters? Discuss the relative social benefits/disbenefits of buying the world's most wanted phone. 3000 words, on my desk by the end of the holidays.

Review of the year - the ten second version

This year the iPhone changed everything.

You *know* what I mean.

On rare ocassions advertising is actually true.

Err, that's it. Review of the year done for another year, thank God.

Is UK mobile feeling the credit crunch?

Of course it is.

But thankfully it's an industry that looks more recession-proof than most. Pricing is holding up well compared to retail in general (where 50 per cent off seems to be the norm) and it is easier for most mobile retailers to lay off staff than can be done in manufacturing - O2 for example uses plenty of part-time staffers than are not expensive to reduce.

Anyway.

This week's big reality check was the news that Laird, which makes electromagnetic shields for phones, is to lay off a wapping 5,000 staff and cut production 14 per cent. Fortunately (for some) most of its 14,600 staff are overseas.

The firm is predicting a 10 per cent decline in phone sales next year.

More from the FT here .

Freedom of information - Yes We Can!

It is a sad fact of life that laws are sometimes passed which give real access to the state machine, yet are not really taken advantage by the average man on a bendy bus.

When it comes to the Freedom of Information Act I too was that man on the bendy bus.

But not anymore. Thanks to The Guardian's list of best web sites I was directed to: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com ...and very good it is too.

Very very good.

It takes out all the hard work of finding the email address of the relevant person in the organisation you want to question. All you have to do is formulate your request in a readable manner. You can also see the result of requests made by other people using this service. It's just a pity there isn't a central database of all requests.

So go forth and do as the 70s hippies used to say 'Question Authority'. You never know, you might even learn how many paperclips the Home Office uses each year, or how many illegal immigrants they have on security these days.

Virgin goes viral on its 30p offer

Virgin Mobile recently announced a 30p per day data tariff on mobile Internet (http://www.virginmobilepeople.com/30p) in the UK.

To make the whole thing they have launched a 'viral' video on YouTube. I am informed by the PR agency that the thinking behind it is: "that if 30p can give you the whole of the Internet - imagine what 30 *peas* can do."

Maybe a tie-in with Birds Eye is in order.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_E21KVL9Ew0

Nokia 5800 XpressMuisic Demo

And the word was iPhone; and lo the rest followed. And it came to pass that all phones started to look like the iPhone (but with slight differences to avoid expensive lawsuits).

Here's a demo of the Nokia iPhone wannabe. Enjoy.