There is no need to pay top dollar to book a cabin on a cruise ship because there are a lot of discount cruises available. So you may think that what you need to do is reserve your cabins well in advance to ensure that your package is available and avoid the possibility of the cruise being sold out. But while this strategy works great for booking cheap airline flights and hotel rooms, it may not be the wisest approach to find a discount cruise. Why? Let’s find out below.

How Does This Work?

Discount cruises are possible because cruise lines realize that selling every possible cabin is better than leaving cabins empty, and so they give huge discounts on rooms that remain unsold prior to departure.

Cruise lines allow unsold cabins to be booked at a fraction of their total price, which means you get to go on discount cruises, though more often than not, they do not advertise such bargains on the television or in the print media, mainly to protect the interests of their travel agents as well as their full-fare business. There are certain cruise agencies that ask people to enroll as members to their websites in order to get quotations on discount cruises.

It is up to the traveler to check with some accredited cruise agents to ascertain whether a discount cruise is available or not. Only a well-known cruise agent will have an exhaustive list of discount cruises so you can pick up a bargain deal on a reputable cruise liner. It should also be noted that these discount cruises do not compromise on quality and that the packages provide great service in spite of the discount price tag.

Cruise agents are sure to have discount cruises available on some well-known cruise lines such as Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruise Line, Holland America, Princess, Norwegian, Costa, and Disney.  The trick is to avoid paying extra when buying direct from the cruise lines themselves, because cruise agents, who deal in bulk sales of cabins, will be able to provide discount cruises at the best prices.

In order to request a quote or obtain more information about the discount cruise just provide your contact information and the cruise agent will send a complete list of available discount cruises. Discounts start from as low as 10 percent and go up to as much as 75 percent, depending on availability and to a degree, on striking the right note at the right time.

If you are timely and get the best discount cruise, you may even be able to take a five-night Caribbean Cruise for as little as $260 or you may be able to save as much as 81 percent on last minute deals once you find the right cruise agent and the right cruise.

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Businesses switching energy suppliers to take advantage of cheap deals are being unfairly snared into expensive contracts once the initial term ends.

All business electricity and gas suppliers impose increases when renewing contracts ‘assumptively’ which automatically take fixed rates from as low as five pence per kilowatt hour up to as much as 32p/kwh. Customers do not realise they must actively reject the new rate being offered to them mid-way-through their contract to avoid being tied-in for a further 12 to 24 months. Each supplier has different rules but the notice period ‘window’ can be as narrow a week and is activated as soon as a renewal letter is sent which, in some cases, is as much as 120 days before the contract is due to end.

This practice is also noted by Datamonitor whose research (Retail Competition: The role of price in managing demand) found that an average loss of -5% margin is made on each new SME customer in their first year but that profit rises to an average of 32% on ‘default offers’ thereafter.

Furthermore, suppliers deliberately disguise price increase notifications with letter headings such as ‘Offering your business more’ or ‘We’ll protect your new prices for two years’. This tactic is clearly working as the biggest business supplier has statesd in its annual report: “A 95% SME renewal rate”.

Business electricity contracts are not at all like household contracts which can be switched at any time. Our simple advice to avoid the assumptive renewal trap is to find out when your contract ends, ask exactly what notice you will need to give to reject their renewal terms and make a note in your diary to shop around when the time comes.

Chantrey Vellacott DFK, for example, is a long established provider of accounting, taxation and related advisory services with offices throughout London, the South East and the Midlands. Its roots go back to 1788, making it one of the oldest firms of chartered accountants in the UK. In 2005 the Croydon branch relocated to a Lansdowne Road office tower. As it approached the end of its initial electricity contract at the new premises, office manager - Derek Harris - checked the small print for any renewal clauses and kept an eye out for the supplier’s letter with its proposed new rates for 2008. Sure enough, they were much higher than Chantrey Vellacott DFK was used to paying. In Derek’s words: “Everybody knows that suppliers look at any way of increasing prices but what genuinely surprised us was that the saleswoman wasn’t at all interested in keeping us as a customer on anything less than their pushy terms. They must work on the basis that there are enough people out there who don’t realise they can just as easily switch onto new customer rates with a different supplier. It’s a strange way of doing business but, sadly, that seems to be the way things are going with utility companies.” Derek used the renewal window to shop around and search for brokers who could offer cheaper prices on an impartial basis. Avoiding those who asked a seemingly endless stream of irrelevant questions, he ended up speaking to Make It Cheaper. It suggested a competitive one year contract and handled the transfer itself, with a promise to make sure that Chantrey Vellacott DFK is not rolled-over into unfair rates in future. Make It Cheaper also has a strict data protection policy so won’t be passing Derek’s details on to any third party salespeople.

