When should take out a sim only contract with EE to avoid the coming annual RPI increment?

scotlandstreet

Hi,

I just left Vodafone due to awful service (was an expensive phone linked contract which I just paid off). I'm currently on a rolling contract with Smarty. I would like to move to EE due to some long winded mobile performance reasons...

My question is, when can I take out a new 12 (or 24 month if I think it would be worth it, financially) month contract to avoid the hurt of the RPI increase coming in spring? I don't want to take it out now as I assume it will increase in feb/mar/apr by 12-18% which is obviously undesirable. I can probably cope on smarty in the mean time (though their service is poor in my town but not my work - hence the EE plan). When do they usually put their prices up according to RPI/CPI (whichever it is) to avoid the 2023 round of increases?


Thanks

CKhalvashi

I believe January 15 was the original cut off date, I had this issue sorting something the week before it a few years ago when luckily it wasn't declared in the call so we managed to get it adjusted for a year.

EE by phone are now asking you to confirm you've read documents confirming the increase. Happy to dig these out later to try to find the exact cut off if you need. If you're changing plans with them, ask to speak to retentions and benchmark against another carrier. This is by far the best way to get a good deal as in general they will price match without a fight once they've verified the offer.

sully1311

I believe the cutoff is the 1st March so anytime between then and the 31st March. 

HaroldWhistler

scotlandstreet said:

Hi,

I just left Vodafone due to awful service (was an expensive phone linked contract which I just paid off). I'm currently on a rolling contract with Smarty. I would like to move to EE due to some long winded mobile performance reasons...

My question is, when can I take out a new 12 (or 24 month if I think it would be worth it, financially) month contract to avoid the hurt of the RPI increase coming in spring? I don't want to take it out now as I assume it will increase in feb/mar/apr by 12-18% which is obviously undesirable. I can probably cope on smarty in the mean time (though their service is poor in my town but not my work - hence the EE plan). When do they usually put their prices up according to RPI/CPI (whichever it is) to avoid the 2023 round of increases?


Thanks

Unless you specifically need an EE signal - Just a suggestion, but if you have a good Vodafone signal at your workplace, then you could consider Lebara who use the Vodafone 4G/5G network, but have fixed prices without the RPI increase at all and flexibility of rolling contracts like Smarty. There was apparently a 1p a month offer discussed here a while ago, but a quick Google search suggests fairly good pricing for various SIM only products. That way you'd have the Vodafone signal without the awful customer service.