Prices may change during this period?

murphydavid

Thinking of changing my internet provider (or is it broadband provider?)
As you can tell I'm not very savvy with this.
MSE tool came up with NOW broadband 1 year contract
 In a bit of fairly small print I read "Prices may change during this period". 

Does this mean that after I take out the contract they can hike up the price and I am stuck with it for a year?
Thanks

Neil_Jones

Pretty much, yes.  But this is standard practice now in most provider's deals, Now TV is Sky in new colours and they've had it in their TV packages for a while too.

It'll pretty much make the whole "leave penalty free" thing redundant.

macman

Yes, they never have been fixed price contracts. You can normally leave without penalty if they increase above RPI though.
TT are the only telcoms provider offering fixed price deals, AFAIK.

JJ_Egan

Not sure about RPI and leaving  re Ofcom .

Eg BT are CPI  + x % March each year .That on all adverts and all contracts from August 2018 .

I read the following from Ofcom as entitled to cancel .

<The subscriber agrees and enters into a 24-month contract for services on terms that the core subscription price will be £10 per month. The contract also contains a term to the effect that the CP may increase the agreed core subscription price8 by up to a certain amount, percentage or index-linked level (such as RPI).9 Ofcom is likely to treat any exercise of the discretion to increase this agreed price during the fixed minimum term of the contract as a modification meeting GC9.6’s material detriment requirement.

murphydavid

Thanks. I never thought it would be so complicated.
I am with Sky at the moment and my main reason for wanting to change is the speed. Social media video chat keeps dropping in and out and I want to improve this. I thought the reason was I had purchased a slow package but now I'm not so sure because
When I go a step further in the selection process I now see

As you can see from my first image I selected an average speed off 63Mb but it is now indicating estimate of 23.1 - 37.3.
Surely if I select an average of 63 I should not be seeing numbers 23-37 = average 30 - Half of what I want and a min of 19 sounds ridiculous to me.
No explanation - would it be because of my location. I live mid Surrey. I can see one needs to be quite alert and not just accept the MSE compare results. 
If I can't actually get a fast speed because of my location then there is no point in paying extra for a fast speed packages. Is there?
When it comes down to it what I really want is advice on what I should purchase to allow me to video chat without constantly loosing the signal / line or whatever its called. 

milgo

The provider who currently provides your internet access do you know what package you are currently on with regards to speed?
Also when you are having problems with video calls dropping the connection are you using a mobile phone over your wireless connection?

JJ_Egan

As above .

Speed if measured over wifi is wrong  it needs to be measured via Ethernet cable close to the router and checked on router .

If their is a problem with ingoing cabling then moving to any OR ISP may do nothing , same cable etc .

murphydavid

milgo said:

The provider who currently provides your internet access do you know what package you are currently on with regards to speed?
Also when you are having problems with video calls dropping the connection are you using a mobile phone over your wireless connection?

I'm paying for: as advertised; it says - Sky Broadband Essential - Average download speeds of 11Mbps, it's great for browsing and email.
I just used GENIE to check my actual speed and it said Download = 3.38Mbps and Upload = 0.59Mbps. Also checked with fast.com and it said 3.4Mbps
The video calls are messenger (thats facebook); or Watsapp. Zoom which is a bit more consistent. All on an older iPad that does not have a sim.
Don't know how good a mobile would be as I don't often use it for that.
Thanks

murphydavid

JJ_Egan said:

As above .

Speed if measured over wifi is wrong  it needs to be measured via Ethernet cable close to the router and checked on router .

If their is a problem with ingoing cabling then moving to any OR ISP may do nothing , same cable etc .

Thanks.
Checking with an Ethernet cable. Not sure about that. I think I know there are Ethernet slots in the router and I presume I need a cable of "Ethernet to USB" because I am unaware of having Ethernet slots in my laptop.
I gave the speeds above using wifi to my PC.
The cable to my house is a wire from a telegraph pole. Unchanged for 30 years or more as far as I know. There are several houses the same. Then inside there is a wire several meters long that runs along the inside wall of my attached garage and under my floor to a telephone socket. A Sky engineer put in the router and checked it 2 years or so ago now and set up the WiFi and a Sky dish. I assumed the engineer would  have said something if my house phone wiring was faulty.
In passing I have a feeling that my internet has been slowly ramping down but that's just a gut feeling maybe I have just been expecting more from it.
To be honest I have only just started thinking about it. Up till Covid Video calls have not been so prominent and we have kind of just accepted the service and only ever thought about keeping the bills reasonable.  

Neil_Jones

Unless your laptop is more than about 20 years old (or its ridiculously thin), it's almost certainly guaranteed to have ethernet on it.  Some laptops tend to have an ethernet port with a little over/partial cover over it, you just move it to expand the full size of the port.

If you post your laptop model number somebody will be able to look it up and tell you whether it has ethernet or not.

JJ_Egan

Reads as a wifi problem rather than internet .

Log in to router and it should show what's going in .

How is the router connected to the BT master socket .