MoneySaving Poll: Should Ofcom prevent firms giving 'retention' offers?

Former_MSE_Sam_M

Poll started 23 September 2014

Should Ofcom prevent broadband & mobile firms from cutting their price to keep you when you ask to leave?

The communications regulator is investigating digital TV, broadband, landline and mobile phone ‘retention’ offers - those where when you ask to leave they try and cut prices to persuade you to stay.

It believes this could be harmful to consumers in the longer term as new providers find it hard to compete for business, therefore reducing choice and meaning only decent hagglers get the better deals. Please choose the option CLOSEST to your views.

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mjm3346

Far bigger savings to be had by making it a requirement for "new customer" deals to be made available to all existing customers.

WestonDave

Personally I would prefer to go the other way and outlaw companies offering better deals to new customers. It would save us all a lot of time and effort if the renewal deal we were offered was the most competitive they were prepared to offer rather than what they hope we will be mug enough to allow it to roll over for!

brewerdave

Nightmare scenario! As a customer on a Market 1 exchange my costs would go thru the roof - I've currently negotiated a deal (not much haggling required!) which gives me unlimited adsl bband & evenings and weekend calls for ~ £6.50 pm -should be £16.99 without evening calls! Add in advance line rental which "saves" me ~ £50 per year and overall I estimate that I could be paying ~ £270 per year more!!!!
Add in any discount that I can grab from Sky TV and you are looking at £500+ per annum increase:eek:
Does anybody really believe that the likes of Sky,TalkTalk,BT would REDUCE their prices?? And who is going to come into the market for digital TV anyway?? Far too capital intensive - Virgin won't even extend their existing network in any meaningful way!

canub

Telcos have been virtually eliminated from villages in North Lancashire as we have built our own hyperfast fibre network with 1GB to the premises.Most computers etc running at 700mgb upload and download simultaneously.

potbelly

mjm3346 wrote: »

Far bigger savings to be had by making it a requirement for "new customer" deals to be made available to all existing customers.

I agree completely. If the deals were available to ALL customers, retaining existing customers would be better all round. Less paperwork for the supplier as it may only involve a change of payment amount. Better for the customer as less likely to have to change supplier to get a good deal.
At the moment I change gas, electric, phone, broadband suppliers every year, simply to get the NEW customer deals, and many of these deals will have a Cashback bonus as well. I find this easier than haggling, especially now 'switching' procedures have been improved.

sinizterguy

Why the bleeding !!!! would you want to stop retention offers ?

This how businesses work, try to keep current customers and get new ones while keeping up with their costs.

More nanny state madness.

skirkpatrick

Retention offers simply make me - as a customer - feel exploited. If I decide to say nothing, the provider will just take my extra money that they'd happily forego if I asked them to. It just feels wrong and I feel I'm being overcharged for a service simply because the provider feels like it.

I also think it's a bizarre about-face approach that new customers tend to get better offers/rates than existing/loyal customers. But it very much seems like the norm.

simax

If a company charges £xx for a product, and advertises as such, then offer it to someone at £xx-£10 because they threatened to leave?

If you don't like the price you pay, leave. Simple as that. Hagglers put the prices up for everyone else.