MSE News: EE and O2 mobile customers to be hit with 1.1% price rise
Former_MSE_Paloma
Former MSE 531 Posts
in Mobiles
EE and O2 mobile phone customers face price hikes of 1.1% from March/April and you may not be able to leave penalty-free ...
Read the full story:
EE and O2 mobile customers to be hit with 1.1% price rise
Click reply below to discuss. If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply. If you aren’t sure how it all works, read our New to Forum? Intro Guide.
EE and O2 mobile customers to be hit with 1.1% price rise
Click reply below to discuss. If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply. If you aren’t sure how it all works, read our New to Forum? Intro Guide.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Latest MSE News and Guides
Martin Lewis quizzes Rishi Sunak
Watch the cost of living support Q&A here
Join the MSE Forum discussion
Replies
Granted 1.1% isn't a lot compared to last year's RPI amendment effective March 2014 but it's still 1.1% the consumer has to find per month until this time next year.
It's based on the RPI rate on a certain date, as you say it's written into the contracts (as it always was) so hopefully we won't have a painfully long whining thread like we did last year.
now im quids in and free from any price hikes at all.
I believe it's the preceding February?
"The provider last announced price hikes in April 2014 (see the EE mobile customers face 2.7% price rise in May MSE News story)"
So they increased prices in May, and now are applying a whole 12 months' worth of RPI for another increase 10 months later in March.
RPI increases are only fair if you use the same month year-on-year. You can't pick and choose which months suits you. And you certainly can't cram 12 months of inflation into a 10 month period.
I'm with you on this one. Swapped to 3 payg about 4 months ago from o2 and really pleased with their service, especially the price of calls!
They should be basing increases on their own rising costs, and should not be able to change them during a contract. They're big enough and clever enough to hedge their costs in advance if they really believe there is inflation risk. But no, they are purely doing this as a money-making exercise.
And there is certainly absolutely no reason why they should be able to increase costs based on some mythical RPI number that really has zero relevance to do with anything.
Agreed. A prime example if when VAT went up a few years ago. This resulted in an increase in RPI.
What did TMobile do? First, they applied the extra VAT rate to the bills (they had to). This resulted in an increase for consumers.
They then went on to apply the RPI increase to the bills. Because RPI already included an element of VAT, they effectively factored in VAT more than once. This bore no relation to their own costs.
VAT increases are another good example of why you can't use RPI twice within one year, and why it should be the same month year after year - or indexed back over a non-12-month period to when the last increase was applied.
Why a good example? Say a tax was introduced that added 10% to all prices, everywhere. If there had been no natural increase in prices, then RPI would jump up by 10% in Jan versus prices 12 months ago. It would also show a 10% increase in Feb, Mar, ..., Dec, each versus 12 months ago when the tax was introduced. Not because the tax happened 12 times, but because 12 measurements of RPI are taken.
But if EE did the same there, making two increases 10 months apart, then they would be able to increase bills 10% for Jan, and a further 10% for Nov, which would in no way reflect the reality of how prices had risen.
That is why I believe it is fundamentally unlawful to apply two RPI increases for 12-month intervals less than 12 months apart. Even if the intervals are more tahn 12 months apart, the choice of months can be manipulated to give a higher increase than has actually happened.
45p a min to UK and £1 a min to Europe?! that's crazy pricing when you can call spain on giffgaff (o2) at 2p a min and 10p a min UK out of allowance!