Price rises should be stated in email subject line
I don’t know whether Ofcom can ban mid-contract price rises or prevent providers from linking them to aboveinflation increases, but they should certainly force them to communicate the increases more clearly.
To give an example, when Three emailed me to confirm that my phone bill was increasing, it had the subject line ‘IMPORTANT: Changes to your Three SIM Plan’. This simply isn’t direct enough. Instead, every email about a price increase should state unambiguously in the subject line: ‘IMPORTANT: your monthly subscription is increasing’. More people will open and read those emails than those that blandly mention ‘changes’ to a plan.
The other alternative is for providers to visit every customer’s home and paint the words ‘PRICE RISE’ in big red letters on their front door, but this might not go down too well.Alan Hailes
