can Vodafone unilaterally double the cost of my phone?

rikur

I signed up to a renewal 18 month contract with Vodafone last November

It included 100 inclusive minutes and data charged per kByte up to a £1 maximum daily charge with no minimum charge

My recent bill was much larger than usual. On investigation it seems that Vodafone have introduced a minimum 50p per day charge for data.

This means my data charges have gone from about £1 per month to just under £15 per month, almost doubling my total bill (all I use data for is to check train departure boards each morning, was costing about 4p per day)

Spoke to Vodafone and they basically said as I have been in the contract for more than 7 days I cannot terminate it without paying £125 early termination charge. I asked to terminate without penalty - they say no. I asked for the charging structure that I thought I'd signed up to when I entered the contract back - the best they could offer was to increase my bill be £7.50 per month for unlimited data.

I hadn't realised when I entered into the contract that they could simply unilaterally double the costs and be so unreasonable about it.

fsrandom

Ask for the £5 internet package instead of the £7.50 one.

rikur

that still ends up being £50 more per year than the contract that I thought I had entered into.

seems wrong to me that I can sign-up to a contract with an expectation of paying £270 over 18 months, and they can just unilaterally change it to £330 for the same service

esuhl

Read the Ts&Cs and see what you've agreed to. If there's a clause that states that you are entitled to cancel the contract without penalty if the charges rise, then use that as justification to cancel. If you signed a "blank cheque" contract... well... don't do it again!

A similar thing happened with T-Mobile a while back. They imposed a charge for paper billing, resulting in a get-out clause for (probably) millions of subscribers. However, they appeared to deliberately and maliciously obstruct any reasonable attempt to cancel. Eventually I managed to negotiate a discount for the line rental that left me in profit at the end of the contract, but T-Mobile must have made millions of pounds over their unethical handling of the situation.

redux

you might use a separate SIM for your browsing, perhaps with an old phone or one of those dual SIM adapters

Asda Mobile is 20 pence per megabyte, so sounds like it would be under a penny a day

jamiex

When I heard about the change in charge structure I phoned up and chose the "thinking of leaving us" option. I ended up being offered the £5 unlimited internet (500mb fair use) per month option at a discounted rate of £2/month.

We do have several phones with vodafone, so that might be a factor, but you could try and get the same deal. I though it was a bargain as I bet I was using around £1.50/month in the first place, and now I get to use it without worrying at all.

I'm sure they can't just change prices like that though, and even though they say you can't, you might be able to leave them without penalty. You'll probably have a fight on your hands though. Don't give up!