18 Month Minimum Contact Lengths 26 January 2018 at 12:41PM edited 30 November -1 at 1:00AM in Broadband & Internet Access 3 replies 735 views

michaels

Being on MSE we probably all know that the pricing model for broadband is to offer reasonable prices for the first 12 months (perhaps via some form of cashback) followed by eye-wateringly expensive pricves with continual hikes for those who stay longer than that year.

A few years ago I used to go with adsl2 and pay about £5 per month or less for BB plus line rental after cashback.

Then I switched to fibre, first year was less than a tenner a month and this year is about 11.50 per month with virgin.

However when this runs out it now seems the cheapest per month is well over £20 - especially because the minimum term seems to have gone up from 12 to 18-24 months so any incentive payment is 'diluted' over more months.

Longer contracts make sense for mobile phones where the price includes paying for a handset on credit but I can not see any justification for this for broadband where you are 'given' a carpy router worth about 20 quid and that is it. The longer contracts are pure profiteering.

There is a regulator, ofcom, what are they doing to protect the consumer from this sort of abuse? :mad:

JJ_Egan

My last sign up with BT Fibre was 12 month Dec 2017 .
Plus 12 month deals show on the comparison sites .

Somehow i thing we have been here before in recent times .

onomatopoeia99

michaels wrote: »

There is a regulator, ofcom, what are they doing to protect the consumer from this sort of abuse? :mad:

There are ISPs with one month terms, there are ISPs that don't have introductory discounts, don't do cashback sites and don't haggle.

You are not obliged to go with an ISP that requires a long contract term.

mije1983

While you may 'agree' to an 18 month minimum term, the reality is you probably won't have to see it out anyway as most ISPs put their prices up (at least) annually.