EE to hike prices for out-of-contract calls and texts for millions of customers

MILLIONS of EE customers will see the cost of calls made outside of their package hiked, while charges for going over your inclusive allowance will also rise. The increases, which will take force from August 19, include the cost of calls to UK mobiles, landlines and voicemail. These will rise by 10p a minute from […]

MILLIONS of EE customers will see the cost of calls made outside of their package hiked, while charges for going over your inclusive allowance will also rise.

The increases, which will take force from August 19, include the cost of calls to UK mobiles, landlines and voicemail.

Reuters

These will rise by 10p a minute from 55p to 65p. While the cost of sending a photo message will go up by the same amount.

International call costs are also rising, and so is the fee users are charged for paying their bill late. See the box out below for more information.

EE wouldn’t tell us how many customers are affected but it has 31million users in total across its mobile and broadband network..

However, it’s worth pointing out that these changes won’t affect your inclusive minutes, texts or data or the monthly cost of your plan – these already rose by 2.7 per cent from March 31.

While loyal EE customers who joined the mobile provider more than five years ago were hit with average bill hikes of 2.4 per cent from June 1.

But affected customers can cancel their contract penalty free if they’ll be materially impacted by the hikes.

EE says this is where pay monthly mobile customers’ total bills after adding the new out-of-bundle allowance rates exceeds a certain threshold of their normal bill value.

We’ve asked what this threshold is and we’ll update this story as soon as we get a response.

Telecoms regulator Ofcom rapped EE last year for not making it clear to customers that they could cancel penalty-free if they were affected by out of bundle price hikes.

If you think you’ll lose out, because you often make calls abroad, for example, then you need to contact EE within 30 days of being notified about the hikes.

Customers will be notified by text, email or post.

An EE spokesperson said: “We’re contacting our pay monthly mobile customers to let them know about changes we’re making to call and text costs outside of their allowance and other fees from August 19 2019.

“The vast majority of these customers have unlimited UK texts and calls and these small changes ensure we can continue to invest in offering the best service to our customers.”

In a further blow to EE customers, broadband users will be hit with hikes of £24 a year on average from June 27.

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