MILLIONS of households could be wasting nearly £900 a year on rip-off mobile phone and broadband deals.
Phone users who stick with the same provider after they have paid off their handset could be spending up to £335 a year over the odds, says comparison site Uswitch.
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Household are wasting hundreds of pounds on mobile bills by failing to shop aroundCredit: Ray Collins
And internet customers who don’t shop around are spending up to £227 more than necessary, comparison site Broadband Genie found.
So a family paying for two mobile contracts as well as home broadband could be spending £897 in extra costs if they fail to chop and change suppliers when each deal ends.
Here Leah Milner investigates the biggest telecoms rip-offs and reveals how you can beat them . . .
OVERCHARGING FOR HANDSETS
NEARLY a third of mobile customers on pay-monthly deals are out of contract and free to switch, according to data from industry regulator Ofcom.
Many providers continue to charge customers an inflated monthly price long after the cost of the handset has been covered.
Virgin Media O2, which has committed to reducing bills once gadgets have been paid off, claims that rival firms are making as much as £500million a year from the practice.
Greg Marsh, founder of Nous.co, an online tool to help cut the cost of household bills, says: “The regulator needs to clamp down much harder on these dodgy tactics.
“We recently saved two customers a total of £700 a year — one was still being charged for an Apple Watch bundle and the other a smartphone that they had already paid off.”
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RAMPING UP PRICEY DATA ALLOWANCES
MORE than 70 per cent of customers are paying for more data than they need at a total cost of around £800million a year, research by charity Citizens Advice has found.
“It’s easy to get drawn in by dazzling new deals offering unlimited data,” says James Francis of Mozillion, an online marketplace for buying and selling phones.
“The reality is you probably use much less than you think.”
The average mobile custo …
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