I don't know why internet providers don't value their existing customers, offering only the cheapest deals to new customers, but you can play hard ball with them.

  1. Call them within the 30-day no-exit-fee cancellation period and talk about your contract ending
  2. Wait for them to offer you a shitty deal. Sound disappointed, make sure they can hear you clicking and typing, and talk about looking for other options instead. Thank them for their time, and amicably end the call.
  3. Wait a few days.
  4. Someone will call you back and offer you a less shitty deal. Make it clear that price is the main issue, and express interest in their slower packages. Get them to go as low as they can possibly go on a slower package. Sound unconvinced.
  5. Start lamenting about the current package, wistfully talking about how you wish things could remain as they are and that you don't want to keep changing providers every 2 years.
  6. Wait for them to offer the best shitty deal on your current package, and express interest. If they refuse to budge any lower on price, get them to throw in an extra like a public IP4 or something.

all 24 comments

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[–] 19 points 3 days ago

The problem is I can't be fucked to do any of that

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  • [–] 7 points 3 days ago (1 child)
    1. Check MSE or whatever price comparison site for the best deal
    2. Call the current company and ask them to match it
    3. If they don't, switch to the cheep deal

    Probably less effort that going back and forth on the phone!

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  • [–] 6 points 3 days ago (6 children)

    In the past you could talk on the phone with retentions team and get a good deal but that's gone away now. Now my wife and I just swap every 2 years and take the new customer deals.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 3 days ago (5 children)

    I'm hesitant to switch because the new ones are always an unknown; e.g. they might bundle hidden fees where you're not expecting it. At least with the devil you know, there's some peace of mind

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  • [–] 7 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    OFCOM have pretty much made it so hidden fees can't be put on any broadband contract.

    Your provider has to tell you

    • The overall price per month (including addons like TV or landline, line rental must be included in this figure)
    • The expected average speed for your package for your area
    • How much your fee will rise each year (this is capped at £3 per year while in-contract)

    I'd recommended using MoneySavingExpert to compare deals (other price comparison sites are usually untrustworthy), and they often throw additional stuff like supermarket vouchers too

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    I think you should be more careful with the existing one. Your assuming that nothing has changed in the fine print when if I understand he situation correctly, your signing a new contract with the current supplier. As in new t&C's potentially. At least new customer acquisition is mildly incentivised to be plain about their billing what with the cooling of periods etc that exist.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago (4 children)

    I can't be bothered to do all that so I just decided fuck all of them as every wired provider is like that. Using mobile data instead and the only time I had an issue was when my card expired and I forgot to update it then my internet dropped out. They sorted it pretty quickly when I called them to switch over to my new card.

    At the time my phone had no data at all. Now its got 3GB so I could just use that and do it online.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    I did something like that in the beginning. My current router has a USB port, so I tether my phone data to it and spread it over the house via Wifi. It wasn't great for zoom calls, but it really wasn't that bad to work with 99% of the time otherwise!

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago* (2 children)

    Surprised about zoom calls. I worked from home for years with it using teams and never had a problem. Can even play online games just fine.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    I think it depends how congested the phone tower is. Even now, some days its great (~2Mbit) other days not so much (<100kb). I found it too unreliable for conference calls

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  • [–] 3 points 22 hours ago

    I got sick of this exact charade, so I ended up buying a 5G router plus an unlimited data Lebara SIM, and that's my home internet now. No more 2-year contract with mid-term price hikes; no more negotiating shitty deals. Just flat £25 monthly subscription that I can end at any time without cancellation fees.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    I've been using a Three 5G broadband deal for the last 3 to 4 years. I bought an external antenna and it works great. Occasionally Three can struggle with loads but mostly I have all the bandwidth I need. It was £24 a month on a monthly rolling basis (£20 if a 1/2 year package was bought) but think it's £25.50 now or something. Still loads cheaper than what I was paying before for proper broadband.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    I saw some deals in that direction, but I'm sticking with OpenReach (shitty company, loads of gotchas you have to watch out for) with £26 for 80Mbps Fibre.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    One of the tipping points for me to go 5G is that no matter which provider I used I kept getting the same type of faults and they couldn't fix it. New lines, changing master sockets, etc. multiple times. Something was wrong some where so I thought fuck it, not paying all that money for a shitty line which breaks all the time.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 day ago

    Oh for sure -- I actually have a bit of a fox problem, and they do seem to have a knack for chewing on glass fiber... whenever the internet goes down I flip a coin and wonder if it's my provider or the foxes haha

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    I just get the fastest service, BT reseller lines don't provide the best speeds. No real discount on price, but it's reasonable for what I get, and when I've called their 24 hour service line they were excellent.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 days ago (1 child)

    I had the fastest in my last contract, but who genuinely needs 1Gbps download? I'm not a torrent seeder, I stream most things instead of download, and in a 2 person household it's way overkill, and if I do download something big, I'm more than happy to wait 24 hours for it to finish

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago

    If I wanted to haggle I’d buy my internet from an arabian souk

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