Customers of UK ISP PlusNet Braced for September 2015 Price Hikes

Low cost Internet provider PlusNet has announced that a raft of new price rises and hikes will hit customers of their fixed line phone and calling services from 2nd September 2015, with both standard line rental and annual pre-paid line rental saver services seeing some of the biggest increases.

In fairness it should be said that PlusNet are one of the few providers, at least among the big boys, that keep their line rental charges at a lower level for longer. Put another way, the current price for standard line rental from PlusNet is £15.95, yet almost all of the other major ISPs have been running at between £16.40 to £16.99 per month for many months.

Never the less customers who cross paths with PlusNet’s Updated Price Guide page won’t fail to notice the big coloured notice, which details the following price rises. We suspect that many of them will also be distinctly less forgiving of it all.

Prices changes – 2nd September 2015

• Line Rental will increase from £15.95 per month or £15.99 per month to £16.99 per month.
• Line Rental Saver will increase from £155.88 for 12 months to £185.88 for 12 months (for those customers signing up or renewing Line Rental Saver from 2nd September).
• Evening and Weekends will increase from £2.00 per month to £3.00 per month.
• Anytime with and without 25% off international destinations will increase from £5.00 per month to £6.00 per month.
• Anytime International 300 will increase from £7.00 per month to £7.50 per month.
• Our call set up fee will increase from 15p to 16p per call.
• Geographic calls to 01, 02 and 03 numbers will increase to 10p per minute and mobile calls to 13p per minute.
• Postage & Packaging will increase from £5.99 to £6.99 (excluding YouView+ set top box at £7.99).
• Our early termination charges will change. How much depends on your package.
• Some of our call rates will change.

As we’ve said above, this is really just about PlusNet bringing their prices into line with everybody else. Customers can perhaps take some solace from the fact that they’ll soon be paying 40p to £1 less per month again than rivals, when BT inevitable kicks off the next round of traditional line rental hikes in the coming months (this usually occurs around late July or August).

It’s worth pointing out that the underlying wholesale cost of line rental remains fairly flat, sitting as it does at around £10 per month. However ISPs have now grown somewhat accustomed to the marketing twist of masking price increases in broadband by moving the impact onto line rental, although we do see more broadband-only rises now too.

Mind you ISPs often state that part of their increases are linked to inflation, as well as the need to adapt their prices to the rising data consumption of end-users, as well as any increases in staffing and the cost of implementing new Government policies etc.

Indeed if the above holds true then it will be worth keeping an eye on the forthcoming BT price rises because inflation has been running at around 0% since January 2015. Plus under Ofcom’s rules for mid-contract price rises, existing customers who are still in contract when the changes hit may be able to exit penalty free.

Meanwhile whoever is running PR for PlusNet probably needs a poke. It’s perhaps better to get all your bad news out in one go than to spread it like a brutal shotgun blast. Lately we’ve also seen the ISP slash the upload speed on their 38Mbps Unlimited Fibre package from 19.5Mbps to 2Mbps (here) and soon after we learned they were scrapping 24/7 UK based phone support (here).