Displaying items by tag: Christmas

New retail data from Eftpos has revealed the Black Friday sales surge moved beyond online to music shops, fashion outlets, department stores and appliance retailers

New Zealand’s consumer competition regulator The Commerce Commission has recommended that consumers buying online for Christmas do their research before using an online store for the first time and check any statements on the website about when the goods will be delivered. 

Communications firm Zoom will remove the 40-minute limit on its free accounts on a number of days during the Christmas season, the company says.

Aspera Mobile has launched two new low-cost models ahead of the Christmas peak buying season, with one being the AS6 smartphone for $149 and the second being the F42 flip phone with pre-loaded social media apps for $99.

It’s not just fun and games for kids this Christmas, as more 56% of Aussie parentsare expected to buy their children toys they secretly want to play with, according to new research from eBay, with 62% of Dads the main culprit.

SPONSORED NEWS (Sponsored by iTWire): As Australians start to think about the gifts they will share over the festive season, children’s education charity The Smith Family urges them to also consider stepping up to help change the course of a child’s life, by supporting their education to break the cycle of poverty.

Product comparison firm iSelect says it has seen an average increase of about 40% in the number of Australians inquiring about changing their Internet plans after the festive season.

COMMENT Fitting right into the "bah humbug" category, we find research that notes endless repeats of Christmas music is bad for mental health.

Children as young as 12 will more than likely be getting their first smartphone this Christmas, with research by Telstra revealing that many parents will buy their kids a phone to keep them safe when they are away from home.

An attempt to get a Christmas song written and sung using a form of artificial intelligence has not turned out to be very inspiring.

Australian small business owners are an entrepreneurial lot, with many choosing to operate more than one business at a time and working so hard they probably won’t take public holidays or even a Christmas break this year.

With Christmas and the year’s end there’s always a swag of reports about festive season spending. In a new report from EFTPOS payments provider Tyro, Australians are forecast to make 1.5 billion transactions between now and the end of the January post-Christmas sales – peaking at an estimated 85,000 transactions per minute - and amounting to a six week $100 billion spending spree.

Whether they’ve been naughty or nice this year, children and their parents are invited to Microsoft Store, Pitt Street Mall, Sydney, to sit with Mrs. Claus for an intimate Skype video session with Santa. 

Online shopping is a little more dangerous this year with multiple fake shopping apps in both Apple App Store and Google Play.

It’s well and truly the festive season, and we’re in between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, but it’s also a time when dating signups ‘spike’ massively.

NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command is getting a bit of telecommunications assistance from US telco Verizon in NORAD’s yearly mission to track Santa Claus’ Christmas Eve journey around the world.

It turns out that employees want different perks than their employers think, with CFOs and financial directors having different expectations about their employees’ wish list.

In 2014, Lizard Squad ruined the gaming fun for millions of Xbox and Playstation gamers with DDoS attacks - and it might happen again.

The Mobile Muster program is appealing for all to recycle their old, unwanted mobiles, batteries and accessories to help families in need for Christmas 2015.

AVG advises you should ‘avoid the offers that are too good to be true and only shop at secure, trusted retail sites.’