Please note, this operator is further increasing its prices by discreetly notifying its customers at the bottom of their invoice. Look quickly so as not to have any unpleasant surprises in your bank account!
Like many Internet users, you probably regularly receive emails from your mobile operator or your Internet service provider. Most of the time, these are simply messages related to your monthly plan, concerning your consumption and your bills, or commercial offers. In short, nothing new in the tropics, and you quickly archived them or deleted them after a quick glance. Except that, sometimes, you can miss information which, although written very small, can have a significant impact on your finances: a change in price. And of course, it is never a reduction!
Orange, Bouygues Telecom and SFR are the major specialists in this type of development, with increases of 1, 2, 3 or 4 euros per month on their packages. Moreover, if you are a customer of RED by SFR, the subsidiary low cost from the operator, you better be careful, because you are going to have to put your hand in your pocket! If you look closely on your last bill, you might well discover a very annoying little sentence: “The price of your offer changes…” We all know what that means! In the example below, you will therefore have to pay 0.99 euros more per month. A sum that seems insignificant, but which, compared to the year and combined with other increases, ends up weighing on the wallet!
The operator justifies this decision by “a context marked by the general increase in costs constituting the price of your service (electronic components, raw materials, logistics, etc.)…”. Understand: inflation has happened, production costs have increased and the company adjusts its prices accordingly. An explanation brandished by Orange, Bouygues Telecom and SFR since 2022 to pass the pill of successive increases…
The problem is that this practice is perfectly legal and it is impossible to object to it. Article L.224-33 of the Consumer Code authorizes telecom operators to increase their prices whenever they wish, provided that they inform their customers at least one month before the application of the new prices and give them the opportunity to cancel their subscription free of charge within four months of this notification.
You therefore have two solutions: accept the increase or change operator. You can opt for another “big” operator, like Orange or Bouygues Telecom, but their offers are expensive and also tend to increase sharply at the moment. It is better to turn to one of the countless MVNOs – “virtual” operators like Cdiscount Mobile, Auchan Telecom, Réglo Mobile, Prixtel or NRJ Mobile which do not have their own network – which offer much more affordable subscriptions. But keep in mind that they, too, are subject to changing their subscriptions at any time. Only Free has committed not to change the price of its packages until 2027, to stand out from its competitors during this harsh period of inflation. A safe bet?