Tag: Which?

Which? blasts telecoms firms for price hikes

Which? has told telecom firms to stop any plans to go ahead with ‘unconscionable’ broadband and mobile price hikes in April, even after the industry watchdog found the practice hurts consumers and set out plans to ban it.

Ofcom recently planned to ban the practice of inflation-linked mid-contract price rises, saying that they cause ‘big consumer harm’, but this will not happen before the next wave of expected hikes in April 2024.

Many providers seem ready to shamelessly go on – with next week’s CPI inflation news set to start the announcements of the latest round of shocking hikes for consumers. Many may have already suffered increases of up to 17 per cent last year.

Which? Has written an open letter to big broadband and mobile providers – BT, EE, O2, PlusNet, Shell Energy Broadband, TalkTalk, Tesco Mobile, Three, Virgin Media and Vodafone – telling them to cancel any unfair and unpredictable price hikes planned for April this year. The letter has been published as a full-page national newspaper ad this morning.

UK plagued by dodgy routers

Millions in the UK could be using insecure routers according to an investigation carried out by Which?

A survey of more than 6,000 adults conducted in December 2020 found that millions of households could be using devices which are more than five years old and are no longer being supported with firmware updates.

Among the security flaws discovered were weak default passwords which are easy to guess by hackers, as well as local network vulnerabilities which would allow hackers to direct users to malicious websites.

Which? claims it sent some of the most used older devices to security specialists Red Maple Technologies, who discovered problems with more than half of them which included ISPs such as Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk, EE and Vodafone.

Brexit will bring unsafe products

Consumer group Which? has warned that if the UK ever leaves the EU it could end up importing dangerous electrical goods which no one else in the world was dumb enough to buy.

The watchdog barked that Brexit could be a rise in the number of unsafe goods entering the British market due to delays in sharing information with the rest of Europe.