In a similar example, Tudge Meats is a family-run farm on over 300 acres near Ludlow, Shropshire. It supplies naturally-fed free range chickens, seasonal turkeys and free range rare breed pigs, all of which are reared using traditional farming methods. It sells to caterers, restaurants and at farmers’ markets including: Hereford, Ludlow, Leominster, Malvern and Abergavenny. Guy Tudge first used an independent broker at the start of 2007 when he received a renewal letter from his supplier with notification of a massive price rise which would have meant his annual bill more than doubling to £4,000. Guy suspected the letter was trying to catch him unaware as it unbelievably told him to ‘relax’. He immediately served notice and asked Make It Cheaper to arrange a new contract. A different supplier was found, offering half the price. Guy sent his finest Berkshire sausages to Make It Cheaper’s London HQ to say thank you!

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Jonathan Elliott is Managing Director of Make It Cheaper, the UK’s leading independent price comparison and switching service for business electricity & business utility bills, offering massive cost savings on business electricity prices & business gas prices as well as a range of products including: insurance and telecoms.

Contacts
For interviews, images or comments contact:
Jonathan Elliot
Marketing Manager
Email:
www.makeitcheaper.com
0800 970 0225

Source: http://www.articletrader.com

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If you’ve heard of VoIP, or even Voice over IP, you’ll have some idea that it’s a way of making telephone cheap international calls or even free international calls over the internet. But if you’ve looked into it, you might find it a little confusing. So what exactly do you need to do to implement VoIP either at home or at work?

Most of us are looking for easy ways to cut costs and balance budgets, whether it’s at work or at home. One of the most painless ways to save money is to look at your telephone bills, especially if you call abroad. If you’re looking for cheap international calls, or even free international calls, you may have come across VoIP: new technology that enables you to make cheap phone calls over your existing broadband connection.

If you want to implement VoIP, the main issue to consider is how much flexibility you want. As a rule of thumb, the more flexibility you want, the more you pay.

Not much flexibility: PC-to-PC.
If you want free international calls, and you don’t mind a few limitations, consider a VoIP provider that offers free PC-to-PC international calls. To implement VoIP in this way, you and the person you’re calling must have the following:

• a computer or laptop each;
• a broadband connection each;
• a headset/ microphone/ speaker (these may be integral to your computer) each;
• individual accounts with compatible VoIP providers that allows PC-to-PC calls, such as Skype or MSN.

As well as these set-up limitations, there are also restrictions in the way you use the service:

• you both need to sitting at your computers in order to make or receive a PC-to-PC Voice over IP call; this usually means agreeing a time and date for the call;
• the calls must be PC-to-PC; that is, you can’t just pick up your phone and dial;
• if you use this to make any calls to any other landlines or mobiles, you’ll be charged by the minute;
• you’ll probably find that the sound quality isn’t as good as that of a regular landline or mobile phone.

Lots of flexibility: phone-to-phone.
If you love the sound of VoIP, but aren’t prepared to put up with the restrictions above, it’s worth considering a completely different, much more flexible way of implementing VoIP and making cheap international calls. Using VoIP to make phone-to-phone calls is, basically, just the same as using a normal phone.
First, it’s just you who needs to get set up with the following:
• a computer or laptop;
• a broadband connection;
• a regular handset;
• an account with a VoIP provider that allows this kind of calls;

In terms of how you use this phone-to-phone VoIP service, it’s more or less what you’ve always been used to.
• you can just pick up your normal handset and dial;
• you can dial any number, not just other VoIP phones;
• you get unlimited calls to all landlines and mobiles featured in your particular call plan;
• you don’t need a headset;
• you don’t need to be at your computer;
• your computer doesn’t even need to be switched on;
• the people you’re calling don’t need a computer, broadband or any kind of VoIP account;
• the call quality is so good that they won’t even realise you’re using a broadband phone.

Bespoke flexibility: phone-to-phone and PC to PC
You can, of course, combine these two ways of implementing VoIP and tailor-make a system that’s perfect for you. It depends on your own needs and calling habits.

Say for example that you’ve got a family member you talk to frequently in France, but most of your friends live in the States. In this case, it might make sense for both you and the person in France to take the time and trouble to set up a free PC-to-PC VoIP service, and agree a regular time and day for speaking to each other. Then you could also sign up to one of the phone-to-phone VoIP providers and choose a call plan that offers unlimited anytime calls from the UK to, for example, landlines and mobiles in the States and Canada, for a low, fixed monthly fee.

Once you’ve decided how much flexibility you want, the next step is to go ahead and sign up with an appropriate VoIP provider. However you decide to implement VoIP, you can be sure of one thing - you’ll save money, whichever system you use.

–
Costas Kariolis - Online Marketing Manager of Vonage UK. Vonage are leading low rate VoIP providers for home & small business users. Offering cheap international calls and free international calls to landlines via an internet phone service for a set monthly fee.

For interviews, quotes, images or comments contact:
Costas Kariolis
Online Marketing Manager
E-mail: http://www.articletrader.com

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