Upgrade Nonsense

[Photophrenic]

I think, having been a customer with EE ever since the company first began, I might finally be reaching a point of switching to a new provider. I have my whole families phones on my EE account and we received a text that my wifes contract was coming to an end and that we could upgrade or the price would change, increasing by £12 to £54/month. When I spoke to CS I explained that I was firstly confused that considering the phone was now paid off why is the cost then going up not down to which no explanation was offered. Then came the conversation on upgrades......

I told them she only needs the lowest data use as she is almost never on the go with it and so we agreed on a 5gb data package, unlimited calls and texts. For a lavender 256gb iphone 17 standard they tried to charge me £82/month on a 36 month contract - which as you can imagine had me choke a bit. I told them absolutely not, just change the phone to a sim only contract which was done for £22/month.

I had to do the maths after the call as it sounded like a con, and it turns out it very much was. Take the £22 off that £82 contract they wanted me on and we are at £60/month for the phone. Over 36 months that has me paying £2160 for a phone you can buy outright for  £866.64 on their website - an inflation of £1293.36 - close to buying the phone three times over.

Suffice to say I have opened a dialog with Ofcom regarding both the contract increase after the phone has been paid and the pricing of the new phone contracts actually being in breach of regulations (which they said on initial glance would be when I called their helpline service). I post this as an advisory for anyone upgrading or coming to end of a contract - most of what EE are seemingly offering is quite possibly very misleading, or cetainly falling within a very broad grey area.

[XRaySpeX]

EE's traditional mobile contracts have no concept of paying off the handset. You agreed to pay the same price for the full duration of the total bundled contract. There may however be a 10% discount 3 months after the end of min. term. You may always choose to upgrade your contract to a cheaper SIM-Only contract from the last 30 days of your contract term.

OFCOM don't handle individual complaints. You can make a formal complaint to EE & if you don't get satisfaction after 8 weeks or come to a deadlock you can take it to EE's ADR provider. See Complaints code of practice and here is the Complaints Form .

[Photophrenic]

I think they do have a concept of paying off the handset because the CS rep I spoke to talked a lot about flex-pay contracts and how they specifically are essentially 'renting' the handset and at no point do you actually own it which I immediately brushed off. That though suggests the non-flex contracts are 'buying' the handset as you do own it at the end of it. If there is a component of the bill that is paying for your EE services then the rest is paying for the phone by proxy regardless of anything else the CS might say.

[XRaySpeX]

Yes, on Flexpay you get 2 contracts, a fixed term contract for the handset & an open-ended contract for the airtime/SIM. But I'm assuming your current contract isn't 1 of those, but a traditional open-ended contract at the same price point.

Such mobile contracts don't just end, just the min. term expires. They are not fixed term contracts. After the min. term they just carry on at the same price point on a rolling 30-days' notice basis until you explicitly cancel, upgrade or port your no. away. There may however be a 10% discount 3 months after the end of min. term. You may always choose to upgrade your contract to a cheaper SIM-Only contract from the last 30 days of your contract term.

[Photophrenic]

So to sum up what they are offering

Sim + Phone - £82/month total of £2952 over the 36 months

Sim only + Full Buy Phone - £22/month + £866.64 total of £1658.64

This leads to them charging £1293.36 extra to pay for the phone over 36 months - 149% interest on it, an effective APR over 36 months of 98.5%...there is no way to sugar coat that one.