On Thursday at 12:40, with a cheese sandwich in one hand and the dining table covered in paper, I finally found out what our broadband contract says. I'd been meaning to for six weeks. The email that arrived on 2 March said, in a cheerful font, that from 1 April our monthly price would be £31.00. It was the kind of email you read, think 'hm', and close. Then the first of the new direct debits went out, Rob said 'isn't that more?' from the sofa, I said I'd look into it, and it was a Thursday, which is my work-from-home day. So I looked.
What the contract said
It's all in the welcome pack we were sent when the line went in on 26 March last year. I keep that sort of PDF in a folder in my email called House, which is the most organised thing about me. On page four, under Your Price, there's a line saying the monthly charge is £28 and will increase by £3 on 1 April each year during the minimum term. A fixed amount in pounds, not a percentage, not tied to anything I'd have to go and look up.
So the email wasn't news. It was the contract doing what the contract said, and I'd read that page a year ago and forgotten it, because the number I was looking at then was £61.50 turning into £28. If it had said a percentage I'd have been less relaxed, I think. As it was, I closed the PDF and felt slightly daft for having been irritated.
The sums for the rest of the deal
The deal runs for 24 months, to the end of March 2027. By my reckoning, that comes to:
- Twelve months at £28: £336
- Twelve months at £31: £372
- Total for the two years: £708, or £29.50 a month on average
- The old cable deal over the same 24 months: £1,476
The retention offer I turned down when I rang to leave was £44 a month for 18 months. Over those same 18 months we'll have paid £522 (twelve at £28 and six at £31), against £792 on the offer. So even with the rise it beats the best thing I was offered by £270. I don't think of that as a victory exactly. It's a sum that came out the way it came out.
What it can't tell me is the price after March 2027, because the paperwork stops where the minimum term stops.
The install, a year on
The thing I do remember from last March is the install: the engineer in the hall at twenty past nine with a drill, a small white box screwed to the wall by the front door, and the router on the shelf above the meter cupboard. A year on it's the one thing in the house I never think about, which is more or less what you want from a router. Rob did a speed test on Thursday evening. It said 482Mb standing next to the router, and 143 in the back bedroom, where the signal is worst, which is still plenty for Isla's tablet and the kind of video that comes with a dinosaur fact in the title.
It's a 500Mb line and we have never come close to using 500Mb of anything. I'm aware of that. It was what the cheapest deal came with.
What I'll do next spring
I rang nobody. I thought about it for about ten minutes, which is roughly how long the retention call taught me you can stay on hold in hope. The answer to 'it said so in the contract' is 'yes, it did', and I'd rather save a phone call for a day when it's useful.
What I did instead was put a reminder in my phone for 1 February 2027, seven weeks before the minimum term ends. It says LOOK AT BROADBAND in capitals, because I know myself. The old cable bill crept up in small steps over four years because I didn't look, and by the time I did, the number on the sheet was £61.50 and I'd stopped being able to tell whether it was fair.
I'm not going to say what we'll do when the date comes. I don't know yet. Whatever it is, I'd like to have looked first, with a cup of tea and the folder called House open on the table. The cheese sandwich, incidentally, went hard around page three and I ate it anyway.
