Mobile borrowing

Finnish firm Ferratum Group has set up its mobile microloan service in New Zealand offering cash to borrowers at high interest rates. Already there's been a fair amount of concern as to what will happen to people who use this service in a casual way, and how much debt they'll accumulate within a short time.

If you pay the loan back quickly, this system will probably work in your favour, but if you let it ride, the amount you owe is going to increase exponentially. There is a schedule, but it's not something you can read through quickly on your cellphone - especially when you're wanting the money quickly. According to Philip Macalister, in the schedule (see here) interest rates range from 91% for $100 borrowed for seven days through to rates of more than 500%.

Ouch. Off the top of my head I can't work out what that will add to your loan, but I don't have any doubt that it's a substantial amount.

There are all sorts of loans available out in the big wide world - do we educate our kids as to how dangerous some of these can be? I just came across a common loan system (see title loans Raleigh NC for an example) that will lend money against your car, if you're over 18 and the car has a value of US$2500. A car isn't quite the best asset to be borrowing against, but I suppose it's a step up the lending ladder compared to borrowing via your mobile.

Keeping in touch

As we prepare to go the UK for six months, we’ve been looking at all sorts of options for dealing with calling home and using email. There are plenty of options, but a lot of them are expensive, with a capital E. We’re probably going to use Skype in part, though so far it’s debateable how well it’ll work for us. But we’ve done some testing here at home and things are starting to come together.
Skype, of course, is only of use if you’re close to the laptop. Another option I wouldn’t have normally considered is a calling card, but Pingo’s cards seem to be very economic to use - and they allegedly don’t have any of those awful charges that eat up the money on the card before you’ve even started talking. I’ve just had a look at the FAQ, and it seems it’s only when you call from public phones that you have additional charges. Well, that’s normal, I guess.
Usually when I come across these sorts of cards on the Net, they’re limited to one country, but Pingo actually lists NEW ZEALAND. I had to use capitals to show that for once the great US of A has acknowledged that there’s a little country down the bottom of the world. We’re not the only country they acknowledge and act as a prepaid calling card provider for. In fact, the list goes on and on, and their site quotes all sorts of rates for calling from hither and yon and back again. Yes, even for NZ. Ain’t that amazing?
Their rates are very good too, though there seemed to be a bit of a discrepancy between their quote in English pounds compared to the same quote in New Zealand dollars. One is 2.7P per minute, and the other is a phenomenal .072 per minute. I don’t think those two quite equate. Nevertheless, that’s a pretty good rate. But what I did like the idea of is having a pin connected to the card. Gone are those awful days when you had to press umpteen buttons to get to the person you wanted to call. And if you made a mistake - you started all over again!
Pingo calling cards are available in NZ, but I can’t find a direct link. So I’m going to give you one for the International prepaid filipino calling cards, since I can find that link much more easily!

Voicemail to Text

While reading the Vonage VoIP forum , I came across the following piece of news. Just when you thought you had everything on your mobile, along comes Vonage with their new voicemail transcription service, Vonage Text.

Vonage Text automatically transcribes voicemails to text and allows the mobile owner to read their voicemails anytime and anywhere. Subscribers can read, store, search, and respond to their voicemail messages not just on their mobiles, but on their laptops as well: anywhere, anytime and in any form. (I’m not quite sure what ‘in any form’ means in this instance, but that’s what they say on the forum.) They can check out new messages to sift through and find the urgent ones. No longer will someone have to strain to hear a voice message in a crowded place; it will be readable, just as texts are.

I guess this is the sort of thing businessmen and women on the move will appreciate. For me, at this point, it would avoid the sluggish process I have to go through on my mobile to get at a voice message, but it isn’t of great benefit to someone like me who’s really only a moderate mobile user.
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