Ofcom enforces ban on ‘nasty surprise’ mid-contract telecoms price rises

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/17/ofcom-ban-nasty-surprise-mid-contract-telecoms-price-rises?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky&CMP=bsky_gu

Posted by zeros3ss

7 comments

  1. Why anyone would ever order the nasty surprise is beyond me

  2. It’s always been wild to me that the contract can be changed by the other side at any moment and I am bound by it.

  3. From Friday, wording of that type will be swept away and inflation can no longer be used to calculate the new billing arrangement. Instead, the contract may typically state that the monthly price is “£30 until 31 March 2025, increasing to £31.50 on 1 April 2025 [and] £33 on 1 April 2026”.

  4. It’s about time, can’t believe that it was ever allowed that one party to a contract had unilateral right to change the terms of that contract

  5. This makes no difference in real terms. They can still change the contract and charge you more, they now just need to tell you how much it’s going to be.

    The whole thing is insane. If I sign up to a 2 year contract, that should be it.

  6. I don’t get how we’ve reached a point where you can sign a “contract” with a provider, then they can change the terms of that “contract” midway through the term without incurring some kind of penalty.

    Because while it (evidently) isn’t the case, I think the general understanding is that if you & I sign a 3-year contract, the point is that we’re both, in good faith, signing up to **maintain the status quo** for 3 years.

    I’m pretty sure if I sign a 3-year contract with a provider, I can’t go back 18 months in and insist to pay less, without incurring a fee!

  7. Vodafone have been taking the absolute piss with this recently. It used to just be RPI. Then they changed it to CPI (a slightly lower number) + 3.5% (way more than inflation at the time). They then increased that to 3.9% despite inflation already running at over 10%, so a couple years ago they were jacking up prices by almost 15%!

    A lot of people are paying £50 a month for their contracts so that would represent an extra £7 a month or so which is just absolutely shameless profiteering and price gouging considering their contracts aren’t cheap anyway.

    So yeah – excellent that Ofcom decided to stop this shit, but no idea why it took so many years.

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