Tony1

I think that sounds a sensible approach, but its hard to imagine most/all of the thousands of Smarty customers surveyed would never need to use customer service (and thus respond with NA). So you would think there would be enough respondents to post a score with some degree of validity. But who knows, that's just guesswork on my part. I guess my thinking is that if all other aspects are equal (ish), then you might as well choose the option with a known (and good) score, rather than one which is probably good, but you cant be certain.

Thanks for that info, that does somewhat change my views about Sky. Re the customer satisfaction thing, I take your point that the bar is perhaps lower for some of the customers who use the cheaper providers, and that some of them might be more generous in their ratings. But the cheaper providers do also have plenty of well informed customers who can spot a good deal (e.g. Ian's partner, and Loddon of this parish)- so there is that. Whatever the breakdown and the 'savviness' of their customer base, it is still worth noting that Tesco mobile have higher ratings than most others. My new conclusion is that even if the satisfaction scores for cheap providers are falsely elevated, it may be that since Tesco stands above the others in that segment, Tesco might perhaps be in the same ballpark as EE and the other major providers. In other words, maybe a score of 4 for a cheap provider like Tesco is roughly equivalent to a score of 3 from a major provider like EE?

That plusnet approach can't be common to all the piggybackers, surely? I cant imagine tesco mobile trying that with customers, and still getting such high customer service scores? But either way, without a visible score for smarty, I won't be using them. Tesco do look very impressive.

Just to offer a contrasting experience (although admittedly only one person) the guy from whom I bought my Liverpool boat actually went back to them. After my purchase, he was on his way to collect a brand new widebeam from them. But I am absolutely not trying to denigrate the many (alleged) reports of quality issues. There is no getting around those. That said, with a snagging list you can at least get the faults fixed for free (usually), so there is a decent chance you'll still end up with a half decent boat after the hassle of the first few months doing fixes. There was a period when I was considering a different type of mobile lifestyle- a motorhome. I recall many people voicing the opinion that the build quality of UK motorhome manufacturers was so poor that it was preferable to buy one that was a year or two old, so that the previous owner would have dealt with the stress and inconvenience of fixing the quality 'snags'

I take your point about 57ft narrowboats being more spacious and more luxurious than 32ft GRPs (and I do use the word luxurious in a very limited sense there)- but I have to say that if my budget ever got cut back such that I was struggling to pay for blacking every 2 years, plus the increased license fees that are surely coming our way, then I might consider a viking 32cc or similar. I certainly dont have any objections to GRPs that are based on aesthetic grounds. At the end of the day, there are some people who like living afloat but would struggle to pay the running costs of a 57ft narrowboat. As an example, if you use a 15hp or 20hp outboard, you do not have to pay the £200 plus per year for RCR membership- and that saving will really add up over the years, in addition to blacking costs, anodes, etc.

In fairness I did say 'something like this', rather than 'this'. I don't have any links, but I bet a very compact SF stove would be available from a UK supplier. Maybe its because you can buy diesel from marinas at the side of the cut (or even fuel boats)? Whereas to get petrol you have to go a bit further afield. So from a convenience viewpoint the diesel looks attractive. But they cost way more than petrol models, which is a somewhat less attractive feature. But there are enough petrol gennies around for me to feel reasonably confident that its not a significant hardship for a boater to fetch petrol.

There are some valid points there David, but it is worth mentioning that the viking 32cc does have a rear cabin that could house a permanently made up bed. On the down side, the stove would be in the main living cabin, so in winter that rear cabin might be best used as a storage area.

Again, apologies for banging the GRP drum, but I do think if you are ok living on a smaller boat, the 32ft viking and similar craft should stay on your radar as an option. You could buy a very nice viking 32 for 30k, and you then have 20k to sort out the liveaboard stuff, e.g. 1. A small coal stove - something like this would be enough for the cabin of a 32cc: https://cubicminiwoodstoves.com/collections/cub-cb-108/products/cb-1008-br-cubic-mini-wood-stove You can also fit that yourself, so no labour costs. 2. Some insulation, which would be labour intensive, but its not specialist work and you could do a lot of it yourself 3. Maybe an inboard diesel engine if you want that, but lots of GRP owners seem to live happily with an outboard. Some of those viking 32cc's will come with inboard diesels anyway. 4. Solar - cover every inch of the roof surface with semi-flexible solar panels 5. Get a decent Honda genny because those outboards dont usually recharge batteries very well I reckon you could end up with a really warm and comfy 32ft GRP for your £50K, and you wouldn't have blacking costs every 2 years, plus your license would be lower its a shorter length boat. Apparently they bob around something rotten, but maybe that would make it all feel a bit more nautical! 😁

Apologies if this is repeating stuff you already know, but maybe worth a mention- there are actually some positive aspects to using a petrol powered outboard compared to an inboard diesel. For one thing, if it fails you buy another one for maybe £3k or £4k (used for much less), and you hang it on the stern. So you're not paying £9,000 for a new engine and/or gearbox installation. The other thing is that there are hundreds of petrol stations to be found within a few hundred yards of the cut, so you are never going to be stranded - there's never any real problem getting hold of petrol if you can cycle a mile or two (although apparently you are limited to 10 litres at a time if using a jerrycan). The viking 23cc is a narrow beam and goes anywhere a narrowboat will go, so no issue there. There are some downsides I dont like about GRPs, and one of the most worrying is the issue of being hit by narrowboats in very popular places like the Llangollen canal (I was hit twice in the summer of 2021). But its an interesting option, and one which I would personally consider in future years, as I get less fit and strong. I suspect I'd find it a lot easier to haul a GRP boat to a stop than I would a 57ft steel narrowboat, as an example.

