Shops

Douglas Adams famously predicted that civilisation would end when every store was a shoe-shop. This happens because competition between shoe manufacturers drives down price, which lowers quality. As shoes last for less time, people need to buy shoes more often, and so more shoe shops are built to fill the demand. This in turn increases competition, which drives down price, which lowers quality, which increases demand, and so on.

This prediction is in fact perfectly correct and is happening right now in England, with minor detail changed: Not shoe shops, but mobile telephone shops.

Every single shopping district I have seen has at least five mobile telephone shops. At a minimum, there will be O2, 3, T-Mobile, Vodaphone and Carphone Warehouse. There is also likely to be a Phones4U and some others I can't think of. You seriously can't throw a stone in a shopping district without smashing the glass at the front of a phone shop.

However, it seems competition has not yet driven price down to the point where they will sell me a phone on reasonable terms. I went into one today. Asked to sign up a phone on an 18 month contract. Explained that I was newly in the country. Now they want me to pay £9 a month for the handset, and £15 a month for the service, all this for 18 months. It sounds to me like a license to print money. Nonetheless, they have to run a credit check first. Why? I asked. Because we're offering you credit, came the reply. I wanted to scream, No you're bloody not, you're asking me to fork over fistfuls of cash, but thought better of it. They ran the credit check and, of course, I have no credit history here. So, what can they do for me? They can sign me up for a contract to pay them £24 a month, all right, so long as I'll put down a deposit... of £300. You read right. Three. Hundred. Pounds.

Where do these people get there license to print money? I want one! Admittedly it's only a deposit, which they will pay back after 12 months, but it's still a serious amount of money (about $700 Aussie, for the... erm, Aussies out there).

Sigh. So I guess I'm stuck with my pay-through-the-nose-as-you-go phone. Ah well.