Renewing contract early

[#1]

I have a ticket open on this (#208618436) which includes some other issues but I thought I'd raise the main point here.

My existing contract ends in January and I got the standard renewal email a couple of days ago. Phoned to haggle (!) and got a price that's £6 more than I'm paying currently, but still competitive, so I went ahead.

However I just got my November bill and that's at the new price. Surely I should pay the current contract price for November and December? Hardly an incentive to renew early if not.

[#2]

Oh yes, I've been caught by this one too. Your new contract is just that, it starts as soon as you agree to it and so does the increased price. As you say, the moral is not to renew too early, just do your homework, shop around and give PN the chance to match other ISPs' quotes only in the last four weeks of your contract period. If they don't, it's bye-bye.

[#3]

Well I have 13 days to cancel the new contract if that's how they want to play it.

[#4]

Good idea! Another point: I've been happy to sign up for two years in the past, my new contract is for 12 months only. I realised later that there are price rises in the offing, and I'll be hooked for all of them. Of course it also enables me to shop around and change ISP annually if necessary.

[#5]

I had a similar problem earlier this year and it took ages to sort out. I had specified that I wanted my new contract to start when my old one expired. However it didn't happen and, like yours, started immediately. When I got in touch via phone and forum three people tried to sort it out. My bills were all over the place and one came to over 20 lines with charges and discounts. Fortunately the fourth person I spoke to on the phone cancelled the rest of the contract and put in place an identical one for 10 months. Since then no problems and my end of contract is showing correctly.

If you don't cancel the contract keep at them. It can be sorted. I will not try to renegotiate a contract now until I'm in the last month of my present one.