Thanks Ian, thats really interesting info. My own takeaway from those figures is that although the likes of O2 and vodafone get worse scores for value, the customer service ratings are not too dissimilar. So if I can tolerate O2 and EE customer service, maybe I can also tolerate 3, which has the same three star rating for that aspect, Since smarty doesnt have a customer service score, I cant know what to think about it, but both Tesco mobile and Sky have a four star rating. I will not use any Sky product or service because the owner is (in my view) a massively destructive fascist monster, so I'm left with Tesco mobile as the most appealing option. Since they all seem to provide acceptable/functional call services, customer service seems to be main way to differentiate them.

I can understand your concerns about buying older boats- possible engine issues, overplating, etc, and potentially many hours of repairs and associated bills. I'm not mechanically competent, so my approach was to prioritise getting the newest boat possible within my budget, in the hope of avoiding problems for as long as possible. That was back in 2020 and I think prices were lower, but I paid a bit over 50k for a 6 year old boat, 50ft long and with low engine hours. Nothing fancy- just a bog standard Liverpool boat, but it floats and it drives, and its reasonably comfortable. I thought about the Beetle range, but I wanted the 40ft model, and it was a bit above my budget- plus I really didnt like the layout, and they weren't able to alter it, even when I offered more money to do that. If you are ok with living on a smaller boat, and you want to avoid potential issues, I'm wondering if it might be worth considering a 32ft GRP cruiser? This example is from 1990 but with GRP the hull can last longer before giving you problems, and its only 20k, so the budget would allow for a lot of internal updating and maybe even a new engine. I reckon a viking 32cc has as much interior space as some 45ft narrowboats, and there are often better examples than that one to be found. https://www.boatsandoutboards.co.uk/boat/1990-viking-32-8599741/ or maybe: https://www.rightboat.com/boats-for-sale/viking/32ft-centre-cockpit-called-whomping-willow/rb451628

To be fair, I think my negative attitude toward the piggyback providers is probably out of date. I used the original 3 when they first set up about 20 years ago (I think they piggybacked on the O2 network in those early days). The service was very patchy indeed, and about 30% of calls attempted just dropped before making a connection, because the O2 customers obviously took priority over the 3 customers. I've avoided those providers ever since (and 3 in particular), but clearly they do provide acceptable service, or they wouldn't be so popular. Being cheap is only useful if things actually work, and in my early experiences it didn't work at all well. I like the sound of giffgaff if its a good bit cheaper than O2, and I believe Ian's missus would definitely not use a poor quality provider. But if its a similar price then my thinking is that you might as well just use O2 rather than the piggyback provider.

Yes, it did occur to me that an EE SIM with the help of a 6ft mast might give almost 100% coverage, but I suspect a different provider's SIM might still be worth having as a backup option (albeit an option you'll very seldom need). I think when my contracts are up I'll get a data-only EE SIM for the router, and an O2 SIM for my phone. The number of times I'll have to put the O2 phone SIM into the router will hopefully be so few that I wont mind the faffing around. I'm wondering what provider to use for my next mobile phone SIM (and this SIM will also act as a backup to put into the router in places where the EE SIM isnt usable). Based on your comment above about customer services I think I'm going to rule out 3, and I dont want to use one of the cheaper providers who just piggyback on other networks, so I think my options are O2 and vodafone. So far I've been thinking O2 because its sort of OK in most places I've been. And Ian's research indicates that O2 have slightly wider coverage than Vodafone. But that was with the help of an aerial, and there are clearly some areas like your where O2 is very poor, so its not a straightforward decision.

I find that in places where my O2 SIM (held in the router) doesnt work, the EE SIM in my phone almost always does give some signal. It can get patchy in some locations, but I've never yet had to put the EE phone SIM into the router so that it can use the aerial. So far its been usable almost everywhere just sat within the phone, although it has been hung up in a window a few times. In fact, sometimes the EE SIM gives better speed when sat inside my phone on a worktop, than the O2 SIM gives with a 6ft mast and aerial. But none of them cover everywhere, so I would agree with your approach of having a cheap backup from a different provider. In that respect, O2 and EE seem to compliment each other well, as a 'team' of SIMs.

