UK ISP Home Telecom Adopt New Pricing Policy for Mid-Contract Hikes
Customers of internet provider Home Telecom, which is part of the wider Telecom Acquisitions (TAL) group that also includes several other UK ISP brands (No One, Leetline, Fleur Telecom, Eclipse Broadband etc.), have this week begun to receive emails notifying them of a change that will make their “annual price increase simpler“.
The email itself, which was also sent to customers on some of Home Telecom / TAL’s other ISP brands, didn’t include much in the way of detail and largely just redirected people to check their T&C documents. This is perhaps a bit unusual, as providers are normally expected to put a little more effort in to clearly communicating major changes, especially when it involves a price change (simply nudging people to read the small print isn’t always enough).
The provider’s previous T&C’s did include a policy on annual price rises, which increased prices each April by the “Retail Price Index (RPI) rate of inflation at that time“. But it appears as if Home Telecom uploaded a new set of terms on 1st October 2024 and are now notifying their customers about the change.
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Home Telecom’s Customer Email
Hello XXXXXXXXXXXX,
We’re getting in touch to let you know we’ve made some changes to our Terms and Conditions, specifically, making the annual price increase simpler. If you would like to read them click here, or visit our website, www.hometelecom.co.uk where a link can be found on the footer of every page.
These terms and conditions will be in effect from January 15th 2025. You don’t need to do anything, by using your service after that date you are agreeing to the new terms.
Thank you for being a Home Telecom Customer,
Kind Regards,
The Home Telecom Team
The new T&Cs, once you find the relevant reference to “7.12 Agreed Annual Price Adjustment“, actually don’t contain much detail and instead direct customers to hunt out the “Tariffs and Charges document on the website“. Oddly, Home Telecom chooses not to include a direct link to that document within clause 7.12 itself, but they do include several other links earlier on the same page (here).
The Tariffs and Charges document doesn’t, on the surface, do a particularly good job of clearly setting out what’s changed (i.e. no before vs after). But the bit on page 3 for “Annual Price Increase – We increase the price on all our tariffs on 1st April each year“, does include a solitary figure of £3, albeit without clarifying whether that’s £3 extra per year or £3 extra per month. We’ll assume it’s the latter because that’s in keeping with what other ISPs have been adopting. But HT could be doing a better job on the communication front here (i.e. next time, just put this all clearly in the email).
The situation did cause a bit of initial confusion for some of No One’s customers, as quite a few of them had not previously been subject to mid-contract hikes and were still within the minimum term of their original contracts. But the provider has since confirmed that the change is being applied to everybody and that customers “have a 30 day period where you can cancel without penalty due to these changes” (detail that should have been in their email).
“I just got through to Home Telecom CS again and they confirmed that all customers are having T&Cs changed. I was then transferred to Home Telecom retentions who confirmed ‘Right of Exit’ without Penalty as per Ofcom rules and have cancelled,” said Jon (HT customer) to ISPreview. A similar discussion also cropped up on Reddit, which confirms the same policy.
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Why the Change?
The new policy is of course intended to reflect Ofcom’s earlier move to BAN broadband ISPs and mobile operators from doing mid-contract price hikes that are linked to confusing inflation and percentage-based changes (here). BT, Plusnet, EE, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Virgin Media, Three UK and other providers have already adopted a similar approach, albeit with some variations.
The change was never designed to stop mid-contract hikes completely (it’s more about making future pricing clearer and simpler), but it did require providers to tell customers precisely what any future price increases would be when they sign-up “in pounds and pence“. This rules out changes to core subscription prices that are linked to unknown future inflation values or percentages.
For example, BT will also increase the monthly prices of their broadband customers by £3 from 31st March 2025. But this approach does have its flaws, such as with the fact that it will hit cheaper entry-level packages harder than more expensive ones (this is not very proportional). The fact that providers can specify a specific rise ahead of time will also do little to dampen calls for an outright ban on mid-contract hikes in favour of fixed term pricing.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Quite a change for those in a contract that didn’t have price increases as part of their deal. OK, they are able to leave, but given this was upload on 1st of October but only highlighted now, after Black Friday deals by many ISPs it’s doubly tough.
Customers will have to remember to a £3 to any headline price they see, almost immediately, as most ISPs are going to increase in April.
Why aren’t mid term rises half way through a contract? I.e. in the middle, now that they are not based on RPI figure release dates? Why can’t a percentage of contract price still be used, as long as it is shown with a £.p calculation for each tariff, keeping it fairer on those on lower speeds? However, if as stated, they know the increase is £3 they must know the total price and can just divide that by 24 / 18 /12 as appropriate.
> Why can’t a percentage of contract price still be used, as long as it is shown with a £.p calculation for each tariff, keeping it fairer on those on lower speeds?
They can, e.g. see what Tesco Mobile is doing.
Speaking of OFCOM, I don’t like the new price changes rules as they have green lit providers the ability to just put up the prices even at times when inflation is slowed. A great little earner for the providers.
I received this and it’s really annoying as I signed up to Noone internet because of a 24 month No mid term rises! I’d become increasingly annoyed at BT/EE inflation +% rises.
They now have“just a billing arrangement” (read that as taken over!) with Home Telecom and are changing the goal posts!
Can we not trust any company now!?
Yeah… That’s why I signed up with them for 12 months only. Guess I’ll leave them – as this is becoming increasingly anti consumer. That’s a bit of shame.
No, you can’t trust any company now. Its 2024 you know, corporate greed has no limits.
Thank goodness for that, they have been useless at everything, billing, customer service and now this forced contract change.
I jumped ship week before this email came in (4 months early, so with fees I guess), but I for one will be glad to see the back of them. It was last months double DD email notice for different dates (albeit they didnt actually take it twice) which I queried and got no response that was final straw for me.
Get out now while you can and its free.
One Touch Switch has been painless so far.
Pretty scummy to not even mention a price hike in the email… They are clearly hoping that most people won’t open the link to check what this is about.
It says a lot about Ofcom when they never intended to ban anti consumer contractual terms.
Changing from % based to fixed increase is the sort of thing you do when you want to give the impression you doing something without actually doing something.
As a customer they bought from Cuckoo I was thoroughly confused by their email, which pointed me to the full T&C, which as you point out didn’t send me to details of the price rise. I had no idea what was changed, what applied to me, or anything really. Couldn’t have been harder to try and understand if they tried.
Not following the guidelines for making T&C changes clear for consumers, and certainly not making the price rises clear to them, as I couldn’t find the info anywhere.
Glad I’ll be leaving them before April all being well.
It’s getting even weirder… Now the links in the email no longer work… That’s the email text by the way (I’m a No One Internet user):
Hello XXX,
We’re getting in touch to let you know we’ve made some changes to our Terms and Conditions, specifically, making the annual price increase simpler. If you would like to read them click here, or visit our website, http://www.hometelecom.co.uk where a link can be found on the footer of every page.
These terms and conditions will be in effect from January 15th 2025. You don’t need to do anything, by using your service after that date you are agreeing to the new terms.
Thank you for being a Home Telecom Customer,
Kind Regards,
The Home Telecom Team