Next steps

Two important finanacial steps need to be made in the next few days.

One concerns my PPI claims to Santander and RBS, which have ground to a halt and must now be referred to the Financial Ombudsman. That will take fresh effort to present the claims succinctly but cogently. Actually, I don't mind that effort. I launched these claims back in January with Resolver, but quickly decided that was a mistake. I've parted from them now. I'll take this forward personally.

One reason for doing so is that the premiums I paid seem to have been on insurance policies that would cover the mortgage debt if I died - not the same thing as PPI - and a recast claim would have to make this clear. I would still say that there had been mis-selling. I never asked for (nor wanted) these policies; they were compulsory, and imposed by the mortgage lenders; no enquiries into my health or personal circumstances were made; nor whether I already had suitable provision arranged by myself; nor whether I was entitled to a lump sum on my death from my government department employer (which I was). Willy-nilly, the lenders' compulsory policies had to be accepted - or no loans. I took the package, needing in each case to arrange a mortgage without delay, so that the fragile buying and selling chains wouldn't collapse. Now I want redress for having to pay an unnecessary extra expense.

There will therefore have to be more hours spent on this rather arid and soulless pursuit of refunds. This time I will be carefully inserting information into the Ombudsman's online form. At least this won't be confrontational. There's nothing left to say to Santander or RBS, and they have nothing left to say either. So no more argee-bargee with them. I can leave it in the Ombudsman's hands.

I don't mind how it turns out. If the Ombudsman upholds my claims, I get the premiums back with some interest. And that will help to fill the hole made in my savings from repairing the caravan earlier this year. If my claims are not upheld, then I'm no worse off.

The other 'important financial step' is switching my broadband from BT (now very expensive) to someone else, probably Vodafone (who already provide my mobile phone service). In a nutshell, Vodafone can give me the same type of broadband for half the cost. Vodafone know I am interested in making a switch - I made sure of that a month back. They also know that my mobile phone contract with them expires in early August. So Vodafone have every reason to be very nice to me just now. I shall aim, when moving to SIM-only from August, to extract from them either a lower price or extra data gigabytes, something that I can make inter-dependent on placing my broadband contract with them.

Meanwhile, with this in the background, I can make a call to BT and ask them whether they can price-match Vodafone in order to keep me as a customer. That'll be an interesting conversation, because I'm perfectly ready to switch - I simply have the press the button so to speak - and BT will realise that if they can't price-match then I will happily walk away from them. And I want money off the basic broadband charge - not freebies, vouchers or extra online facilities. I don't think that BT will budge much, but it'll be fun asking them to.

A deeper question I asked myself was: do I need home broadband at all? When 5G comes to the village, the answer will be no. But that may be years off. Meanwhile I use home broadband for:

# Uploading photos to Flickr.
# The Electricity and Gas smartmeters.
# Watching catch-up TV on my laptop (but only now and then).

Everything else can be done using Mobile Internet on my 4G phone - and this is what I do for one-quarter of the year, when I'm away caravanning.

The three home broadband uses listed above hardly justify paying even Vodafone's tariff for broadband, let alone BT's swingeing charges. It's tempting to jack it in entirely, and save the money instead, but that might be a step too far. Nowadays, all new electronic gadgets need an online connection at home in order to set them up.

And yet, wouldn't it be liberating, to be internet-free at home? And to have your phone as the only communication gadget?