Gigaclear, £51pcm existing customer, only £19 for a new customer

longwalks1

As above, we've had Gigaclear in our village for a couple of years now and its been great.  We originally signed up and had a long wait (3 years) until enough people had signed up to warrant the installation of it.  Currently paying £51 pcm for a true and very reliable 300mbps.  Come to the end of my contract and its still £51 to renew, yet for new customers on their website its only £19 pcm.  
I did email them and ask why, and would they do any deal to stay with them (we have no other fibre supplier to choose from) and was offered £5 a month discount, so still £46 a month.

Is there any way I can sign up as a new customer?  Surely they cant charge almost 3 times as much to existing customers for the same service?

iniltous

£19 or whatever they charge for a new customer is a loss leader , if that were their regular price  they wouldn’t stay in business very long , or the service would be unusable, it not a price that is sustainable long term , like most Alternative Networks, the initial price is an incentive just to get customers on board , they then hope that when the price goes up to a realistic level , customer inertia will prevail and customers will remain, especially if there is no alternative anyway .

IMHO you need to reassess they way you look at this , it’s not that they charge existing customers 3x more than new customers , it’s they offer new customers a 2/3rds discount for a limited time to get their business , it’s naive to think £19 is a price at which they make a profit , and company’s that continually fail to make a profit go bust .

daveyjp

Downside of only having one provider.  Until very recent upgrades by Openreach and Cityfibre our only option was Virgin FTTC, which we had had for many years, but prices were getting silly,

Once competition arrived prices fell dramatically and two years on they are now cheaper than I signed up to.  Last time I checked 150 meg was from about £20 a month 1 gig for an average of £25 a month for 2 year contract.

 Speeds have also increased and over 2 gig is now available.

littleboo

Gigaclear, like most AltNets, are losing money and have large debt. they need the cash

iniltous

Don’t know where you were looking but for me VM 125 is £27 for new customers, £54 if you are daft enough to move onto the rolling contract ….obviously there is no harm in anyone asking for a deal , and as stated if there is competition a reduction to near a new customer price is usually negotiable, but the OP example £19 for 300Mb is unrealistic, the new customer VM equivalent for 300Mb is £37 , which is probably a ballpark target figure for that speed for those inside a minimum term , so still less than the £46 the OP was offered , but if there is no competition for GC there is no requirement for them to go that extra mile and knock off the extra £9…..I’m not saying £46 is good , simply that £19 is unrealistic 

M25

Be grateful you have such a good service and pay what the company need to function.

longwalks1

Choose a Package  £19 for 300mbps

flaneurs_lobster

Do you have a partner or other permanent resident at your address?

This might work. Cancel your contract. Wait a reasonable period of time, 3 months should do it. Get other person to apply as new customer. Bingo! cheap deal.

Or you could just pay what seems to be a reasonable price to renew the reliable service you have.

tasty_snacks

Looking at this again as I've had an email from Gigaclear to increase the monthly payment (would be £52 pcm, versus £25 pcm under the current 'new customer' deal). 

Initially I was miffed, and strongly considered going down the new customer route (signing up in different name etc). 

But, even if that worked (and I don't see why it wouldn't), there would be a potential supply disruption. 

I also checked their accounts at Companies House. They're making some fierce losses, but are experiencing significant revenue growth. The growth will be from new customers, whose rentals will assumedly double after 18 months, which might just about make them profitable.

As Gigaclear is basically the only reason my wife and I can work from home, or that the family can stream online content, I've decided to suck it up as a price to pay for Gigaclear's continued existence!!

I presume the infrastructure is a fixed cost to Gigaclear (i.e. it doesn't cost Gigaclear any more to provide me with 900mb as opposed to 400mb) so I'll give them a call and see if I can at least upgrade for the same cost (or maybe a few quid off). 

iniltous

Providing 900Mb costs more than 300Mb , but a relatively small cost ( in relation to  other costs ) plus putting you on it without any other backhaul changes just means more potential network congestion, so other users potentially suffer as you get to consume more of the shared bandwidth, so they may consider it , as it’s relatively cost neutral to them , but as you apparently have no realistic alternative, something they also will be aware of , they may say no , you want 900Mb you pay for 900Mb …as stated , the initial monthly amount won’t have covered their costs , the new monthly cost better reflects what the service costs to provide .. 

quartzz

I can confirm that the £19 is now £21, and that after 15 months or so, the price increases to it's "normal" price of approx £45 (don't quote, that's off the top of head). The £21 figure is a "discounted" figure. what happens after 15 months.....I'm not sure. maybe I'll try ending and re starting cntrct.