CPI + 3.9%!

Did you know that the cost of frozen berries can make a difference to your broadband bill? Or that gin used to? It’s true, and it’s because both of these items are, or have been, included in the list of 743 shop bought items that are carefully quantified and costed to make up what is known as the CPI basket, CPI standing for Cost Price Index.

Fair enough, you may think. When considering the cost of living and trying to work out a fair way to measure how much just living day to day is costing then measuring a basket of goods containing a wide range of products is as fair a way of doing things as any. Here, though is our point. In a business one doesn’t have 743 separate costs to consider when working out the bottom line, in simple terms there’s maybe a dozen or two, raw materials, power, cost of offices, vehicles, wages, marketing and a few more easily quantifiable parameters, so why do our major telecoms companies choose to put their prices up based on the CPI, and then some? Why the extra 3.9% when they are, in the main, already making substantial profits...and at a time when it’s generally acknowledged that people are struggling?

The answer could be simple...that they can get away with it. Many of us wouldn’t lift an eyebrow at 3.9%, many of us wouldn’t question a telecoms company raising prices ‘in line with the CPI’. At TPTele we do. And here’s our promise, we won’t raise any prices until we’re forced to by our suppliers.