Hello all, I have a query regarding the 2021 price increase. I've searched this forum and it seems this question has been covered on a number of occasions, but there doesn't seem to be one specific for my situation, which I shall explain and it may help other people in a similar scenario. If there is, apologies as I must have missed it.
If you have just taken out a new contract in the last few weeks, but then receive notification of a price increase, does it apply to the new contract, or could the notice have been generated before making changes to the account? I haven't yet seen a new bill post changes so do not know whether I have a fixed price deal or standard deal with £xx or xx% off. My last bill was for a higher amount than usual (due to no longer getting the promo price), my next bill is going to be lower than the new deal (to counteract my last overcharged bill, as it were), and then the third bill (and ongoing bills) are going to be at the new lower deal price until this new deal ends.
For more specific details, I had broadband only on a promotional price on an 18 month contract that ended in January 2021. When the next bill arrived it was at more or less the standard higher price and more than I was prepared to pay, so I called customer services with the intention of cancelling - I had already lined up 3 good deals with other companies. As a side note, being a long term customer since 2005, years ago I had various TV, broadband and landline packages but gave this up about 2 or 3 years ago as I rarely made use of the non free-to-air channels and did not need a landline.
So, back to my query. It's been about 2 weeks since I intended to cancel my broadband service, but upon speaking to customer services, I was offered a good deal on a new 18 month contract which I accepted. Then, yesterday a letter arrived advising that my bill is going up on 1st March.
Could this be just bad timing and my new promo price will in fact stay at the same for this new 18 month contract? If not, the increase is going to be 10% which does not seem justifiable and I will likely have to look elsewhere.
I've posted here because, although the customer services phone line was answered reasonably quickly when I wanted to leave, the line quality was poor and the operator had a fairly heavy non English accent so it wasn't the easiest conversation to understand. I also tried the web chat yesterday but gave up after nearly an hour of waiting for a human, and also tried today and again gave up are waiting about 2 hours for a human. The chat bots can only do so much to help! I realise most companies have reduced staffing levels to some degree and some maybe working from home what with all the Covid-19 restrictions on at the moment, so I felt this community could provide a definitive answer to my non-urgent query.
Thanks for reading if you managed to make it this far!