It makes no sense.
Every year they increase my contract in line with inflation. Every 2 years I upgrade my phone, taking the contract back to original price.
Mobile customers face a mid-contract price rise, with all four operators confirming they will hike fees by 4 per cent, 1 per cent above inflation. That is in line with the Retail Price Index (RPI) figure for January 2018. Operators will begin introducing the increase from March. Rob Hilborn, head of strategy at price …
Yup, the reminder has prompted me to look at the upgrade options. Between my phone and the Mrs' phone I've just saved £25 a month and got significantly more data to boot.
Had they left the price alone, apathy would probably have maintained its hold until next time one of us needed a new phone (could easily be years)
I had a wonderful experience with O2 doing something similar to me when trying to get me to stay with them. I had complained that they were too expensive (on PAYG) and I was shocked when they tried to justify this with what was basically an advert. I said I'm paying 25p a minute for calls and 10p for SMS which is outrageous. He told me that the I could buy a package with huge numbers of minutes, texts etc. with my top up plus O2 priority, plus without buying anything my calls dropped to 5p per minute after 4 minutes use each day. I came back with the comment that I didn't use more than 4 minutes a day or sometimes a week and to get to the 5p rate it cost a quid. As a result, buying something that had silly amounts of minutes that expired after 30 days wasn't worth it. Then I pointed out that compared to the 123 rate on Three they were so uncompetitive that I wanted to switch to Three.
It was at this point I was offered a new phone to which I said no thanks. Then a contract offer with silly minutes, texts and data which I explained (patiently) that I wouldn't use. I just needed my PAC code please. I will be interested to see if they increase the 123 rate as I'm still on it.
Dunno what the pricing is in the UK now, but here in the US I switched to prepay a few years ago and save tons over what I was paying before. In fact I just happened to notice that my $45/month ($40/month with autopay discount) prepay plan from AT&T that used to have 2 GB of data now had 6 GB of data, and just found out they added a $35 ($30 w/autopay) plan with 1 GB of data which is plenty for me since I almost always use wifi. Switched last night so now I'm another $10/month ahead.
If I was willing to go with an MVNO I'm sure I could pay even less but then I'd have to figure out how many minutes/texts I really need and the thought of doing that makes my head hurt.
Last time I bothered to check I was paying £10/month (somewhere around $14/month). That gives me 1GB of data (I mostly use WiFi so that's plenty), unlimited texts and 600 minutes talk time a month (I'm an unsociable moo so rarely get anywhere near that).
It looks as though those figures compare at least reasonably with the ones you quoted.
Rosie
Or Plusnet.
For £10 I get per month: 4GB data, 1500 minutes, unlimited texts, roaming, and crucially, tethering. 30 day contract so I can shift quickly if needed.
I suspect this thread is now going to turn into a "hey, I can beat that!". So long as everyone is happy with their deal and it represents value for money (to them), then all is good....
Never quite understood people who pay megabucks per month if they don't have a handset commitment to pay off.
> Are their any (reasonable) simm only with wifi calling? I can't seem to find one
EE do a 20GB/month (unlimited texts and minutes) for £22/mo with wifi calling.
Next tier down is £17/mo but you only get 4GB data.
The catch? It means using EE. So you better hope there's wi-fi available as chances of a consistent signal are slim outside of cities/towns. They had 3 masts down near me a few weeks ago
Both EE and Three have Wifi calling - either by downloading an app or natively in the handset. Latter option requires the operator custom software on any Android that isn't <12 month old Samsung, Huawei or Honor. Apples from the last few years all work fine though.
If O2 or Voda offer it they are keeping it quiet.
@ARGO, "If O2 or Voda offer [WiFi calling] they are keeping it quiet."
Yeah Vodafone are doing all they can to keep their Wifi calling service quiet.. It's native on the Jesus-Mobe, plus various Droids.
In the UK from Three I pay £20 ($28) per month and get unlimited data, free roaming in 71 countries including the US, free tethering (4g -> wifi hotspot), unlimited sms and a few hundred minutes talk-time (not sure how much I never use all of it). This is on a rolling 1 month contract.
re. Three free roaming in the US, yeah, 3 p/ m to your mates back home is great. Now, if you try to call the bloke standing next to you, your dear American cousin, on his dear American cell phone... You'd better check those rates first! Last I checked, it was something like GBP 1.5 per minute... And no, you CAN'T use one of them cheap international numbers Three advertise, nosir, not when you're roaming. Trying to outsmart the smarties, eh?! ;)
Why do you Brits put up with such abuse?
Presumably for the same reason 71% of SSE's customers are on a Standard Variable Tariff (the most expensive way of buying electricity and gas) - inertia coupled with the fact that it isn't in the interests of the suppliers to make the transition easy (it's supposed to be, but there are lots of ways it can fail).
