RM Internet Price Increase

[AverageMuggle]

Has anyone using RM as your internet provider had a weird email about price increase? We've had one but still waiting for more information about the increase. We've already paid for a years contract, so not sure how they think they can just increase the price 6 months into a 1 year contract.

[mavhc]

Weird, usually prices for internet go down, are your lines from openreach? You can see what the wholesale prices are

 

Phone them and complain

[HereIGoAgain2601]

We have just been shafted for an increase mid year and contract. They are a rip off company. We have already given notice to cancel and move away in the coming months. Crazy thing is we managed to secure the same speed 1000/1000 as we previously had with RM, add a backup leased line of 200/200 and still save between £1000 and £2500 a year per school.

 

If you are able to move away I strongly suggest you do so!

[HereIGoAgain2601]

Weird, usually prices for internet go down, are your lines from openreach? You can see what the wholesale prices are

 

Phone them and complain

 

They won’t care whether you complain or not, I have tried all sorts and they genuinely know you can’t do anything about it immediately so don’t care.

 

They also don’t allow you to go into a monthly rolling contact and blame that on the carrier. They would only let us do a 6 month extension instead of a 1 or 3 month - the same price as the full year for our new provider because the install was overrunning.

 

Even the threat of “our finance director won’t allow us to give any future work to RM if you don’t work with us on this didn’t get them to budge.

[yac2016]

They are not the only edu broadband suppliers who dont allow monthly rolling at end of terms when wholesale reverts to this…when they too have the issue with contracts and installs overrunning on time.

[FN-GM]

not sure how they think they can just increase the price 6 months into a 1 year contract.

 

It depends on the terms of the contract. Being in a contract doesn’t necessarily mean a fixed price.

[AverageMuggle]

I've tried contacting them, getting hold of an account manager is near on impossible at the moment. I think they've let go of a lot of staff. I'm looking at moving, but RM as a company seem to be in rapid decline.

[AverageMuggle]

I need to look at the terms. I've never paid for a year upfront for a product and then been asked to pay more for the same product 6 months later.

[Zoom7000]

RM's share price is plummeting wildly and they issued a profit warning in August 2022. Cash flow is definitely an issue, hence the request for upfront payments. My personal advice would be to look elsewhere.

[kennysarmy]

We're aiming to give our 120 days notice soon and move to another Broadband provider.

 

Anyone got any recommendations so that I can seek three prices?

[CHiLL]

RM's share price is plummeting wildly and they issued a profit warning in August 2022. Cash flow is definitely an issue, hence the request for upfront payments. My personal advice would be to look elsewhere.

They also shut down their Consortium arm recently, which doesn't bode well.

 

We were with RM some years ago and despite using the same Virgin line, they couldn't come close to the price offered by Virgin directly. With their pricing model as it was then, I wouldn't consider them now, especially when you have the likes of Wave9 (who we are with), offering very competitive pricing and excellent support to boot.

[chazzy2501]

I've disputed an invoice they sent in October (for new Broadband), it took 32 days to get a reply, their billing team got hold of me last month wanting paying. it got escalated to another person... its been 2 weeks and no contact. The business is falling apart.

[AverageMuggle]

We're aiming to give our 120 days notice soon and move to another Broadband provider.

 

Anyone got any recommendations so that I can seek three prices?

 

I've just got a quote from Wave9 which was cheaper than RM.

[kennysarmy]

I've just got a quote from Wave9 which was cheaper than RM.

 

To switch will you be required to get three quotes?

[PotNoodleTech]

It depends on the terms of the contract. Being in a contract doesn’t necessarily mean a fixed price.

 

Indeed but it depends if the price increases were built into the contract and stated clearly which you signed (e.g. price increases will be RPI + 5% or whatever.) If not, then the contract price is the contract price until the end of the contract.

 

I frankly don't know why people are still using RM the company fell apart 15 years ago. I do miss RM CC3's ease of use and the Tech seminars but I've never really looked back since dumping them!

[ovenchips]

Been a nightmare to get a hold of them recently - our central team didn't give notice soon enough so we got roped into another year even though we had a new line in place, in the past 3 months me & our finance officer have been sending them emails to provide cancellation notices, and have heard absolutely nothing back since. Something is definitely going wrong as their service was nowhere near as awful as this only 2-3 years back.

[AverageMuggle]

Been a nightmare to get a hold of them recently - our central team didn't give notice soon enough so we got roped into another year even though we had a new line in place, in the past 3 months me & our finance officer have been sending them emails to provide cancellation notices, and have heard absolutely nothing back since. Something is definitely going wrong as their service was nowhere near as awful as this only 2-3 years back.

 

Same for us. Sending constant emails and taking weeks to get a response or not getting any response at all. Even this time last year, I was getting better service than I am now.

[5tu]

We're aiming to give our 120 days notice soon and move to another Broadband provider.

 

Anyone got any recommendations so that I can seek three prices?

