Hidden broadband fees that double the price
This is Money Podcast
This is Money
4.4 • 735 Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2015
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
'This is outrageous,' says This is Money editor Simon Lambert on the compulsory line rental fee buried in the small print. #virginmedia #broadband #phone
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Hosts: Georgie Frost, Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce, Helen Crane
Producer: Georgie Frost
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Well, for our next story, we take a look at an issue that's left one of your readers feeling well like this. |
| 0:09.1 | I think that's a frustrated sound there. Yes, nothing worse than the frustration of seeing a big banner ad announcing a great deal and in finding those hidden costs whack up the price. |
| 0:19.2 | It makes it impossible to know if you're getting a good deal. |
| 0:22.0 | But is it legal? |
| 0:23.2 | And with the New Consumer Rights Act, saying that they're preventing firms hiding fees in small print, |
| 0:27.9 | I wonder whether this will apply. |
| 0:29.3 | But we're talking specifically now about the case of one of your readers. |
| 0:32.5 | Now, they want a new TV, phone and broadband deal. |
| 0:35.6 | They wrote to you particularly annoyed at some of the provided |
| 0:39.0 | Virgin Media's Big Bang advert. Now, this offered at 16 pounds for nine months the TV phone and |
| 0:46.9 | broadband deal. However, the small print says you must also buy line rental at the same time at 1699. So that doubles the fee. Simon, |
| 0:57.3 | what's going on here? What are companies doing? I think that this is absolutely outrageous what |
| 1:04.0 | phone companies, broadband TV and phone companies do, and they're all at it with this thing, |
| 1:09.0 | where basically you've got a whacking great big advert with the price and then underneath it, it says this thing where basically you've got a whacking great |
| 1:11.1 | big advert with the price and then underneath it it says oh but you've got to take the line rental |
| 1:15.6 | and what they've done over the years is basically bumped up the cost of the line rental so many |
| 1:20.0 | times that the line rental now for example in this virgin instance is actually more expensive than |
| 1:25.7 | the package itself i don't think that they should be allowed to do that. |
| 1:29.0 | I think that where it says big bang, $16 pound a month in big letters, |
| 1:32.9 | it should say big bang $32.99 a month, |
| 1:37.0 | because that is how much it will cost you. |
| 1:38.9 | You cannot buy that Big Bang package for £16 a month |
... |
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