Utility mobile etc

[Rasmus]

Hi All

I have a couple of questions regarding living costs in NZ. We are a family of three who will hopefully be arriving in Auckland in August. We are trying to prepare a budget, so if anyone could help with some expected expenditures that would be great.

How much should we count on using on:
Gas?
Electricity?
Water?

Also we'll be bringing our mobile phones, which company will be best to start out with? We don't expect to use them much in the beginning.

Last thing Broadband, phone, TV? Does it pay to have them all as a package deal and with who?

Thanks in advance for all you help

Cheers,

Rasmus

[JandM]

People in NZ already may have some comments, but meantime, do remember you can use the Search facility - these topics are often raised, and there is already help on old threads.

[Duncan74]

If you're bringining your phones then (apart from Iphone 3 and previous) will be on the 900Mhz frequency for 3g data. So if you want to use data outside of the very centre of Auckland Wellington and a couple of other places (and I mena the very centre) then you'll need to go Vodafone. If you're not bothered then any of the 3 will work, and all will work for voice. Check the websites for proces. I found the $2 max charge back to the UK useful when trying to cancel a few accounts back in the UK and on hold for ever.
Utility bills clearly vary according to the type and size of house and if there are people there during the daytime. On my personal experiences, then there's not a lot of difference in the end from the UK. Split between GAS / Electricity may be diffferent, but I seem to pay about the same.

[Manks]

You won't find many places with gas over here so that doesn't tend to be a consideration.

Our leccy is with Powershop and I pre-purchase a lot to help us budget, but the website is telling me that our power bill is currently $4 a day - which is nothing compared to a lot of people's bills. But we have a house that's about 10 years old, seems to be pretty well insulated and we haven't had to put the heat pump on too much. But we have indulged in leccy blankets(!) and two dehumidifiers. We run one dehumidifier every day, pretty much all evening.

We don't pay for water so I'm assuming the landlord does through rates or something?

My husband has a 2 degrees pay as you go sim. It worked fine in my old Nokia phone (about 4/5 years old) but he didn't need data. He spends around $20-30 a month now, including data, but we mainly text and so he has a text bundle.

We haven't got a home phone so we have "naked" broadband from Vodafone that is purely broadband and nothing else. It costs me $65 a month (discounted as my work phone is through Vodafone) for the top level, and the data cap has just increased to 45GB - even though we never even got close to the old cap of 30 GB. You can buy "bundles" which may be cheaper. We are considering getting Sky through Vodafone as well as we can get a free My Sky subscription (same as Sky+).

[Duncan74]

Manks - be careful with the sky. We got that bundle and got totally stiffed on installation. Was already in the place, but because there's a monitored burglar alarm they charged a fortune for the phone and the sky installs, but did nothing and we can't order the movies from the box. So $300 of installation for 2 blokes to come round and do pretty much nowt.
Also, they subscribe you to the listings magazine, and then charge you and I can't work out how to cancel that. To make it worse we get 2 each month as we've multiroom.

(And TGA has mains gas FYI - standing charges are very high though. Economically I really ought to cancel it as there's virtually nothing using gas and we pay $2 a day to be connected).

[mattandjax]

(And TGA has mains gas FYI - standing charges are very high though. Economically I really ought to cancel it as there's virtually nothing using gas and we pay $2 a day to be connected).

I would quite happily pay $2 a day just not to cook on a electric cooker. We love our new gas cooker and would never go back. Having said that could a LPG cooker work just as well?

In response to Mank's post lots of places in Auckland have mains gas. We are currently on genesis and the daily connection charge is just 73c. We also get a big gas discount thingy which may or may not be a introductory offer (hard to work out) which actually makes it 44c a day.

Currently use gas for our hot water, cooker and main heating source.

Matt

[Falcon_XR6]

Before you leave the UK check with whichever phone company you have your mobiles with that will work in NZ and if not then make sure they will give you the "unlock codes" as they will be locked to a UK network (even PAYG phones that you have bought outright) and an NZ SIMM will not work in them unless they are unlocked.

Also something else you need to do is put 2 or 3 UK 4-way power blocks in your hand luggage and either buy a couple of UK to NZ adapters or a couple of NZ plugs (when you get here) to replace the UK ones with on the 4-ways as ALL your chargers will be UK ones (and probably direct plug-in transformers so not replaceable plugs), and if you bring hair dryers and such they will also have a UK plug on them. I picked up a couple of NZ plugs from a place in the UK (can't remember who they were at present, I can find out if you like - they weren't cheap but were very good quality ones and I haven't seen the same type in NZ... weird) and got them ready in the UK before we left... and 3&1/2 years down the line they are still in daily use.

Go to B&Q or some such and get a load of 2-way, 4-way and/or 6-way power blocks and chuck them in your container as all of your UK stuff that plugs into a wall socket is running on UK plugs... and you will be surprised just how many UK plugs you do have on things like Christmas Lights etc... you can then convert them all to Kiwi plugs in slow time if you so wish (except the phone chargers, Ipod chargers etc). I only put an NZ plug on the Dyson we brought with us last month.

Hope that's of some help
Cheers
G

[mattandjax]

Hi All

Also we'll be bringing our mobile phones, which company will be best to start out with? We don't expect to use them much in the beginning.

2 degress will probably be the best as there rates are pretty cheap. However like Duncan said if you need to use Data outside of the big cities then you will have to use Vodafone.

My vodafone package keeps getting better and better, $40 now gets me 3gb of data, 2,500 x-net texts (just up from 500) and 60 mins (just up from 30 mins).

NZ competition watchdog has recently slashed the x-net termination costs (for example texts down from 9.5c to 0.06c) which should make mobile phone plans cheaper. Although there hasn't been much immediate reaction price changes seem to be trickling down to consumers.

This should benefit 2 degrees the most as they have the least number of customers.

[Sun777]

Hello Rasmus,
Check this thread

http://www.enz.org/forum/showthread.php?t=13682

To be specific to your question:
Gas: None
Electricity : $150 summer & $350 in winter
Water: $100 quarterly

Broadband: $60 (Naked broadband with 30GB (now 45GB)
3 Mobile: $160 (2 post pay and 1 prepay, both myself,OH & my daughter are on best mates plan)
Sky: Around $50
Landline: We don't have any

Vodafone has some good packaged deals Mobile, Broadband, landline and Sky together, you can save around $70-$100 a month in it. I think Vodafone is extending 30GB naked broadband to 45GB at no extra cost from tomorrow onwards, so its worth to have a look if you use higher data (internet).

[Rasmus]

Thanks for all the replies. It's been a great help.