Cancel contract due to Roaming Pass price increase?

[Redmi]

When signing up to your 24-month mobile contract recently, the deciding factors were the price of the plan itself, as well as the price of the addons advertised as benefitting EE users. Your recent Roaming Pass price announcement, increasing the price from £15 to £25 per month from October is not only not in line with the Consumer Price Index, but is also a price increase outside of your annual price increase in March.

As such, please confirm EE customers can cancel their contracts without incurring penalties.

[gusSylvaticus]

Disagree. A right to exercise an option at a given price is a contractual right. Obviously 9 people out of 10 (at a guess) take cost of EU roaming into account when comparing contracts, so the pretence that this is extraneous to the contract as a whole is just wrong.

Anyway I am requesting the cancellation of my contract, and taking this to Ofcom if I get a refusal.

[Chris_B]

@gusSylvaticus   The daily rate hasn’t changed the add on that you don’t have to purchase that isn’t part of your contractual agreement with EE has changed.    

  If you still disagree

     Where in the contract agreement that you agreed too does it state you have to purchase this add on. 

[gusSylvaticus]

OK. 

If I agree to sell you 10 tins of beans for £3 and as many tins of tomatoes as you want at 30p a tin, both parts of the agreement are contractual. The second part is optional from your pov (as many as you want), that doesn't make it optional from mine. I can no more say that tomatoes are suddenly 40p a tin than that beans are £4 for 10. The fact that you don't have to ask for any tomatoes if you don't want to is irrelevant.

Would it be rude to ask whether you work for ee? 

[Chris_B]

@roydancer   Then you would be breaking the contract agreement,  you have clearly started as many tins of tomatoes at 30p that’s part of the contract that you’re offering.  Unless you give notice of the increase.   It’s not optional it’s part of the contract that you offered and I agreed too. 
 
 The add on that EE offer you isn’t part of the contract agreement.  If you take this into account when you take out a contract then you’ve took that into consideration by yourself.  

 And no I don’t work for EE.  

what you’re stating is that a petrol station has to inform you when they are increasing prices just because you use that petrol station.    There is not contractual agreement with that petrol station, which is why they don’t need to inform you, just like add ons that you don’t have to purchase its your choice to purchase it.  Just like you don’t have to use the same petrol station. 

You might want to look at this as this is the T&Cs of the contract 

 As you can see the £2.29 daily rate is part of your contractual agreement the add on that you don’t have to purchase isn’t. 

[gusSylvaticus]

Yes, but your analogy falls down immediately. I don't have a rolling monthly contract with the petrol station, nor Ofpet supervising my dealings with it. The petrol station can't say I have to use its petrol for the next two years before switching to BP. I do not have a contract to pay so much per month for unlimited petrol with the option to buy an add on for a months worth of engine oil. And so on.

You don't have to believe this, and I certainly don't intend to identify myself to prove it, but I qualified as a solicitor in the 1980s and have spent much of my career advising people how contracts work. This is a beans and tomatoes contract. The option to extend to foreign countries is contractual and enforceable.

[Chris_B]

@roydancer   The £2.29 that is part of the contractual agreement hasn’t changed and is enforceable if you choose to use the device on cellular. 

 Add ons are optional not enforceable you don’t have to purchase it.   To use the device abroad on cellular you have agreed to pay the daily rate of £2.29 as stated in the T&Cs that you have agreed too, you have however an option that you don’t have to purchase if you choose not to to purchase it.    The add on might mean you need to pay less if you do choose to purchase it instead of the contractual £2.29 daily rate.

And if you qualified as a solicitor, then you should understand that options ( add ons ) are not enforceable are not contractual and you’re not obligated to purchase them and are not part of a contractual agreement that you have agreed to.   You might want to read your contract before you take it out as any good solicitor would know what a contract agreement is.  

[gusSylvaticus]

I'm not really getting through to you. 

Options are asymmetrical. I am not obliged to ask for them. If I do ask for them, the grantor is obliged to comply with my request. That's how they work.

[Chris_B]

@gusSylvaticus   Has the contract £2.29 daily rate changed?   This is what you agreed too when you took out the contract and is part of the agreement you agreed too.  

  I’ll answer that for you.     
  NO IS HASN’T CHANGED.   
 
 If the daily rate was to change then yes EE would need to give 30 days notice of that change as it’s a change of the contract agreement.      

 
 Options for add ons are just that options that you don’t have to purchase and you are not obligated to purchase them,  if you was obligated to purchase them it would be in the contract thats agreed upon.      
Do you agree with that ?  Thats basic contract law right there. 

oh and I think a solicitor might know that Ofcom don’t deal with individual complaints.   Perhaps you need to brush up a bit on what you think you know. 

[gusSylvaticus]

Sorry, you just don't understand what an option is, and I am giving up on trying to explain. Go back to the beans and tomatoes example and ask yourself whether the seller has more of a right to raise the price of tomatoes than to raise the price of beans. The answer is no. The end.

[Chris_B]

@gusSylvaticus   I recommend you read the contract you agreed too.     An option to purchase something that isn’t mentioned with in your contract doesn’t mean it forms part of that contract agreement regardless of how you think it does.     

And to go back to the beans and tomatoes unless you state in the contract that the pricing increase might happen during the term of that contract then you cannot increase price of that contract,   And the contract that you offered clearly states the price of beans and tomatoes.

The contract offered you clearly states a roaming charge of a daily rate of £2.29. It doesn’t state any optional extras or add ons that you’re not obligated to buy are also included at a set fee for duration of that contract. 

oh and to be totally clear, I think this £25 is a rip off and I don’t agree with it.