[Rules p.1] Things that annoy you guys. 100 percent. Not gonna lie

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Jenuall
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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Jenuall » Fri Feb 22, 2019 7:08 am

Green Gecko wrote:You've kind of already defeated the point of a value assessment by buying the latest most powerful handset possible and discounting other options, it is a waste of argument. In most cases it is considerably cheaper to buy a phone and a 30 day SIM for average usage and normal features.

It'll cost marginally less or the same to get the latest phone on a contract, the point is nobody actually needs that.

I pay £5 per month and use a handset from 2008, my tablet or laptop does everything else. I take pictures with a real camera and if I need maps I put my SIM card in my old smartphone that isn't constantly buggering it's battery by being on constantly for 3 years eventually rendering it useless by simply functioning at all.

Mobile phone obselecence is also terrible for the environment and some of the people making and mining for them. The environmental and human impact of manufacturing just one phone is crazy nevermind hundreds of millions of the same strawberry floating thing every 12 months.


Except I haven't defeated the argument, you've changed the argument. I've demonstrated that if your objective is to have a new handset with a generous data/calls/text allowance it is fundamentally cheaper to do that on a contract. I've also shown that even compromising on the handset and buying a significantly cheaper model still costs approximately the same.

Yes you can pay less, if you get "less". The argument that was put forward is that it is cheaper to buy a comparable handset and SIM separately, it demonstrably isn't - unless you compare apples and oranges and the "separately" option is a cheaper phone on a worse contract.

I accept that if you are happy with an old phone and a cheap contract then obviously that is cheaper, but that is a different argument entirely.

And yes I agree that technology waste is a massive problem and the disposable culture we have over these items needs to change. I sell on all of my old technology where possible, or donate them to others.

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Victor Mildew » Fri Feb 22, 2019 7:25 am

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Green Gecko » Fri Feb 22, 2019 4:53 pm

I respect that, however your usage needs a really really high and you want the latest and greatest phone - all I'm saying is it's simply not a typical case scenario. So you are arguing to one extreme, in which case yes you may be correct. However, I am saying generally from the point of view of value one is not getting that unless your needs are at the top-end - which for most people, they are not needs in my opinion. I can say that dude. I don't think anyone could argue the most expensive handsets and contracts represent good value for the average user; the point of these contracts and extremely expensive handsets is to extract as much money as possible from a value judgement that is inherently off-kilter in order to acquire the highest luxury at the lowest upfront cost i.e. dangling the proverbial carrot.
How many people actually exhaust their allowances? When for example I look at my real usage in the past it is always drastically lower than what you are sold on, and providers know this - this is also an example of FOMO economics; "I need this high/unlimited allowance because I might need it, every single day". This is part of what Ad was complaining about; the race upwards in terms of cost/luxury for the same functional device. The credit extended to the customer is comparable to another form of credit such as a credit card (but with a higher % interest) in exchange for a level of service that costs almost nothing to operate.
Of course I'm not going to be sympathetic to looking at only the best handsets if I consider the high end of that market, and what I consider most usage to be extreme, beyond most reasonable humanitarian needs. If people want the best for the least that is understandable from one perspective of luxury only but imo it is not good value to go down this route, that is understanding my means are very low so of course I will hold a different perspective. This is the general customer journey upwards from weening onto mobile phones by the selling of cheap handsets with PAYG SIMs. Why do people really "upgrade" in the first place, is it based on need or desire? For upper end offerings to offer bad value is a fundamental reason for their existence which is vast profit, and there are few greater examples of planned obsolescence built on top of that to make the profits even more insane.

It isn't atypical to look at those low-end handsets and lower service offerings and basically disregard them because they are poorer.. that's a bit crass honestly, as that's what the market wants you to think. For most intents and purposes those offerings are perfectly fine which is where the monthly SIM / phone purchasing strategy comes from when detached from the want of the best for some reason one can personally justify.

I also think smartphone usage and fashion driven gadget acquisition is a cause for low quality of life so I also factor that into what people are getting for their money; essentially an endless dependence on credit in order to have the most luxurious electrical device in the world and constant access to stream of largely pointless information (data addiction) geared around selling them more things they most probably don't need. See app store and free to play expenditure, and the size of mobile advertising market and vast, utterly vast data collection on all of that. All of this to me makes a top end phone a poor value proposition and so looking at those top end phones/contracts a moot option.

I also find the fetishism around getting the most expensive phone and the biggest numbers on x contract a bit well, boring. There is of course the option of simply spending and using this thing less, but that would be heresy.

I realise this post sounds a lot like "Damn you for liking this thing!!" but I don't mean it that way, just offering an alternative perspective on why the best phone (or other) for the best price isn't always, well, what it sounds like when put that simply. My perspective is more the best value possible to each individual's need, and my criticism comes from the need part looping back into the value assessment.

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by OrangeRKN » Fri Feb 22, 2019 5:09 pm

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose
Green Gecko wrote:an endless dependence on credit in order to have the most luxurious electrical device in the world and constant access to stream of largely pointless information (data addiction) geared around selling them more things they most probably don't need.


