I’m Sick of EE

Most days involve checking my email and the ritual rarely changes. I log in, I see I have half a dozen or so emails that are mostly marketing nonsense and then I delete them and go back to my life.

This morning was a little different. I saw one with the subject ‘Important information about your price plan’ from my mobile phone service provider, EE.

I knew it wasn’t going to be good news, but I opened it anyway. It was as I suspected. There will be price increases.

The changes only apply to services outside of my monthly plan, which is good because that price increased by 1.3% only six months ago.

Some of the new price increases are quite hair-raising though. Calls to landlines and mobiles outside of those which are included in your plan are increasing from 40p per minute to 50p per minute (that’s a whopping 25% increase), as are picture messages. The real killer is the cost of international calls from £1 to £1.60 per minute (30%).

A quick internet search reveals that on other networks calls to landlines are as low as 15p per minute and MMS are 16p each (both on giffgaff). That makes some of EE’s prices over 200% more than their rivals. But — and I recommend sitting down before reading this one — it’s possible to get international calls for as low as 25p per minute elsewhere (Tesco Mobile) and that makes EE more than 500% more expensive. Absolutely shocking.

And EE’s justification for the price hikes?

Their commitment to improving their network. The email I received claimed that they spend £1.5 million per day on improving it.

Improvement is certainly needed as is actual truth relating to the network operator. EE’s 4G apparently reaches 97% of the UK population, they claim. Really? I live in the East Riding of Yorkshire and the only time I have a 4G signal is if I leave the county. There are also colossal blackspots where there is no signal of any sort throughout the county.

Of course that won’t be their fault. The government’s commitment to improve everyone’s mobile phone signal by erecting a series of masts led to only two — one in south west England and one in North Yorkshire — being put in place. But that was the coalition government that nobody elected, so there’s plenty of convenient finger-pointing to be done there.

I was mis-sold handset insurance by EE last year. The guy in one of their stores completely lied to me about the price and when I phoned to cancel it they employed bullying tactics to try and get me to keep it. I had an additional SIM as part of my monthly plan which I never used. When I cancelled that more or less on the first day I was able to I was told that I needed to give a month’s notice and therefore still paid for it for an additional 30 days. A promise that my phone would work while I was overseas turned out to be an untruth so texts and calls cost me much more than I expected. When I phoned to complain about this I could practically hear them shrugging at the other end of the line. Let’s not pretend for a minute that I’m the only person this kind of thing has happened to. Yet more money is raked in.

Of course businesses need to make money and it’s really important for their shareholders that as much profit as possible is being made. EE was bought by BT this year and share prices soared immediately as a result leaving investors rubbing their hands together.

BT also increased the average home phone and broadband costs by £54 a year earlier this year. When the takeover was announced, industry experts warned that it could potentially lead to price increases of 25% once the newly-created behemoth controlled more of the market. Consumers then: “Don’t be so ridiculous!” Consumers now: “Oh…”

As consumers we are interested in the service with which we are provided. In 2015, Ofcom figures revealed that EE was the UK’s third worst — or fifth best if you want to put a positive spin on it — mobile network provider (quite poor when you remember that there are four giants, one of which is EE, who control the lion’s share of this country’s networks). This doesn’t justify far-above-the-level-of-inflation call costs though.

So-called ‘phantom call’ charges duped thousands of customers into paying up to £100 to a third party. Those who harangued EE endlessly were lucky and got the amount refunded “as a good will gesture”, but many gave up or were perhaps unaware that they had been charged having eschewed paper bills which they charge you a fee to receive.

Ultimately someone is going to be sitting atop a huge mountain of cash as a result of all this. With the alternative being to be permanently incommunicado, we seemingly have little choice. But it would pay the mobile phone companies to remember that prior to the mid-90s we all did perfectly well without them and could return to those days if we wanted.

If only we could escape the iron-clad contracts we all signed without reading the small print. Once my time with EE is fully-served, I’m off.