I've found a new and productive way to exercise my necessary periods of procrastination and I thought I'd share it with everyone. Now I'm not Martin Lewis or anything, but I have found my voice as a self-righteous consumer and, in the process, reduced my cost of living quite significantly. So far, over the past week, I have reduced the cost of my internet broadband by 20 %, have got a months free internet access and free month's worth of calls for my mobile and a £3 gift voucher from Asda to buy a new meat feast pizza. It's so easy as well. All you need to do is when you're feeling bored and frustrated with your work, just ring up one of your service providers and randomly complain about something.

So, to get the free meat feast pizza, I was angry about having to transcribe, so I rang up my local Asda and said there was only 3 pieces of ham on my pizza - hardly a meat feast! So they apologised and sent me out a voucher.

To get a month's worth of free calls and internet access on my mobile, I was angry about having to redraft my questionnaire, so I rang up my service provider and said my mobile signal had been poor all week.

To get a 20% reduction in my cost my broadband, I was angry about having to rewrite my verbal probes, so I took it out on Virgin Media. I rang them up, said that I thought their service was slow and I was thinking of leaving them. So they offered me a 20% reduction in my monthly payments with no contract renewal. That cheered me up.

Anyway, I'll bet no-one can beat me on productive methods of procrastination! The moral of my off topics thread is, if you're going to procrastinate, save money doing it. :-)

congrats Wal - although you seem to be on a constant war with the amount of pizza topping provided.

I have saved no money this week -although it is the first week where i actually cooked everything I bought at the beginning of the week, rather than not wanting it and then throwing it out when the use by date had passed - so that has saved me money.

I have also saved money by pretending that I'm at other meetings next week, so won't be able to go to one that someone tried to make me go to and therefore saves £ in travel.

I like your style. I must admit I have done something similar, though I tend to just end up writing letters of complaint. I kid you not, I once complained to a supermarket that the path to the carpark sloped to one side so it was difficult to push my trolley to the car. 10 quid voucher, thankyou very much.

I LOVE the meat feast pizza complaint though! Maybe I should try it... should I sign my letter Dr DanB as well, just to be really arrogant about it?

hi wally I wish I could be more like you!!!! :-) :-) :-)
do you think it will work with BT...

My brother is a champion complainer and is always getting £10 vouchers for things (which only cost him about 50p) - I really like the idea of using procrastination time profitably though - great idea.