Choose life.

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Lagamorph » Fri Feb 22, 2019 5:54 pm

So I shouldn't have pre-ordered a Galaxy S10+ this morning then?

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Green Gecko » Fri Feb 22, 2019 5:59 pm

No you are a terrible person and you do bad things :capnscotty:

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Moggy » Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:05 pm

Lagamorph wrote:So I shouldn't have pre-ordered a Galaxy S10+ this morning then?


I think what GG is saying is that you should buy at least two of them.

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by KK » Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:12 pm

While it can be rather slow to add it on (as I found out the other day!) I favour Pay As You Go and buying the phone outright. I use a lot of WiFi hotspots, and I’m not one for watching TV on the move.

I tend to swap between Classic and Bundle options depending on what I know or think I’ll be doing. Texts outside of iMessage are 2p, 4G Data 1p a MB. Alternatively I can top up, say, £30 and I’ll get 20GB of data and 5000 texts. There are probably better deals than that around too (I’m with O2). Three tend to be more data focused.

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Vermilion » Fri Feb 22, 2019 6:55 pm

Green Gecko wrote:an endless dependence on credit in order to have the most luxurious electrical device in the world and constant access to stream of largely pointless information (data addiction) geared around selling them more things they most probably don't need.


Parklife.

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Jenuall » Fri Feb 22, 2019 7:35 pm

Green Gecko wrote:I respect that, however your usage needs a really really high and you want the latest and greatest phone - all I'm saying is it's simply not a typical case scenario. So you are arguing to one extreme, in which case yes you may be correct. However, I am saying generally from the point of view of value one is not getting that unless your needs are at the top-end - which for most people, they are not needs in my opinion. I can say that dude. I don't think anyone could argue the most expensive handsets and contracts represent good value for the average user; the point of these contracts and extremely expensive handsets is to extract as much money as possible from a value judgement that is inherently off-kilter in order to acquire the highest luxury at the lowest upfront cost i.e. dangling the proverbial carrot.
How many people actually exhaust their allowances? When for example I look at my real usage in the past it is always drastically lower than what you are sold on, and providers know this - this is also an example of FOMO economics; "I need this high/unlimited allowance because I might need it, every single day". This is part of what Ad was complaining about; the race upwards in terms of cost/luxury for the same functional device. The credit extended to the customer is comparable to another form of credit such as a credit card (but with a higher % interest) in exchange for a level of service that costs almost nothing to operate.
Of course I'm not going to be sympathetic to looking at only the best handsets if I consider the high end of that market, and what I consider most usage to be extreme, beyond most reasonable humanitarian needs. If people want the best for the least that is understandable from one perspective of luxury only but imo it is not good value to go down this route, that is understanding my means are very low so of course I will hold a different perspective. This is the general customer journey upwards from weening onto mobile phones by the selling of cheap handsets with PAYG SIMs. Why do people really "upgrade" in the first place, is it based on need or desire? For upper end offerings to offer bad value is a fundamental reason for their existence which is vast profit, and there are few greater examples of planned obsolescence built on top of that to make the profits even more insane.

It isn't atypical to look at those low-end handsets and lower service offerings and basically disregard them because they are poorer.. that's a bit crass honestly, as that's what the market wants you to think. For most intents and purposes those offerings are perfectly fine which is where the monthly SIM / phone purchasing strategy comes from when detached from the want of the best for some reason one can personally justify.

I also think smartphone usage and fashion driven gadget acquisition is a cause for low quality of life so I also factor that into what people are getting for their money; essentially an endless dependence on credit in order to have the most luxurious electrical device in the world and constant access to stream of largely pointless information (data addiction) geared around selling them more things they most probably don't need. See app store and free to play expenditure, and the size of mobile advertising market and vast, utterly vast data collection on all of that. All of this to me makes a top end phone a poor value proposition and so looking at those top end phones/contracts a moot option.

I also find the fetishism around getting the most expensive phone and the biggest numbers on x contract a bit well, boring. There is of course the option of simply spending and using this thing less, but that would be heresy.

I realise this post sounds a lot like "Damn you for liking this thing!!" but I don't mean it that way, just offering an alternative perspective on why the best phone (or other) for the best price isn't always, well, what it sounds like when put that simply. My perspective is more the best value possible to each individual's need, and my criticism comes from the need part looping back into the value assessment.


I appreciate what you are saying, value ultimately is a concept that is hard to pin down - what constitutes good value will vary greatly depending on subject, context, and what aspects you are trying to optimise on. I'm not in any way advocating spending more than necessary just because, ask anyone who knows me and they will say that I'm as tight-fisted as they come and my wallet is home to many a moth. I drive a 20 year old VW Polo because I see absolutely no reason to spend more money than necessary - it has 5 doors, 4 wheels, has a radio and gets me from A to B as well as something that costs 100 times more, why spend more than I have to!