Thanks for this, its useful info, and is borne out by my own experiences cruising around the Northwest and Wales. And I wasn't aware that Vodafone had one of the poorer coverages. Other regions may of course vary, but in general I find that EE has a usable signal in significantly more locations than O2. And when they both work, EE usually has a faster speed. So if I had to choose one provider it would be EE. But as with all of them, there are a few locations where O2 has worked and EE did not, so I will be carrying on with the dual approach. It works better for me anyway because I can keep the O2 SIM inside the wifi router 24/7, and keep the EE SIM in my phone. So no messing about swapping SIMs around. For people thinking of using a mobile EE SIM to get internet access, I would recommend checking how much of the data allowance you are allowed to use for tethering. I was told I could only use 100Gb of my data for tethering. I looked into that some more on their user forums, and I still never got an answer that I was happy with- so it is a nagging doubt in terms of using only EE. A few users were saying there is no problem and you can use the data gifting feature to increase the amount of data used for tethering, but then a couple of users said they were told repeatedly by EE customer services that they could only use 100Gb of their data for tethering- so I dont feel I have an answer I can 100% rely on, and it is something that would stop me using a mobile phone EE SIM in my wifi router. O2 dont have such good coverage, but they do allow all 250Gb of my data allowance to be used for tethering without using workarounds, so I find it simpler to carry on with them as the main wifi source for the boat, and I tend to save the EE data allowance for the places where O2 doesnt work.

I would give some thought to your cruising pattern before making a final decision. I found when I was in a marina in 2021 their wifi was shockingly bad, and I had to rely on hot-spotting with my phone. EE did not work at all at that marina, but I could get just enough signal from O2. So if you're going to spend lots of time in one location, try to find out if your favoured supplier has decent coverage in that spot. If you're CCing its less of an issue. I find that having two options is great if internet is really important to you. O2 has good coverage in most places, especially using a mast on the roof linked to a wifi router indoors. But there have been one or two spots where O2 had nothing, and my fallback was to use my EE phone as a hot spot. I dont think I've found anywhere in the last 18 months where neither of them worked at all. It also changes from year to year. In summer 2021 I couldn't get anything from either O2 or EE when I moored near Platt Lane bridge on the Llangollen, but when I checked as I passed the spot a few weeks ago, you can now get a half-decent signal on both EE and O2. PS- I was never able to get to the bottom of this, but worth a mention. I was told that EE mobile phone SIMs (which I use for internet) only allow a maximum of 100Gb of hot spotting per month (regardless of your monthly data allowance). I have heard you can use gifting as get around this, but the person who had the problem called theier customer services and could not resolve the problem. So check if you are allowed to hot spot for all of your data allowance. Some have fair usage policies that might limit you if you are a very high-data internet user.

I'm hoping they will offer a discount if I inform on other members who say things that are disloyal to the Party CRT. I'll shop the traitorous scum tomorrow, for a 20% discount.

Yes- technically I am indeed an ar*ehole. But with the continual cross-fertilisation and osmosis of language that is happening between the UK and the US, I am absolutely confident that in 10 years I will officially be a asshole.

Oy, I own a boat. Are you calling me an entitled butthole? I'm not saying you're wrong, but honour must be served. I shall meet you at dawn with my finest handbag.

Merci buckets young man- my foolish and fictional friend will get on it.

I'm guessing really, but it's possible that some of the negativity towards the OP was due to a feeling that claiming a refund for a service you had used for 2 years could be viewed by some people as being slightly avaricious or grasping behaviour? Maybe people are reacting to her based on their view of the ethics of the thing? Claiming a refund in that scenario would feel unfair to me personally, and its not something I personally would ever contemplate, but we all have our human failings I guess, and so I wouldn't want to name-call as such.

Oscar Wilde almost certainly once said that a gentleman who wore his cap backwards should either be 14 years old, or imprisoned for life on grounds of appalling taste. And such a specimen should never be put in charge of a narrowboat.

My dear MTB, I will confess I was not referring to your very handsome self. But if the handsome cap fits, I can only suggest that it be worn proudly.

I could never befriend a man who was foolish enough to allow his lithiums to sleep indoors. Its like letting dogs sleep on your bed. You let them climb up on that bed even once, and you are doomed to endless nights of ruined sleep, and jack russells scratching at your back at 4am because they aren't quite as warm and comfortable as they would like to be, and would you mind moving over a bit. Good job I'd never consider doing that either.

Alas, I pity the madman who would do such a thing. But (just for arguments sake, obviously) let's imagine that I knew just such a madman, who was keeping his precious lithiums indoors on the end of a pair of 2 metre cables (of 35mm square)- and with no fuses on said cables. Let's imagine that this rash- and yet somehow dashingly handsome- chap had two of these long thick cables leading into a cupboard (one from each lead acid battery), and that each cable was connected to.... oooh, I don't know- maybe a B2B charger. Yes- let's imagine the impetuous chisel-jawed specimen has used two B2B chargers. Whether or not our handsome protagonist has formed a personal relationship with his lithium batteries is entirely unrelated to the main question at hand, which is this- is it possible that an unscrupulous BSS inspector could find fault with this sort of setup, and could request that fuses be fitted at both ends of these cables? Perhaps our entirely fictional character ought to fit such fuses as a pre-emptive measure? Luckily I would never contemplate this sort of deadly dangerous arrangement. But if I knew someone who had done that, they might be very interested in your opinion on this issue. I don't, obviously. But if I did.