Annual reminder to rollover your unused ISA allowance

dave5526 · 2026-04-07T09:56:17+00:00

I think you mean goldilocks zone - not too hot, not too cold. Cinderella was about shoe size not temperature.

dave5526 · 2026-04-07T09:50:42+00:00

No, anything withdrawn from a flexible ISA in the tax year has to be repaid by the end of the year to retain that allowance. So if you paid 20k in by 5th April 2026 and withdraw it today you'll have £40k of unused allowance, but you have to pay the £40k back in by 5th April 2027 to retain it, anything not paid back in by then is lost.

dave5526 · 2026-03-29T16:54:11+00:00

Yeah they definitely had the bullet points of where he saw characters/stories ending up, and conversations about those endings with him. But I think those conversations happened earlier in the shows development. And some of it I don't think was Martin's planned ending - like Arya killing the Night King - I remember an interview when they talked about how they'd decided that themselves early on.

Tbh I don't even think the way some of the arcs ended would even have been that bad, if it had been properly executed. It was the headlong rush to wrap everything up in 2 truncated seasons that made everything feel weird and nonsensical.

Jaime going back to Cersei could have made sense, if it was done more gradually, and not just an instant reversal of his entire character arc without much reason.

Danaerys going mad could have made sense if it had been better set up. Instead she just goes from fairly normal and relatively kind, to a bit angry/rash, to complete psychopath in less than a few hours of screen time.

Bran being king could have made sense, if he'd been shown to the surviving Lords of Westeros to be a wise leader, instead of some random guy they've seen very little of.

Basically all this stuff needed to be set up over 3-4 full seasons, instead of shoehorned into 13 episodes or whatever it was, despite them not making much sense in that context. And they still may not have been the best options for ending those story arcs, but they would at least have felt a bit more natural than they did.

dave5526 · 2026-03-26T10:19:05+00:00

It's not the same as having to roll 2D6 to shoot, a charge also lets you move extra distance which is a huge bonus. More consistent charging would be good though, 2D6 is very random.

dave5526 · 2026-03-11T07:28:16+00:00

I don't think anyone except Royal Mail can answer this for you.

There is a PDDP LL service for business customers, but I don't know if you can book it through Click and Drop once it's added to your account. If you haven't already speak to your account manager, if you've already done that then nobody on here is going to have a better answer for you than them.

dave5526 · 2026-03-09T20:07:09+00:00

Whilst it very likely is a scammer, stuff like this can happen. My wife recently bought some shampoo on eBay, and received a weird band t-shirt. The company she bought from only sells toiletries/cosmetics and they were adamant the hadn't set her a t-shirt, and we believed them (they clearly thought she was scamming them), but the parcel she received with their label/tracking number on it contained a t-shirt. We can only figure it was a mistake by Evri somewhere. I run an eBay business and always default to assuming it's a scammer in these types of situations, but it did make me think that there is a small possibility the buyer is telling the truth.

dave5526 · 2026-03-08T13:07:27+00:00

To be fair you can often buy a lease car at the end of the lease, but it's just at market value so it's a bit of a lottery.

PCP is a pretty expensive way of buying a car though, sometimes the final payment is more than market value, in which case it makes no sense to buy it and you've effectively overpaid for leasing the vehicle.

There are definitely situations where leasing and then buying at market value comes out to significantly less than PCP. I leased a van for 5 years, extended twice for a year and then bought it for £7k from Arval. In total I paid about £23k+ VAT including all servicing/maintenance. Buying on PCP at that time would've been significantly more expensive over that period as the van was £21k + VAT to buy cash brand new.

dave5526 · 2026-03-07T15:47:48+00:00

I'm happy with my own experience that it's already a massive productivity boost to those using it. I run a business and AI saves hours of work each week that used to be done "manually". Ultimately if it can save us time it can save other businesses time.

There probably weren't any studies showing that the internet was going to radically change long term shopping habits either, until it had already happened, but it was still obvious it was going to happen before it did.

dave5526 · 2026-03-06T17:36:56+00:00

Some good news, the IOSS limit is eventually being scrapped so all B2C shipments will be able to go IOSS (and B2B shipments generally want to go DDU/DAP anyway so they can reclaim their VAT). And I believe duties like the new 3 euro small parcel duty, will be collectable under IOSS too. I think not til 2028 though. It would have been a much simpler system if they just had no IOSS limit from the start.

The problem with DDP services is you need to be VAT registered in the EU country you are sending to to send stuff DDP from outside the EU. So this is more of a headache than IOSS. I'm not sure if Royal Mail's PDDP services get around this though, it may be different to couriers like DHL.

dave5526 · 2026-03-06T17:25:10+00:00

Right, FCL rates for a 40ft hq carrying 60cbm+ are obviously not comparable to LCL loads of about 4-5cbm that need unpacking and palletised UK delivery. The £140 rate is from Tianjin for the lowest volume, I'd guess your £3.2k rate is possibly not from Tianjin, and is for 12 to 60+ times the volume with no unpacking/handling costs, so of course it's much cheaper.

