Updated Find the cheapest broadband discussion thread

[Deleted User]

Jan321 wrote: »

The £15 fee is called a cease fee and will still be charged after the 18 month period to terminate or cancel! Tat implies it will be charged if I change supplier andI've not had that in my terms and conditions with other suppliers?

It implies no such thing. You would be switching, not terminating or cancelling.

cashmonger

makara wrote: »

On a slightly different note, Sky are charging me a £10 "Admin fee" for renewing my TV for another 18 months - despite me also having Broadband and Phone-line with them running not-quite-in-parallel.

Viva Rip-off Britain.

That is nothing compared to the £150 and upwards admin fee cretinous letting agents charge.

Jan321

Sorry but I’m still confused 🤔 I’m entering a contract with the broadband supplier for a discounted package for 18 months, the terms, the way I read it, state that even after 18 months I will be charged a cease fee to leave that contract and that surely includes switching to another supplier as that is cancelling my current contract?
The idea is to find the best deal and then change when that deal ends to get another good deal.
If that charge is correct all I’m trying to say is shouldn’t it be included in the calculations showing the best value for money plans ?

JJ_Egan

If you feel that is wrong then contact MSE .

Inigo_Montoya

did anybody go for the shell broadband deal advertised on MSE
- it was supposed to be £14.99 per month with £60 bill credit a bit later

Ive just received my first months bill & its for £15.98 (probably £15.99 rounded down at a guess)

so they are charging a £1 more per month than advertised on MSE

makara

Inigo_Montoya wrote: »

did anybody go for the shell broadband deal advertised on MSE
- it was supposed to be £14.99 per month with £60 bill credit a bit later

Ive just received my first months bill & its for £15.98 (probably £15.99 rounded down at a guess)

so they are charging a £1 more per month than advertised on MSE

Maybe paper billing as opposed to paperless?

Inigo_Montoya

no its online billing

makara

Could be a yearly price hike, and perhaps you joined just as the price was about to go up. Worth contacting them to check though.

Ah - if this is your FIRST month, it could well be a pro-rata partial month charge (e.g. 1 whole month, and say 2 days of the previous billing month) - which in effect means NEXT month you should pay a bit LESS than £14.99.

Again contact them to check why exactly - but I think the above might be the reason.

Karen747

I keep an eye on the Cheap Broadband page and on Cashback sites and it really does seem that there is no competition anymore.

MSE and Moneysupermarket also seem to be complicit in this, all the offers are with vouchers etc that use decision.tech et al (part of MoneySupermarket).

Previously each company would have offers, from the famous £5 per annum Sky offer to TalkTalk at £24 per annum and so on. There were also plenty of genuine and really cheap offers, MSE also used to do what it called a blagged link where it gave up some of the commission to give us an even better deal.

Now the few players left in the industry seem to agree to take it in turns in offering the same crap deals on a rotation basis where the best offers seem to be £10 for ADSL and £20 for Fibre BUT these deals are loaded with hidden charges or price hikes when they are over.

Plusnet gets quoted at £10 odd a month BUT you have to pay a year's line rental and claim some stupid voucher and this thread has plenty of people who complaint they do not get paid out.

Previously you knew you got the deal because if you went to Sky for example the price would be there as you sign up.

Now OFCOM says these companies have to write to you with the best deal you can get, well they and the CMA need to make this market functional FIRST, otherwise it will be pointless.

Surely the problem is that one company owns or controls

BT wholesale
Plusnet
BT
EE

BT wholesale has to be the starting point because it gets these companies talking to each other in a way that allows them to have a nod and wink about not competing. The charges imposed also make the market less competitive and what is this crap about charging people to quit broadband when they do not change supplier. That is what you call double dipping, they charge the outgoing and the incoming customers for the same thing. We live in a world of virtual networks, by now this should all be done by software and if not then BT should pay for it for not investing appropriately.

My employer recently had a big re-organisation, the teams were split and merged, I saw the IT department literally drag and drop people from different teams, offices and regions into new networks, they said in old days they would have had to send engineers in the same way BT do.

EE used to compete a lot and by doing so made the others compete, now all that seems to have happened is that prices have been inflated in order to APPEAR to offer a discount.

Consider the crap deal by Plusnet, it will go from £10 a month to £18.99+10.99 after the 12 months is up for BASIC BROADBAND.

The market has changed dramatically in that many many people no longer want a telephone line, so WHY are we being charged this FAKE line rental. That FAKE charge has been price hiked everytime OFCOM tightened the rules, e.g. on 0845 or 0345, but we are not even taking calls.

Well you can go to Vodafone, they do not charge for line rental, except that the price of the BB is hiked.

We get so called new players such as Shell and the Post Office but they all suffer from the same problem, mostly they are rebadged services via BT Wholesale.

OFCOM need to get off their fat back sides and fix this market, just another bloated board of "gig" executive directors claiming a pay cheque for doing sweet FA.

[Deleted User]

Karen747 wrote: »

I keep an eye on the Cheap Broadband page and on Cashback sites and it really does seem that there is no competition anymore...


Consider the crap deal by Plusnet, it will go from £10 a month to £18.99+10.99 after the 12 months is up for BASIC BROADBAND.

The market has changed dramatically in that many many people no longer want a telephone line, so WHY are we being charged this FAKE line rental. That FAKE charge has been price hiked everytime OFCOM tightened the rules, e.g. on 0845 or 0345, but we are not even taking calls...

So what you're saying is that prices have gone up (the same as everything else)?

If you don't have a telephone line how do you think the broadband will arrive?