no loyalty offering for existing customers !

Hyperoptic sneakily bumped up my prices after 12 month offer expired without providing explicit notification this was happening.

Very underhand sales tactic. How comes existing customers don't get option to get a new 12 month promo ?

I might as well terminate and get a new contract under my partner's name !

It's only sneaky if they didn't explain up front that the promotion was only for a 12 month duration. If they did, then you got something cheaper as a promotion for being a new customer thus benefited. They could have charged you full price if you would have preferred?

People need to take responsibility for noting when deals and promotions come to an end and then proactively decide how to continue, if at all. In this day and age everyone wants spoon feeding and/or expects loyalty from companies - but it's too late, the American influence of capitalism at all costs has taken over.

Show no loyalty to companies (unless they show ethical behaviour, and / or provide you a service that exceeds expectations / quality). Companies will show you no loyalty, so your only option is to be a savvy purchaser and follow what's best for you and your requirements.

Our British cultural norms of being loyal has been taken advantage of by business in the main so you now need to play the game if you want to gain out of the market we are in. Do your research, search for best deals, threaten to leave, and ensure you do leave if they don't give you what you consider fair. It's a race to bottom, so make sure you are not squashed .

OFCOM agree, and by Feb 2020 broadband and mobile companies must send end of contract notifications to tell you about it.

BBC news article

Hi

You had a discount for the first year, not a price increase on the second year. They didn't bump prices up on the second year, you had reduced prices on the first year. It is a promotion for new customers, now you aren't a new customer and that promotion has ended.

Now of course the way this is spelled out to potential customers isn't always clear, and after 12 months of paying a reduced price that price becomes the norm so it is hard to swallow the price increase later. With hyperoptic you are tied more to them than a more traditional ISP using Openreach infrastructure where you you could swap to a different ISP and get a new customer promotion but keep a similar service and speed. This is no different though for people signed up to Virgin Media for example who face similar decisions.

At the end of the day Hyperoptic need to make a profit otherwise you'll have no fibre service from them at all, and I suspect for the first 12 months they made very little if any profit from you.

It's just the way it is these days, there is no reward for loyalty.

Regards

Phil

Looking at Hyperoptics pricing I would say your complaint is totally unwarrented

In reply to a post by HurdyGurdy:

Hyperoptic sneakily bumped up my prices after 12 month offer expired without providing explicit notification this was happening.

Very underhand sales tactic. How comes existing customers don't get option to get a new 12 month promo ?

It isn't a promo if it's default pricing?

It was made abundantly clear to you at the time of sign up that the promotional pricing was for 12 months. They'll be required to notify you of this in the near future however for now there was nothing sneaky about it and you had no price increase. A time limited promotion came to an end. Nothing more than that.

In reply to a post by HurdyGurdy:

How comes existing customers don't get option to get a new 12 month promo ?

They do. Did you contact Hyperoptic CS and ask before posting here?

My 12 months on 1Gbps at £60/month (12 month contract) came to an end in October and I didn't receive any offer email from Hyperoptic (perhaps because I had been a "Champion" and receiving the first 12 months for £0 - dunno).

However my neighbours DID receive an offer email giving them the option to stay on their current 12 month contract, or renewing at an even lower price (the current discounted "new customer" price). This left them scratching their heads wondering what the catch is - which is how I found out they'd received offer emails - but seemingly there isn't a catch. Which is nice.

I contacted Hyperoptic CS (via their web chat), asked if I could switch from my 12 month contract to the one month rolling contract at £46 and they said "sure, no problem".

As of November I've been paying £46/month for 1Gbps, saving me £14/month.

On one hand this is good on the other the consequence is likely lots more people staying locked into contracts, i.e. agreeing to new offer subject to another 12 month contract. This will make it harder for the newer providers trying to get new signups as they roll out into new areas.

@MrSaffron

This is the email one of my neighbours received on 28 October 2019:

https://i.imgur.com/hKUdJL9.png

It looks like Hyperoptic are locking people in to new 12 month "commitment periods" (either at their current price, or a lower discounted price) but is that unusual? BT were trying to do that with me all the time! Although they never offered me discounted prices for existing customers!

However as I say, it is also possible to switch to both a discounted price and rolling one-month contract so they're not holding existing customers to their existing contracts if they want to change to something more flexible (it costs £1/month more - £46 for 1Gbps rolling one month, rather than £45 for fixed 12 months).

I think the fact that this kind of behaviour - offering discounted deals to existing customers - is such a novelty that it confused many of my neighbours ("what's the catch?") and to be honest the email doesn't go out of it's way to explain why two different prices are being offered for the same deal...

Not unusual sort of offers at all, and what I expect from the fairness push.

With BT it has usually been a case of you having to ask, but that will be more proactive in 2020, but for those used to be good at haggling it may be harder when they offer essentially the same to everyone.

The danger area now is the added extras, i.e. when re-contracting adding little bits to incrementally raise the price. Standard shop trick, offer a discount but claw it back with adding extra bits e.g. upsell of Halo