As the nation prepares their bank account for Christmas and New Year festivities they would be wise to think ahead to January 2011 when the VAT will increase on all purchases. As it stands VAT is 17.5% but after the New Year it will rise to 20%. It doesn’t seem like a lot but for those that are waiting for the New Year sales may just benefit from buying all large and expensive items now instead of later.
As we know many people benefit from Christmas shopping for themselves as a chance to indulge and also save on the items that get reduced or are on ‘special offer’ but we don’t always save as sometimes to qualify the high street uses sneaky tactics as a free gift if you spend over X amount.
Some people who have been waiting all year to buy their new TV, kitchen or other expensive item will be keeping an eye on the New Year sales but they are just a ploy, they have such sales to get rid of old stock that will no longer be available in the future to make way for newer items.
How VAT increase will affect you?
Well a LG 50” TV that costs £800 now will cost you £820 after the VAT hike you will only benefit from sale prices if it is 20% cheaper. For those who are looking to spend more on a bigger purchase such as a new kitchen or car will see feel and notice the difference even more as these purchases will run into the thousands.
You cannot beat the VAT hike as it is automatically added to all purchases and makes up the total price, there are some places however that add it on at the end before you come to pay so be careful. There are also some places such as Chinese supermarkets that display the final cost with VAT in small print so you think that you are paying less than you are.
It is estimated by raising VAT by 2.5% it will generate more income for the economy by billions, this was the reason VAT was set to increase in the first place to try and cover some of the nations deficit. So if you have any expensive shopping to do it is worth noting that the VAT increase will come into effect January 4th 2011. Any purchases made after this time will result in the 2.5% increase.
As it stands the cheapest wedding package in the UK is around £20,000 the wedding dress, grooms outfit, bridesmaid’s clothes and venue costs can add to the cost of even an average small wedding. As there are many places such as Asda, Tesco and even Marks and Spencer’s who cater for weddings you would think that they would be cheaper but every bride wants to look their best on their big day. No wedding is complete without a honeymoon and unfortunately exotic locations such as Maldives, Thailand and the Caribbean may be out of many newly married couples budget so they are forced to honeymoon in Europe in places such as France, Spain and Portugal.
Weddings abroad have become increasingly popular within the last 5 years, as many couples try to save money for a deposit on a house as well as the soaring costs of getting married going abroad and combining it with your honeymoon may seem like a better deal. Travel agents such as Thomas Cook and Thompson have been catering for holidays for years with expert knowledge and attention to detail all for less than what you get in the UK. So what happens when it all goes wrong?
Getting married abroad will mean you will need a wedding planner or organiser especially if it is abroad in a foreign country where language may cause communication problems. You tell them exactly what you need and the food, cake, venue and photographer are all arrange for you hassle free. But as marrying abroad becomes increasingly popular many travel agents are struggling to cope with these demands and many weddings have destroyed as a result of this.
If you were to marry here in the UK and your wedding planner let you down you could ask your friends and family to rally round and help you organise it, but in a foreign country where communication is a problem and lack of information is hard to find who do you turn to? You can take out wedding insurance that will also cover your wedding abroad but be sure to read all the small print as you may find that some things such as accommodation is not covered abroad.
So yes in theory you can get married abroad for less than what you pay in the UK but the standards we have compared to abroad may not be the same and you may be left disappointed in the service provided for your wedding. You may also be the unlucky few who have their wedding day completely destroyed.
What is bait and switch?
This is when a service or product is advertised at a low price to draw in customers but then swapped for a higher price service instead. A common one circulating is leaflets advertising carpet cleaning at a price too good to be true. Usually under £15 for an average sized living room, when the cleaner comes over they advise a deeper clean that will cost as much £150 more. Unfortunately people who are most likely to be taken in by this scam are the elderly and those who live alone with no support or guidance from family and friends.
Bait and switch is illegal under the 1998 consumers act; companies are not allowed to advertise a service or product at a low price with no intention of honouring or even swapping it for a higher priced deal instead.
It is illegal in most countries as it is so easy to persuade customers to go for a better package at a higher price, what’s worst is some companies who offer products at a low price do not even have the intention of selling them. It is merely a ploy to get customers in so they can persuade them to spend more.
Examples of bait and switch
Advertising a car with no intention to sell – there have been many classic examples of car dealers that advertise cars and vans at low prices that seem too good to be true. When you do get to the showroom you are told that another vehicle is available at a much better deal or price. Some places even have the car still being advertised months later when it was sold long ago.
Retailers offering bargain discounts – if you are waiting for a specific product to be reduced so you can buy it like a barbeque, sofa or other electrical appliance but when you go to the store or look online it is out of stock. Some places will never have had this stock in the first place; it was a ploy to get customers in the door, once in they are bound to find something else to buy instead.
Travel companies advertising cheap holidays – some places will state a starting from price whereas some do not. Some places will advertise cheap holiday deals but when you call they are sold out or there are other ‘better’ deals available.
If you feel you have been a victim of swoop and bait contact the Trading standards with details of what happened and the details of the company you feel tricked you. It helps if you have evidence such as a leaflet where the service was advertised or even a newspaper advert.
