Wildanet pricing.

Richmc

It's not often you hare complaints about price decreases but here's one, I signed up to Wildanet full fibre to house a few months ago £43 for 250Mb, site survey went Ok despite the two guys were more concerned about my dog being kept inside (she was) than doing their job, just looked around and left in a hurry. Day of install, first guy arrived and told me he wasn't informed the cable would have to cross the road so had to wait for second guy to arrive to proceed, eventually got the signal to the router established but had no clue how to get it on my home network so left me with it just connected to my main PC and left me to sort the rest. I also asked for the Phonelink+ all he did was left me with the hardware and said it would be live in a few days, that was it.

Now on to the pricing, after the three free months expired, I happily saw my first £43 disappear, happy to pay for good, reliable service, despite having to switch from UK Cheapest to IONOS for my domain hosting as the set up was not compatible with Wildanet. Had a browse on Facebook, only to see them advertising 1Gb for £19.99, that's four times the speed for half the cost of what I'm paying! Will they do anything to compensate me NO! so now I'm stuck in a two-year contract and although I have no alternative provider in my area and the contract is between just me and them, no third parties they say they are "unable" to vary the terms, am I p****d off, yes mightily, it's got to the point that they are so intransigent that I'm involving my local MP, Ben Maguire for assistance, please if anyone else is in the same situation get in touch with your MP to get a fair price.

Thank you, rant over, for now.

littleboo

£43 is a bit pricey for 250Mbps but if it's an AltNet with no competition, they can charge what they like.

You were obviously happy to sign up at the price you were offered, so frustrating as it is, they haven't done anything wrong

Woodstok2000

You signed a contract at a price you were happy with, they're delivering the agreed service at the agreed price.....frustrating as it is, I dont see much your mp is going to do here…

iniltous

I’m not sure what the problem is , you agreed to the £43 for 250Mb with the first 3 months free , no one held a gun to your head to sign up ( and presumably you were happy at the time with that deal otherwise why take it ) if they subsequently offer better deals to new customers that’s not really cause for complaint , even when the deal is much improved as far as price and speed , you presumably could quit (although it would be ludicrous to do so ) , pay the ETC , pause a while, then attempt to rejoin taking the new customer deal , 1Gb for £20 or realistically you see out the term you agreed to , at the price you agreed to , and then see what’s on offer ( perhaps you could get whatever the new customer offer is at that time possibly better than someone else is paying who is mid contract ) but they have no obligation to reduce your price just because a new customer today gets a better deal than you did , if you were an early adopter and keen to join , generally no inducement is needed for those type of customers they are already ‘hot to trot’ seduced by the extra speed , but after awhile those more resistant to change need a much better deal to consider this new provider especially if the extra speed is of no real benefit, hence the propensity for deals to get better not worse for these type of companies with no brand recognition.

In a nutshell , if opposite occurred and the new customer price was more than £43 , and the ISP contacted you stating they wanted more money from you as they feel you shouldn’t get a better deal than new customers , your response would be to tell them you had a contractual price and they can get lost , and TBH , that works both ways .

JSmithy45AD

@iniltous That's all well and good but it's not fair… ;)

@Richmc You say there are no other suppliers? Was this a house move then or did you simply not have broadband previously? Where did your original offer come from?

Richmc

@JSmithy45AD I'm in Cornwall, Wildanet was given the contract to supply high speed internet, we did have BB previously fibre to box from Sky that was 70MB for more than I'm paying now, that was the pull, no one else is able to offer high speed in Cornwall so they have a monopoly and seem to be making the most of it! These drastic price reductions and offer to new customers are ringing alarm bells, I wonder if they are going bust?

Rob5342

Why is nobody else offering it? If there is some sort of legal restriction then it would be worth taking to your mp about it, if it's because it's sparesley populated then that's just basic economics and they would have to charge more to make it viable.

If they are providing the service advertised then you have no grounds for complaint. This kind of approach is pretty typical with anything, hook in some people at a higher price, and use them to subsidise new customers at a lower price with the plan to move them to a higher price once their contract has expired.

Cisco001

I think sky use openreach? Is switching not available previously?

An alternative is Starlink, but that is not much cheaper.

JSmithy45AD

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82051618#Comment_82051618

Sky use Openreach and Cityfibre (where available) but the problem for the OP may be because they're rural/semi rural that Wildanet completed about 13,200 connections but walked away from roughly 7,700 remaining homes due to cost, despite using public money to subsidise it all (the government are talking to alternate suppliers I believe). Other suppliers can use the Wildanet infrastructure but they have to lease access from them. Perhaps it's just not viable for the other ISPs to reach what could be a small handful of homes.

According to AI at least, they have zero "exclusive" zones as they were funded by the public purse, so it looks likely that it's purely an economic decision.

AstonSmith

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82052974#Comment_82052974

Where I live they connected all the bigger, wealthier properties (including digging up a literal mile of road to connect one property) and ignored the poorer areas. It's easy to tell based on their little manhole covers.

They popped up a stall in the town centre a couple years ago, so I asked them when they were connecting my road… she replied "we don't have the answers to your technical questions". Asking when it's coming is a technical question apparently.

You'll be shocked to hear that they haven't installed it where I am. Joke of a company IMO.