Do most people need the latest handset? Depends on what their use cases are but for the most part almost certainly not. They need a handset that is good enough, and what satisfies that will vary on a per user basis - a more value handset will probably do for the majority.

But there are plenty of considerations - cheaper handsets effectively limits you to Android, I'm an Android user myself and think it is great, but for a former Apple user there is a large cost associated with switching from one ecosystem to another. This cost will come in many forms including in terms of education, learning how to use Android, but also financial - they may have a large library of apps they have invested in that they would need to replace after moving across, then there are accessories to consider as well - another cost that must be taken into account. Lower end handsets are also less likely to have a long life in terms of their upgrade path on Android, an annoyance if you wanted the newer features or if apps stop supporting your device, but a much bigger problem if being left behind opens you up to security risks. Getting a cheaper handset and holding onto it for longer will absolutely save you money, but if it comes at the cost of an increased security risk then I would argue that that is a poor value offering when looked at holistically.

Do most people need a large data allowance? Again, needs will vary but general smartphone usage is eating more data than it used to so where the average user would get by with <1GB I would wager that most people do need a reasonable amount of data in this day and age.

Continuing with the more holistic analysis of the situation there is also the factor of the users general happiness. Having a cheap phone that gives you a poor experience is going to make some people frustrated and generally less happy, yes there's an argument that they should just get over it and some people will have the opposite response - saving money will make them feel more happy, but these more human factors shouldn't just be dismissed and do make up a part of the value proposition.

As I say ultimately it will depend on an individuals needs, genuine needs, believe it or not there are people out there who do need a reasonably high end phone and a lot of data, these folks do exist! Telling someone with those needs that they could save loads of money with a burner phone and a cheap SIM is like walking in to Eddie Stobart's HQ and telling him that he'd be much better off just buying a fleet of Smart cars to run his haulage business! :lol:

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Preezy » Mon Feb 25, 2019 9:55 am

When tedious conversations about phone contracts clog up an otherwise good thread to moan about stuff in :/

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by OrangeRKN » Mon Feb 25, 2019 10:23 am

Preezy wrote:When tedious conversations about phone contracts clog up an otherwise good thread to moan about stuff in :/


That's Amore?

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Preezy » Mon Feb 25, 2019 10:36 am

Yes :lol:

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Victor Mildew » Mon Feb 25, 2019 2:31 pm

I've just found out who the phantom elephant gun shitter upstairs is :dread: :dread: :dread:

Hexx wrote:Ad7 is older and balder than I thought.
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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Jenuall » Mon Feb 25, 2019 2:32 pm

Ad7 wrote:I've just found out who the phantom elephant gun shitter upstairs is :dread: :dread: :dread:

That's all well and good but what has it got to do with mobile phone contracts and the ethics of our modern disposable technology culture? :capnscotty:

EDIT: also "phantom elephant gun shitter" sounds like an early draft title for the first Star Wars prequel. Would have been a better movie to be fair.

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Victor Mildew » Tue Feb 26, 2019 8:27 am

When people feel the need to try and sound intellectual by regurgitating some fact they've heard about the current topic of conversation. We're talking about a subject I know a lot about, and I used a simplified term to make it easy for the other people taking about it to understand.

WRONG YOU SET OFF MY TRAP CARD TRIVIA SPOUT MODE ACTIVATED

I then have 2 people basically scoffing at me for saying one thing when I know damn well what it really is. It's my strawberry floating side hobby, you don't need to teach me to suck eggs on it. Oh but yes I will listen to you spout your trivia on it as if you came up with it yourself.

strawberry float sake

Hexx wrote:Ad7 is older and balder than I thought.
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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Rex Kramer » Tue Feb 26, 2019 8:44 am

The number of strawberry floating idiots they had on radio/TV interviews yesterday who said 'If this is global warming then bring it on' when discussing the current weather in the UK. :fp:

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Victor Mildew » Tue Feb 26, 2019 10:39 am

People who breathe in hot drinks instead of just drinking them. Long intake of breath mixed with slurping, strawberry float off :dread:

Hexx wrote:Ad7 is older and balder than I thought.
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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Vermilion » Tue Feb 26, 2019 2:57 pm

Ad7 wrote:People who breathe in hot drinks instead of just drinking them. Long intake of breath mixed with slurping, strawberry float off :dread:


But sometimes the drink is piping hot, and taking a big gulp straight away without testing it first could lead to boiled insides. :dread:

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PostRe: Things that annoy yo 5.0 - annoy harder
by Jenuall » Tue Feb 26, 2019 3:02 pm

Vermilion wrote:
Ad7 wrote:People who breathe in hot drinks instead of just drinking them. Long intake of breath mixed with slurping, strawberry float off :dread:


But sometimes the drink is piping hot, and taking a big gulp straight away without testing it first could lead to boiled insides. :dread:


But why do you need to inhale the liquid to test that? Just gently take a normal sip. If it's fine then gulp all day, if it's too hot then tilt it away!


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