Which ISPs put up prices every year and still let you cancel penalty free?

WillPS

In the past few years I've enjoyed quite a few cashback/reward deals for taking out broadband only to then be able to cancel penalty free a few months later due to the ISP jacking their prices up.

In the past BT and EE were prime candidates for this, but I notice in recent years they've managed to come up with a way of preventing this ability to leave contractually. Plusnet also follow the same pattern, which makes sense being in the same group.

I also note that TalkTalk appear to be going in the same direction.

My question is, which ISPs haven't done this? Sky/Now appeared to let customers leave penalty free with their hikes this year, as did Shell. I can't see anything about Vodafone price rises in the last year either but they appear to have allowed customers to leave penalty free in 2019, are they still 'safe'?

I appreciate this detail is all there in the T&Cs but if somebody happens to know that'd be most helpful.

redux

Most contracts seem to be either 12 or 18 months.

You can leave after that anyway, irrespective of what the monthly price is doing.

The discounts or cashback seem to have been gradually reducing, but it may still be worth swapping each time.

armith

Ah, but what the poster wants is to sign up to an ISP and get the cashback, then, when the price rise comes in three months later leave and sign up again with another provider and get more cashback. BT (group of companies) have latched on to this and are baking in a 5 to 8 percent rise as part of the contract terms and conditions.

Apart from TalkTalk I don't think this a widespread practice (yet) so the original poster needs to try to work out who's going to put the price up - but it's not something really to rely on as a way of getting free broadband! The likes of A&A/Zen/Giganet don't seem to offer cashback anyway so it's basically taking a punt on Now (who don't seem to raise their prices for in-contract customers), Sky (probably the same), Vodafone, Virgin, Shell.

I'd say that the best idea would be to pick a provider that provides the service at the price your happy with - check their T&Cs for this get-out and treat any early release as a bonus rather than a plan. Better than signing up for a company that is more expensive than you want and hoping for an unexpected price rise?

JJ_Egan

It is becoming more prevalent amongst the cheaper end .

Difficult to give such a list as it would mean doing the work to find them advising OP he goes to sign up only to find T&Cs have changed .

Add in the fact that Openreach have been allowed to raise prices in 2021.

onomatopoeia99

armith said:

The likes of A&A/Zen/Giganet don't seem to offer cashback anyway

I've been with A&A 18 years and they've never put the price up in that time.  It did go down (a lot) at one point when I was on ADSL and the only change in the last few years was a recent 150% increase in the amount of download each month at the same price.  I didn't use even 25% of the old limit so this hasn't made a lot of difference!

WillPS

armith said:

Ah, but what the poster wants is to sign up to an ISP and get the cashback, then, when the price rise comes in three months later leave and sign up again with another provider and get more cashback. BT (group of companies) have latched on to this and are baking in a 5 to 8 percent rise as part of the contract terms and conditions.

Apart from TalkTalk I don't think this a widespread practice (yet) so the original poster needs to try to work out who's going to put the price up - but it's not something really to rely on as a way of getting free broadband! The likes of A&A/Zen/Giganet don't seem to offer cashback anyway so it's basically taking a punt on Now (who don't seem to raise their prices for in-contract customers), Sky (probably the same), Vodafone, Virgin, Shell.

I'd say that the best idea would be to pick a provider that provides the service at the price your happy with - check their T&Cs for this get-out and treat any early release as a bonus rather than a plan. Better than signing up for a company that is more expensive than you want and hoping for an unexpected price rise?

Exactly this, thank you. I might try Shell next, they appear to put prices up every January for customers who joined before September.

I accept it is gambling a bit but I'd never take out an agreement I couldn't afford to pay out on if the gamble didn't pay off.

If the service is bad, then in a way that's even better as you've got another vector for getting out of contract early (done that once with TalkTalk). Although on the other hand having a reliable connection is also important...