TalkTalk may have broken the happy feelings that the recent sunshine has
produced for people with the news that they are to increase the price of voice
line rental and their broadband packages for new customers with immediate
effect.
For the millions of existing customers the new price pricing comes into
effect on the 1st May 2014, and the firm will be sending out price change
notifications from 27th March, giving them 30 days notice of the price rise and
the option to leave the service for another provider at no charge.
We have updated the full suite of
TalkTalk products on our listings, but a short summary follows:
- Voice line rental increases from £15.40 to £15.95 per month. Value line
rental will be the monthly equivalent price of £11.75. - Simply Broadband increases from £2.50 per month to £3.50 per month, with
the £1 price rise trickling upwards to the fibre options too. - Essentials TV, with its non-recording YouView box will increase from £7.50
to £8.50 per month. - Plus TV, will increase from a standard price of £15.50 per month to £18.50
per month, but as of 5th April the Sky channels Sky 1, Sky Sports News, Sky
Living and Sky Arts will be included as part of the package. - Out of bundle call charges will increase from 9 pence per minute to 11.5
pence. This is a single rate that applies to all UK landline and mobile calls
from 1st June. - Anytime calls bundle will reduce in price from £5.50 to £5.
- The £5 Mobile minutes boost is now unlimited, where it was previously
capped at 1000 minutes per month. - 15% Speedy Payment Discount for customers who pay their bill in the first
day. The discount applies to anyone who pays their bill within 24 hours of
notification, and if you are a direct debit customer and pay directly your
direct debit will not be taken from your bank account that month.
As well as the price rises in the wholesale costs for full LLU triggering these rises the
increasing usage from TalkTalk customers, the need to keep investing in core
network capacity may be behind some of the rises. Network usage regularly
reaches 990 Gbps (Gigabits per second) and recently reached its highest ever
peak breaking 1 Tbps (1 million Mega bits per second). The average usage across
the network works out at 34 GB per month, and is 46% higher than 12 months
ago.
Update 5:45pm Change to the speedy payment discount, it
appears it can also be used by those with a direct debit setup by paying the
bill ahead of the date that the direct debit was due. The full TalkTalk
notification page giving details of these latest changes and previous price
changes is now available at sales.talktalk.co.uk/pricing/info/pricing-notification. For those
considering not setting up a direct debit and exploiting the speedy discount,
remember that without a direct debit setup there will be a £4.50 per month
surcharge.
Test your broadband speed
Follow us on X for the latest broadband news 
They should expect the useage to go up. They are professionals. They should have forseen this and planned their prices ahead.
These rises sound a bit like switch and bait to me. 2.50 to 3.50 ? A large jump. Much more than inflation.
bait and switch I mean! 🙂
shocking state of affairs the landline market has become 30min calls on a O2 PAYG mobile is 30% cheaper than 30 mins on a TT landline and of a PAYG has no line rental. Pay a mobile provider £16 a month and the chances are you will have plenty of inclusive minutes, these line rentals are only surviving due to the need to have it for broadband.
Just for the record, the prompt payment discount ONLY applies to domestic users.
Price rises are not the only way Talk Talk make money. Had a recent experience where my wife rented out a flat. She got charged for another month’s line rental after the tenant moved in and so did he. When he moved out, she decided to stop the contract completely and there was a notice period which they said couldn’t start for another week after she’d notified them. Double payments for the same period, additional weeks added on, what other industry gets away with profiteering like that irrespective of the quality of the service?