Is buying from a 3rd party provider riskier re. price increases?

karen100

Hello! So I recently broke my phone so am planning to move from my sim only deal to a contract. I found a great deal for the Samsung Galaxy 7 with 3 on a third party site. I called up my provider and asked them if they could match it, and they said they couldn't, because it wasn't an actual provider deal, but a third party deal (which is true, the same deal was not on the 3 website). I asked why, and he told me that with third party providers the deals are better as there is more risk re. price increases - i.e. in the T&Cs if you look (and we did for that particular deal) it says that they can change the monthly price if they choose. If they change the price and its significant then you have the right to cancel your contract, but then you will still have to pay cancellation fees. I can see that's a risk. So I held off signing anything to investigate further, and I have found nothing on the internet which talks about this risk! Is this something which is actually true of all phone companies, third party or not, and in reality doesn't really happen?

In short, does anyone know what I'm on about, and if so, is it true?

Thanks!
K

mije1983

You will be subject to the same price increases as customers who buy direct from the network. There is no difference in that respect.

The only risk is that if it is a cashback deal and the retailer goes bust, then you still have to keep on paying the monthly fee to the network regardless.

20aday

If you're on about RPI increases then Three don't apply them to their SIMO customers and Tesco Mobile have no inflationary increases at all.

The only time you could terminate an airtime agreement early is if the network provider hiked their monthly tariffs above the rate of inflation e.g. if RPI figures published in February were 3% and company X raised prices 3.2% and so forth.