Giant Advertising Inflatable

Business, Fun Stuff,


So my theory is that you can pretty much buy anything you want on Amazon and as I was searching the other day for a pool inflatable I came across this which really does seem to prove my theory!

If you are looking to buy a giant advertising inflatable then this is surely the place for you. In fact I was passing by a carpet shop the other day and I wouldn’t have noticed it that much except that it had a giant inflatable in front of it advertising a sale they had on. These things really do catch your eye so maybe they are worth the investment. They don’t come cheap – this King Kong giant inflatable has a $2,199 price tag (although prices can change quickly on Amazon but that is the price at going to print). But then if you think about any increase in revenue it might provide then it could well be a good investment. Ok it seems crazy to say that a giant inflatable can be a good investment but I know that I wouldn’t have looked twice at that carpet shop if it hadn’t had the inflatable monster in front of it.

Check out this inflatable on Amazon and you will see they also have a few other designs to offer. This one come with a custom banner so you can either have your own business name on it or maybe you could share it with another business and just have it advertising sale prices or something generic.

After all it may not effectively cost so much if it is a business investment that has some kind of tax write off!

How To Get Free Lives on Candy Crush

Computers & Electronics, Entertainment, Games, Internet, Recreation, Social Networks & Online Communities

Well if you are one of the 20 million people currently playing Candy Crush Saga and you maybe get to a level where you get stuck and keep running out of lives then there is one really simple trick to get you 3 times the amount of lives before you actually run out.

This is maybe something you already know but if not it might just help you get through to the next level. Firstly if you are playing Candy Crush on your phone and you run out of lives then go play on your laptop/PC. You will immediately have a full set of lives regardless of whether you have just run them down on another device. Then, once you have run out of lives there, just go to your iPad and get another set of lives there!

OK that is a quick and free fix. If you want more in depth hints and tips and ways to totally race through the levels of Candy Crush then maybe you will be interested in Candy Crush Online…

Where is the Undelete Function on Sky?

Computers & Electronics, Entertainment, ,

So there were a lot of adverts going around for Sky showing off the new undelete function that they had, whereby if you (or someone else) deleted a program accidentally (which is easily done as I have found to my cost when backing up from something you are watching, hitting delete straight away, and it deleting something completely different because it had just recoded something else while you were watching your program!) you could recover it.

However, what the adverts did not show, was how do you actually undelete something on your Sky box? In theory it is quite simple but in practice it is much easier to find if you know where you are going (much like anything really!). So, to undelete a program, go to your Planner and you will be taken to the All programs section (the place where all your recorded programs are). Without pressing the down arrow to go to the programs, skip left and you will see the Deleted section. From here you can see the programs that you last deleted. Programs will be kept here until you need space for further recordings so if you do have plenty of space on your box it should be no hassle to go back and retrieve a deleted program.

Sky-undelete
This is where you can recover your deleted programs.

How Do I Find Out If a Company Has Gone into Administration?

Business, Finance & Insurance, , ,

So I recently had this problem where a company I was dealing with (and who had taken my money) stopped providing me with the service and seemed to disappear. They were not answering any of their phones and no-one could get hold of them. Chances are that they had gone belly up but how do I find out if they had gone bust?

My first search led me to check the UK Companies House register. They were indeed listed on here as a limited company (you can check here) but they were still registered as an active company. My next search advised me to phone Trading Standards so I googled for a phone number for the local branch of where the company was based. It came up with a general number for Citizens advice but apparently Trading Standards farm out their calls to them. They said that I would have to phone Companies House. So I called them and they said they had not been notified of the company going into administration and that they would only be notified or take action if the company failed to file any returns or else had lodged with the Insolvency service.

So next stop was to phone the Insolvency Service. I asked them again, what would happen if a company has gone bust but hasn’t notified anyone? They didn’t really have an answer. All anyone kept saying was that they would take action once the company notified them. Somehow I don’t think the first thing on the director’s list was to call the Insolvency Service… Anyway, they mentioned the Official Receiver as being the person who would investigate, so I googled them. They are pretty much part of the Insolvency service but what I did find there was a form to report people who are acting incorrectly. This answered my question really about companies who do not notify anyone that they have stopped trading. Other people can report them and hopefully the Official Receiver will investigate. You just need to fill out a form with all the details. You will need to get the Company Registration number from the Companies House website as well as the address, phone etc.

So if you think that a company has gone bust and you can’t find out any information about whether or not they have gone into administration then you can report them yourself. The place to report them is here and you can do it online or by post.

And don’t forget that if you paid by credit card then you may be entitled to get your money back from your credit card provider under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.

Using O2 Abroad

Travel, ,

If you are a UK customer of O2 and you are travelling abroad you may want to take note of what might happen if you do not turn off your voicemail while you are gone.

I speak to you from experience of having incurred quite a few charges for calls that I did not even take (and who did not even leave me voicemails) whilst I was on a recent business trip. I had a local phone so I did not plan on using my O2 phone whilst away. However, each time somebody phoned me and I did not answer I incurred two charges – one of £1.25 listed as my own phone number as the destination and one for £1.50 going to this number: 7802091901.

So, each of these calls that I did not answer cost me £2.75. Ouch.

The thing that comes out of this is that if you go abroad you should turn your voicemail off if you are with O2 (I am not sure what other networks charge). I have been advised that if you do this then you will not incur charges for incoming unanswered calls.

The way to turn off voicemail for O2 is to dial 1760. When you want to turn voicemail back on dial 1750.

Hopefully this will stop other people incurring other unwanted costs on their mobile bill 🙂