 

We left RM broadband two years ago. Their renewal price for our 300mb/1gb leased line was more expensive than two new 1gb/1gb lines (with active/passive failover) with Exa networks.

 

To be fair, RM's price included their filtering which we weren't using as we're a Smoothwall school. I asked for a quote without RM filtering and they refused. They have a history of inflexibility and not listening to their customers.

Edited January 11, 2024 by gybe78

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hi folks,

 

I don't want to comment on RM specifically but I can enlighten you as to why most ISPs that are using BT Openreach based lines are starting to see annual price rises.

 

I forget the exact percentage and calculation off hand (so please take the workings with a slight pinch of salt) but as of 1st April 2023 BT Openreach were allowed to increase their prices to anyone using any of their services (phone lines, broadband, FTTP, EAD LA (Leased line) by CPI + 4.x%. This was a deal done with the regulator Ofcom.

 

The reason BT Openreach were allowed to do this is because they are investing billions of pounds in Ultrafast FTTP services around the country and they needed to recoup some of that investment quicker so we were allowed to increase their wholesale costs so long as they kept on building at pace. These price increases can be applied as of the 1st of April each year. BT Openreach don't have to increase them but so far they have on most products other than FTTP. e.g. SOGEA / FTTC has increased by more than the cost of FTTP to push ISPs and therefore consumers to switch from super fast to Ultrafast broadband. This means that the money BT uses to roll out Ultrafast broadband can be recouped quicker. There are also incentive schemes to carriers such as Talk Talk and BT Wholesale called Equinox 2 that further discounts FTTP over other technologies if they sell enough of it.

 

We and other ISPs predominantly consume layer 2 connections from carrier such as Talk Talk or BT Wholesale when using BT Openreach connectivity. We buy from them and they put their markup from buying from BT Openreach. As part of their service to us, Talk Talk and BT Wholesale have to also add on costs for taking the connection from the local telephone exchange back to our data centres. We in turn then put our margin on for the costs of our network, engineers and Internet / peering connections to deliver the service to our end customer.

 

With BT Openreach increasing their wholesale cost for the EAD LA service (this is a leased line in common talk) to Talk Talk and BT Wholesale then these carriers will inevitably pass on BT Openreachs charges to their customers (i.e. us and RM) and we in turn can take the decision either to pass them on or not pass them on. Sometimes the middle carrier may add some slight margin onto the cost pass through to us the ISP. I've seen different amounts charged by different carriers but as a minimum they at least pass on the wholesale price increase from BT Openreach.

 

Other carriers such as Virgin can ultimately charge what they want. Last year they generally had big price increases but this year I don't believe Virgin are increasing their prices.

 

I have not yet heard from Talk Talk or BT Wholesale as to how much their price increases will be as I've been discussing with our account managers. The BT Openreach price rise was only announced just before Xmas so all the carriers are figuring out what to do whilst still staying as competitive as they can.

 

My point is that if you're buying a BT Openreach based leased line then expect / budget for a price rise this year.

 

My crystal ball says the price increase to end customers will be from £100 - £120pa per leased line circuit and £12-£18pa per FTTC / SOGEA although these are still tbc. So long as the increases are inline with that then ISPs won't be making any additional money

 

I don't know what RM has put its prices up by and if they've even taken BT Openreach price rises into account yet so can't comment on that.

 

I hope that helps set the scene on future price rises and why Ofcom has allowed BT to do them.

 

If you've any questions please do let me know here or via a PM.

 

Cheers

 

Dave

 

P.S BT Openreach haven't increased their 10Gbps leased line costs so anyone on a 10Gbps bearer shouldn't get a price increase directly via BT Openreach

Edited January 11, 2024 by SchoolsBroadband

[PotNoodleTech]

Hi folks,

 

I don't want to comment on RM specifically but I can enlighten you as to why most ISPs that are using BT Openreach based lines are starting to see annual price rises.

 

This is the company that made 1.1 billion profit in just 6 months towards the end of last year right?

 

It must be a struggle for them I think we should give them more money to be honest.

[Zoom7000]

I've been an LGfL customer for 20 years. Whilst it has it's quirks compared to other ISPs, we've always found it very good value for money, especially with the value added extras included as part of your subscription.

[MartinT]

I cancelled RM three years ago. We buy our leased line (Openreach) and failover 5G service from Opus.

[charlie13561]

Likewise we had a price increase from RM, I notice NS Optimum are offering a broadband service with netsweeper, anyone got any experiance of either?

[FN-GM]

Likewise we had a price increase from RM, I notice NS Optimum are offering a broadband service with netsweeper, anyone got any experiance of either?

 

NS Optimum have had a terrible reputation for a long time….

[TheHyperTechie]

I am looking to move from RM. I have had countless quotes that come in cheaper compared to what we are paying now.

 

For me, the main thing that has made me want to change is the lack of support. Sometimes I have to wait multiple days for a firewall change, or even just an IP reservation.