The defamation laws are clear; you should not say publicly (on television for example) anything about another person that could injure his/her reputation unless you can prove that what you say is true. Having said this, you are entitled to your opinion, but have to careful in the way that you express it if you are speaking or writing negatively. You have to be able to justify that opinion with hard facts. In Europe the European Convention of Human Rights defends our right to free speech. We can say or write what we like as long as it is not defamatory and cannot be proved. If you think about John Donne’s line “No man is an island” you have the problem in a nutshell. Or perhaps you would like to consider R.D Laing’s statement “My freedom ends where yours begins.”
The defamation laws seek to protect an individual against unfair slander and libel. (Slander is spoken defamation, and libel is written or spoken in public and reaches a wide audience.)
Now let’s take a look at negative reviews. You may be asked for example, to review a book written by your arch-enemy. The obvious thing to do in this case would be to decline the invitation to write the review, explaining your antipathy to the author. While it is perfectly fine for you to write a negative review of the work, as long as you can justify this and the review is written objectively, then you have not broken the law as contained in the Defamation Act of 1996. If you concentrate on why the book is not very good and can use passages from it to back up your opinion, all well and good. The problem arises if you review the author in a negative light, which is not what you were asked to do. Obviously in some cases reviewers refer to an author in reviews, but usually this is done to explain the similarities between the work of fiction and the author’s personal experiences.
Similarly you can write a negative review of a restaurant as long as it is justified by actual experiences of your and is not just a way of getting back at the owner who you happen not to have liked for a number of years.
Reviews of any kind must be written objectively, and whatever your personal feelings, you have to remove yourself from them and concentrate on what you are reviewing. Your personality should not come into it, and if you harbour negative feeling about the author or owner of a work, these should not colour your review.
A rule of thumb is not to be tempted to write a review if you feel that you cannot be absolutely objective. You don’t want to be involved in a law suit which will do nothing to enhance your reputation.
You might think that there are no regulations governing the use of the internet, but you would be wrong. The law was slow to get into gear as regards protecting copyrights, trademarks and domain names, but it is now up and running.
If you have a business and you want to drive traffic to it you will have used your business name in your domain name and probably your trademark will be prominent in your site too. You have probably bought your domain name and use it to attract clients or customers to your site so that you can sell your products and/or services online. You domain name needs to be protected as much as your office premises and any stock you carry.
There are two types of infringement of your domain name which can be very damaging to your business. First of all there is a crime called Cyber squatting which you should be on the look-out for. This comes in two forms; the first is when you approached by an individual or a company, offering to sell you a domain which bears your trademark or domain name. This is classed as a “bad faith intent to profit” situation, according to the Anti cyber squatting Consumer Protection Act. The name might be construed as being “substantially and confusingly similar” to your domain name and this can be successfully stopped by law. Usually a strongly worded solicitor’s letter is sufficient to stop such actions.
The second infringement which again can usually be stopped by a similarly worded solicitor’s letter is that of another website using a name similar to yours to attract visitors to a competitor’s site or to sell shoddy merchandise, using your trademark, to unsuspecting people who will equate your name with the inferior counterfeit goods they have purchased online.
How can you prevent these situations occurring? You can’t really, but you can take steps to nip such actions in the bud. When you have bought your domain, you should monitor the registration of any names that are similar to yours, for example those which incorporate your trademark or business name. You can also buy up any domain names that are close to yours, so that no one else can buy them and capitalize on your good name.
Nominate is a non-profit organization which maintains a register of “.co.uk” domain names. And ICANN maintains a register of “.com” domain names, so check these regularly. As for copyright, please note that everything that is on the internet is now protected by copyright laws unless it specifically gives permission for its use by others. Do not copy any content or photos or images unless you know for certain that you have permission to do so. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act put a lot of legal power behind copy protection systems and reduced the ‘fair use’ rights that had up until then prevailed. Check out your rights and make sure that you are not violating the copyrights of others.
At some point in our lives our eyesight will deteriorate and we will need glasses, it might be for distance it might be for reading or it may be for both. Glasses in general are expensive sometimes the lenses cost more than the frame, you may be lucky enough to have a work scheme that will pay towards the cost of your glasses if you need them for work. Otherwise you can get free NHS vouchers that can pay towards the cost of glasses and depending on age and circumstances you can even get free eye tests.
Reading glasses should however be cheaper than standard glasses that are needed all the time but like mentioned before lenses can sometimes exceed the price of the frame. If you need reading glasses for when you are reading a book or even computer work you will need an anti reflection coating to prevent the glare of the screen giving you headaches and also for heavily lit offices that can also cause vision problems.
Since the sale of £1 reading glasses were introduced years ago many have abandoned their opticians and bought these bargain reading glasses instead of prescribed lenses. But as more and more people have started to complain about poor eyesight an investigation has found that cheap reading glasses may not work out so cheap after all.
Most £1 or bargain reading glasses are poorly made, the do come in different strengths but sometimes the two lenses do not match in prescription, one differs slightly to the other. The other fault found were that the centre points of the cheap lenses were not correctly centred, whereas custom made lenses made by the optician are. All these faults will lead to headaches, blurred vision, eye strain and cause eye sight to be even worse. Many people who need reading glasses prefer to buy a few pairs as they are so cheap but because they are so poorly made eyesight is being made worse, it’s not until it starts to affect daily life that the cheap lenses are found to be the culprit.
Have your eyesight checked regularly and only buy good quality glasses from the optician, it may be tempting to buy cheaper high street brands but remember it could make eyesight worse and in some cases leave you blind.
You can save money by waiting until there are offers to buy your glasses, alternatively go straight to the source and buy them at warehouse prices rather that the inflated ones from the optician.