I don't know why (more) Local Authorities don't set up bulk-buying schemes for utilities so that people can be assured of getting a reasonable deal without having to put in the effort of constantly shopping around - the amount of human effort wasted in the name of failing competition is tragic.
Most people (in the UK and the US) budget so badly that they could never pay up-front for the lastest tech-toy they "must" have.
So, as long as payment is "tomorrow" and not "today", they'll go for it. Few have even the schoolboy maths to work out compound interest, so one "deal" looks much the same as another. If there's any decision, it's based on trinkets like "free fake leather carrying case".
Don't worry. It keeps prices down for the rest of us.
Yep, I paid outright for a new phone about 3 months ago and I use plusnet as the provider, for £7.50 a month I get 1,000 minutes of talk time, unlimited text and because i am with plusnet for broadband I get 2GB of data, normally 1GB. but £7.50 for goodness shake.
Also no contract, so I can leave at any time.
My old Nexus 4 lasted for almost 5 years, in fact it still works but the battery is not great and the USB connector is a bit iffy.
So if my new phone lasts as long then i am still quids in, I will never have a contract again for a mobile phone.
As usual, they can't even tell mistruths properly. A very simple check on ONS against the CPI (it stopped being called RPI some time ago, by the way Vodafone) here shows that for March 2017 the CPI annual rate was actually 2.3%. Unfortunately Vodafone were suffering from Corporate Dyslexia Syndrome that month and. increased their prices by 3.2% instead!
They even have the nerve to boast about it on their website
You just have to shop around, or threaten to leave your current supplier when your contract is up. I just renewed my contract with THREE for another 12 months, giving me 8GB data, with unlimited calls and texts for £10 per month. That includes their feel-at-home (Europe) package meaning I can use my allowances abroad without paying extra. This doesn't include their other package that includes non-EU countries however, but that's fine for my usage.
Funny how whenever we have to pay someone else more inline with inflation, RPI is used, but when someone has to pay us it's always CPI.
Well in this case you can thank Ofcom, and their total lack of customer focus. There's other UK regulators who believe it their duty, nay very reason for existence to kick the shit out of the companies they regulate. Ofcom, on the other hand, regard their duty as being to work for the companies they regulate.
There is a technical terms for this, of "regulatory capture".
One of the many reasons I don't do contracts on phones.
Month-to-month contract, bye-bye if you raise the price on me too much. Plenty of other providers out there.
And never buy a phone on contract/credit. Pointless exercise. "Hey, I get a new phone every year"... cool. And to do that, and profit, you've got to be paying more than it costs to buy a new phone every year.
They can no longer hold your number ransom and most of the time that's the most valuable component of the whole deal to people.
If you want loyalty, stop raising prices or give me a better deal than being a new customer at a rival. Because though I'm sure the RETAIL PRICE of things has gone up, and maybe inflation has risen as little, I don't believe that your costs as a telecommunications operator with forward-planning and investment has changed at all, in any way.
(Interesting tidbit: Everyone from the manager of the Bank of England to all kinds of economics say the RPI is bunk and shouldn't be used).
(Here's the first)
is no contracts. For some reason both Mrs Page and I have managed to not break, lose or outgrow our phones for over 2 years. So £10/month Tesco and £25/month GiffGaff (two SIMs one data, one vox) suit us fine. Being old farts we've never exceeded the minutes and texts, and with free WiFi out and about (in cities) data either.
I'm guessing we're sort of headed where most folk are. And we are looking in our rear view mirror and seeing the Telcos ....
Watch your EU-enforced 'don't gouge while abroad within EU' tariffs disappear and telcos hike the price of calls/data once outside the UK....
But I don't mind. There is inevitably a list of things we'll lose leaving the circled, protectionist wagons of the EU. But the focus on what is lost is such an EU mindset, seeing the whole world as threat rather than opportunity. And of course, you can revel in glories like the French unemployment rate that has just dropped below 9% which is more than double the UK's.
Using EE here, I ring up every 11 months and get a new tariff- current "loyalty" deal is £8 per month for their 4GB essentials plan - so thats unlimited text and calls, WiFi calling works seamlessly, tethering is permitted for those quick remote access laptop jobs. For less that £100 a year it's hard to knock it, if I went PAYG it would cost more and I'd lose WiFi calling.
"You mean the council tax that before this year has increased at a rate below inflation for the best part of decade, resulting in councils being chronically underfunded? That council tax?"
Or the Council Tax which is now having to be used because central government is pulling any and all funding they provide local councils, instead allowing them to keep more of the tax revenues they raise themselves? Including allowing councils to keep 100% of their business rates take? What? Oh, sorry it's now 90%. Wait, now it's down to 75%. Oh, and local councils only get to keep around 45% of the council tax take anyway, the rest goes back up the line to central government.
Now, Council Tax is a great way for central government to increase their own revenues but shovel the blame on to local councils. Inspired decision really.