Three mega-deals but then I'm ripped off

It's been a day of super deals, somewhat marred by an evening rip-off!

After a foggy morning digging hard earth on the allotment, I decided to spend the afternoon in a warm (home) office sorting out some long-standing jobs. I actually did quite well until I shot myself in the foot at the very end of the afternoon.

Deal no 1 was my mobile phone. I've a £25 per month contract on O2 which is now running. I've been trying to untether my phone and get a better deal on another network, without success; inertia and technical snags have meant O2 has got an extra three months out of me.

Today, I saw a great deal on the BT website - a SIM-only deal for 500Mb of data and 200 minutes for £5 per month. They also use the EE network, so I might actually get a signal at home.

I bought an iPhone 5 and my 4S, which is chained to O2, I'll give to Margaret on an O2 pay-monthly deal. I should be able to make a monthly saving of £10 - £120 per year.

Deal no 2 was another from BT. They'd sent me a letter saying I'd have to pay £7 a month for BT Sport unless I signed up for another broadband contract. When I called them, they offered me Superfast Broadband, a YouView box, BT Sport and Eurosport 1 and 2 (so I can watch bikes) for £5 less than I'm paying now. I can also cease my Sky contract, which is costing almost £70 per month.

I think this is what's called "on a roll" - monthly saving of £75 or £900 a year.

And I'm not done yet. I've been trying to convert some of Margaret's personal tax allowance to me, but the government's website hasn't been working. I tried again today and it failed again, so I called them and they sorted it out on the telephone. That's a saving of £250 per annum.

So total savings of £1,250 per annum!

Of course, there's always a little cloud to rain on your parade and this cloud had Easyjet written on the side. I seem to have a blind spot with the Easyjet website. Last time I booked flights to Jersey, I ended up flying from Southend instead of Gatwick (which was something of a happy accident, although quite a surprise when I realised).

This time, I made sure I booked flights from Gatwick and back to Gatwick and thought I'd got a good deal - £33 out and £15 back - but when I tried to print out my boarding card for the return leg, it wouldn't let me. I spent ages trying to figure it out before I realised I'd booked to return on December 23, not November 23.

Easyjet applies a charge of £45 to make any changes to flight details, so I've got a £15 flight that will now cost £45 to move to the date I want.

How did I screw up? I've no idea - I think the return date jumps a month, or perhaps I just engage 'stupid mode' when I log onto Easyjet.

I didn't pay the £45 admin charge, I just booked a new return flight for £15 for the right date.

Where am I going to? Jersey, I hope!

Maybe it's an age thing - I'm not getting any younger - but I do find travel (especially air travel) not quite the pleasure it used to be.

I guess I don't get around as much ...

Margaret and I are just back from Jersey and getting there (a short hop) ought to be a piece of cake. I was responsible for the travel arrangements and I made a bit of a Horlicks of it in honesty.

First question was: boat or plane? We did boat last time and it wasn't too bad - a fast catamaran run by Condor Ferries from Weymouth. It now runs from Poole and it's a bigger boat, but still a fast ferry, taking just over four hours for the crossing (including a stop at Guernsey).

I'd always choose boat rather than plane, but Condor Ferries seems to have achieved the worst of both worlds by combining the slowness of a boat with the "herd 'em in" and "rip 'em off" ethos of Ryanair or Easyjet.

They charge quite a lot more than the plane, then make you book a seat in a somewhat uncomfortable lounge and there isn't the option of wandering round and sitting in a bar or cafe like there is on the Dover-Calais run. You can book a better seat in a "posher" lounge, but that was an extra £20 on the way out and an extra £50 on the way back.

It seemed cheaper to fly and, without the car to worry about, we could be more flexible finding a hotel without parking. I went onto Expedia to book tickets and found flights at decent times and decent prices via Easyjet. I thought I'd booked to fly in and out of Gatwick, but when I checked a few weeks before departure, it turned out I had booked to fly from Southend and back to Gatwick.

I like to think I'm quite good with technology, but clearly I'm not as smart as I thought I was. I'd selected "any London airport" and Southend is a London airport; most of the options on Easyjet (the cheapest) were from Gatwick, this one had sneaked in and I'd clicked it without looking properly.

When I realised what had happened, I tried to change the booking. This was no problem, but it would have cost close to £80 for the two of us, so I decided to stick at Southend. On top of that, when I printed out the boarding cards, it turned out I hadn't booked any luggage. This is an extra £20. Ironically, when we checked in, they offered to put our additional hand luggage in the hold free of charge to make more room in the overheads!

Southend actually turned out to be a happy accident. We got pretty cheap train tickets and it's an easy journey via King's Cross and Liverpool Street. The airport has its own new station and the airport is also brand new, very clean and smart and also very quiet. The train to London was late, but we had plenty of time; the plane was on time and Lucy picked us up from the airport.

Flying back into Gatwick was much more hassle. It's a massive place, you walk what seems like a couple of miles from aircraft to baggage hall and then to station (via a terminal shuttle). Our plane was delayed by a thunderstorm, so we were running 30 minutes late, we missed the Thameslink to St Pancras and had to get a later one, then arrived at King's Cross to find the station partly closed (due to a fire alarm) and our booked train gone. We had to fork out again for Great Northern tickets and get on the 12.35am, which stops everywhere and is full of drunks.

One chap opposite was trying to read his iPad, but kept dropping it. When he got up at St Neots, he dropped his glasses and would have lost them if Margaret hadn't intervened. She also counted one chap being sick five times (but at least it was in the toilet).

On the plus side, I did get to almost finish my book ...

I suspect we'll be making the trip to Jersey a couple of times a year for the foreseeable future, so I need to get my travel agent act together. I'll probably fly unless we need the car (or take Holly) and I'll certainly look at Southend as a first option.

Lucy says the ferry has been getting a lot of bad press. It's a new, bigger catamaran, but has been dogged by technical problems and hasn't been able to dock in bad weather. In fact, one day while we were in Jersey the fast ferry wasn't able to get into St Helier. It was windy, but not that windy.