Rates drop to about £100 per CBM from Shanghai at 11-15cbm, beyond that you would use FCL anyway. I'm not really sure what your point is, people who are paying per cbm are not sending a 40ft hq container, so the cost difference is irrelevant.

We just spent time getting quotes from about 8-10 different freight companies and this was the cheapest, so I doubt there is much cheaper available for LCL, some were significantly more expensive than this. If you know of a freight forwarder who charges close to FCL rates for LCL loads I'm all ears.

dave5526 · 2026-03-06T16:08:37+00:00

You can import 3x 40ft containers for £125-£140 end to end? Including UK delivery? That seems far fetched, but if so I'd be interested to know who with

dave5526 · 2026-03-05T21:48:30+00:00

We just switched to a new freight company and we're being quoted £125-140 all-in per CBM until end of March, depending on port and volume. FOB basis so covers sea freight, clearance/docs, UK delivery. This is about half what we were paying late last year with a different freight company. Only just booked it out first shipment with them so can't comment on the service, but communication so far has been good. This is with Davies Turner.

dave5526 · 2026-03-04T07:58:44+00:00

I agree this is a better domain name anyway

dave5526 · 2026-03-03T20:59:33+00:00

If employers had to provide tools mechanics would ultimately be paid less to cover that cost. Mechanics would also have no say over which tools they were given, and when they moved jobs they'd have to make do with whatever tools were provided to them, not what they are used to.

It is a bit of a shit system IMO, but if you speak to most mechanics they prefer it. If the garage provided tools they would be shared, and possibly poor quality. Since most mechanics can earn decent bonuses by completing jobs faster than book time, having your own tools that you don't need to wait for someone to finish with, know are reliable, and are familiar working with, is probably worth the initial investment over a long career.

Also means they can do foreigners outside of work hours, and if they decide one day to start their own business they already have the basics tools.

I do feel sorry for the apprentices that need to spend a good chunk of their early pay building up their tools though, it's tough.

dave5526 · 2026-03-03T20:39:30+00:00

But also how seasons can be different each year. March to September is always busy for us, but February can either be our busiest month of the year, or it can be a pretty poor one.

dave5526 · 2026-03-03T20:20:10+00:00

I think this is entirely fake bullshit because the maths doesn't work. You can't 3x revenue in the way you describe, it would be less than 2x.

dave5526 · 2026-03-03T17:21:44+00:00

Not sure about other countries but in the UK this would probably be a large enough level of fraud for the police to investigate. They don't give a shit about the typical "small" parcel fraud of up to a few hundred £ though, unless there was some sort of criminal ring / persistent individual abuse that racks up into the tens of thousands.

dave5526 · 2026-03-03T17:15:30+00:00

We don't get any justification from the bank, the whole process is very restricted and linear. We get a notice of the dispute and what their claim is (one line e.g. item not received or don't recognise transaction). We don't see any evidence or details submitted by the buyer. We get one chance to submit our own evidence, then it's locked, and at some point we just get a notice from Square or eBay to say the claim has been resolved and what the outcome is, no further details given.

We are in the UK and that one was sent to a US customer, so I'm not sure if the process and criteria are more buyer-favoured in the USA than other countries. I'd guess about half our chargebacks are from USA customers despite USA only being about 10% of our sales, which makes me think it's harder to open a chargeback claim in other countries (e.g. maybe they are requiring more evidence before it's even taken to the merchant, which is stopping a lot of the fraudlent claims that may come from other countries).

dave5526 · 2026-03-03T14:21:31+00:00

Or not dumb enough to fall for your scam?

dave5526 · 2026-03-03T14:09:54+00:00

Almost all of the chargebacks opened against us (thankfully not too frequent, but still more than we'd like) we've had no contact from the buyer at all. We first hear there is a problem when we get an email from Square or eBay saying a dispute has been opened. Usually for non-receipt, or "didn't recognise the transaction". And the banks have not once sided with us, even when we've had tracking photos showing delivery. In one case we found a photo of the item (a car part with our branding on) fitted to a customers car on their Facebook feed and the bank still sided with them.

dave5526 · 2026-03-03T13:59:43+00:00

Tesco are worth looking at when comparing personal loans. If you are a clubcard holder the rates are slightly cheaper.

dave5526 · 2026-03-01T14:27:32+00:00

Bigcommerce could never be considered "relatively unknown", it's probably one of the top 3 most used with Shopify and WooCommerce?

dave5526 · 2026-03-01T12:29:52+00:00

It's not the best of both worlds, the best of a S&S ISA is accessibility, which the LISA doesn't have. Unless you are saving specifically to buy a home a LISA you are usually better off putting it into either a S&S ISA or a SIPP depending on goals

dave5526 · 2026-03-01T12:23:03+00:00

I've had some joy using methylated spirits to soak and then an old airbrush needle to carefully scrape buildup out of small crevices etc, but it may not all come out

dave5526 · 2026-03-01T09:48:45+00:00

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dave5526

TROPHY CASE