Letters to the Editor: We're fed up with telecoms providers' mid-contract price hikes
Marie Hanna Curran writes: 'These contracts are, indeed, annoyingly odd beasts. I’d love to know how to beat them because I’m clearly not the winner here.' Picture: iStock
Like many a reader, I nodded along vehemently to your article regarding telecommunication service providers and their price hikes mid-contract.
I spent most of Wednesday on the phone regarding this very issue.
Deciding to be savvy, and having been told by our current provider I could walk away from our contract without any additional charge so long as I did so by April 11, I did just that on Friday, March 14.
Turning my back on an increase of €6 per month to our broadband service and accepting an increase of €2.50 to each of the two mobile phones on a separate contract from April 1.
A minefield has now opened up...
I received my new modem from the new provider and a curt message from our old provider warning me I had 30 days to return their modem or face a charge of almost €60.
Refusing to be hit with this charge, I organised a courier to pick up the old modem, at the expense of the provider, and I spent an hour figuring out how to install the new modem — I am not a tech genius. I still use a Nokia dumb phone and, yes, I had to call the tech support team for help with the box thing that hosts the internet on the wall.
Then, ringing our old provider to confirm the contract had been terminated, I was told: “Oh, by the way, now that you’re no longer receiving broadband from us, your phone contracts of €9.99 a month for both your phones will go up to €19.99 a month each and then increase by a further €2.50 each from April.
Upon hearing this, I was back on the phone to our new broadband provider, switching our mobiles to that firm.
And, after all that work, I spotted on the new provider’s 12-month contract that an “annual increase from April will apply”.
I am now waiting to see if the contract I just entered into will go up in a few days’ time.
These contracts are, indeed, annoyingly odd beasts. I’d love to know how to beat them because I’m clearly not the winner here.
Last week, footage from an undercover investigation into Irish pig farms was released to the public and media. It followed a similar exposé a year ago by animal rights activists.
The filming took place on six randomly selected Bord Bia quality-assured farms and each revealed a living hell for the animals kept in overcrowded sheds. We saw the piglets with their tails docked despite this practice being against EU regulations. Their ears were torn and necrotic. Farrowing crates where the sow is unable to move for weeks on end while she feeds her young was the norm, despite this practice being completely at odds with the sows’ desire to build a nest.
The video showed sick and dying animals left to suffer in agony. Many had open ulcers and all facilities were awash in flies and filth. Enrichment was non-existent and the animals had no option but to chew on the bars of their rusty cages all day long.
I could go on. It was a difficult watch. Unfortunately, these conditions would appear to be the norm rather than the exception.
It is unacceptable. Pigs are the fifth most intelligent animal on the planet. They can paint, solve puzzles, decorate their nest with flowers, and even play video games. They have a range of communicative sounds.
But, in addition to the extreme animal suffering, it is also important to consider the threat to human health posed by the unsanitary conditions in these horrific factory farms, making them the perfect Petri dish for the next pandemic.
Maybe also be aware that the World Health Organization considers bacon to be a group 1 carcinogen, like cigarettes and asbestos. Is a slice of bacon worth any of this?
President Michael D Higgins is correct that those in “positions of influence” who remain silent on the renewed pulverisation of the Gaza strip are “complicit in collective punishment and of having privileged the threat of war above measures aimed at reducing or ending the loss of human life”.
However, the president is being too lenient in his implication that the Irish government should be lauded simply because they have “strongly condemned the renewed violence… international breaches of humanitarian principles, and international law”.
The Israeli state’s renewed and apparently indiscriminate military onslaught on the Gaza Strip is being funded, in part, by the sale of “Israel bonds”, and the entity that rubber-stamps these sales right across the EU is none other than our very own Central Bank, which quietly assumed this role after Brexit.
An Israeli government website promoting these bonds boasts that, globally, they have brought in “more than $4bn since the war started on October 7 through the end of 2024”. How appalling to think that a significant proportion of the bombs and bullets that have wrought such carnage in the Gaza Strip have been funded via our Central Bank.
In the light of Ireland’s obligations as a signatory to the Genocide Convention, Central Bank governor Gabriel Makhlouf’s insistence that the Central Bank’s “hands are tied” and, thus, our complicity must continue rings hollow. The Department of Finance must step in and end the facilitation, by a State institution, of what most people in Ireland see as a resurgent genocide.
With respect to the accommodation recognition payment (ARP) providing temporary homes for those fleeing Ukraine, as someone who provided an independent accommodation pledge when there was no ARP, I think a balance needs to be struck.
Introduction of the ARP scheme has undoubtedly allowed myself and others to extend the use of our accommodation facilities.
Taking the Red Cross findings of 91% of pledged accommodation not from the rental sector, it seems that, by quantity, your government’s intention is not overshadowed. However, stressing of any resource already under stress has a greater impact than numbers imply — thus, disproportionate rental inflation.
Indirectly, this backs up Sinn Féin’s observation of rental market distortion. It is probably best at this stage to put a ban on taking further rental property, to stabilise rental inflation rate.
Probably the greatest injustice to those seeking rental housing is the long-term subsidising of Ukrainian housing. For Irish people and, particularly, the young, this must seem very unfair — that one community sector gets ‘free rent’. In this case, it would seem that Sinn Féin’s suggestion of means testing is a fair way to go forward (taking care not to put those in our care and working in a poverty trap).
With respect to financial top-ups, there are two types, where local government provides additional money and where private hosts take advantage by charging ‘further monthly rent’. The former should probably stop at this stage and the latter fraudulent and cruel behaviour investigated with prosecutions.
The ARP scheme has provided a stable and economical means of housing for a war-torn people and this should not be forgotten. The key requirement now is to phase it out in a rational and planned way, ideally with scattered specific dates of discontinuation for each host and guest.
The current idea of a reduction of ARP to ‘price them out’ is fraught with danger for the hosts, since the temptation to take top-ups may put them inadvertently in a legal landlord relationship.
Donald Trump’s nomination as a potential Nobel Peace Prize laureate confirms for sure that this is the new global era of GUBU. Claudia Tenney, the Republican Congress representative, the culprit for such a grotesque travesty, would do well to withdraw the same nomination to regain some sense of dignified respect for honourable realism.
A convicted felon who avoided jail by bizarrely becoming US president, a narcissistic bully dedicated to relentless insulting of all and sundry, destroying all norms of diplomatic decency, fomenting violence against the democratic essentials of his own home country, encouraging and funding genocidal annihilation of Gaza for tawdry real estate gain, yet pretending to seek peace in Ukraine by obsequiously deferring to an oppressive dictator and accommodating the notion of rewarding criminal invasion by unlawful territorial gain, as well as threatening to illegally appropriate other independent countries.
One’s ‘gast’ is fully ‘flabbered’ as to where the concept of peace-mongering lies within such a catalogue of disastrous machination.
Alfred Nobel must be writhing in his eternal home, if there is any credible notion of such a grotesque denouement of his worthy award. It is patently unbelievable and unprecedented that such a specimen of human malevolence could be deigned possible fodder for the peace laureate, and shame on anyone who would besmirch the award by pandering to his grossly degenerate behaviour, greed for vacuous self-promotion, and shady, filthy lucre obsession.
Perhaps Ms Tenney is seeking a White House role alongside Trump’s other ‘mad-hatter’ alickadoos. Sad or what?
All and any ‘GUBUs’ of yesteryear pale into paltry insignificance when posted against this delinquent notion of warped Alice and Wonderland quality... apologies to Lewis Carroll.
