There is something terribly wrong

There is something terribly wrong. These are Alan Moore’s words from  V for Vendetta. Greed and power overtook justice in Moore’s vision of Britain. Greed and power still grip the pockets of millions today.

Loyal customers are being ripped off. Banks. Insurers. Energy firms. Mobile networks. They all do it. The longer you stay, the more they charge.

The wave of consumer disgust is birthing great businesses. High street banks created  Monzo. Big Six energy firms created  Bulb. Staid and dreary is turning into bright and cheery. But another piece of the puzzle remains.

The broadband market is broken. Complex deals. High Prices. Bad Service. The broadband ‘loyalty tax’ now stands at  £1.8 billion every year. But it does not have to be this way! Simple deals can work. Cheaper offers are possible. And smoother service is needed.

That is what  we are here to do. Cuckoo will offer smooth and simple internet. One simple deal. Fair prices. And great service. The internet is magical. We’ll return it to what it should be.

But we need your help. We can’t do this alone.  Join us on our mission to make the internet more magical.

Onwards!

Alex and Team Cuckoo

P.S. We  confronted the biggest broadband company’s CEO and asked him why loyal customers are paying more than anyone else. He said he was ‘very confident’ that no one would challenge him…

How many broadband customers are on out of contract tariffs, and what will the impact of Ofcom’s end-of-contract notifications be on churn?

And, kind of allied to that, just as Bulb and Monzo have set off a wave of disruption in the energy and banking retail markets, do you expect or see anything similar in retail broadband markets, with 95% market share of the big 4?

The out-of-contract, front-book back-book price differential topic is really really fundamental. With both mobile markets and fixed. So we’ve made a lot of changes over the last 9 months or so in terms of both those types of products. If you look at EE, for example, just as a good sort of benchmark, all our customers are notified well before their end-of-contract date appears, and without sharing our numbers which are market leading, the conversion rate to a next tariff is very, very high. And that is really important, that they feel satisfied with when they end a particular contract, they move to something that meets their needs. Because people’s needs do change — often they’re part of families, kids, all those kinds of things.

So that’s sort of the benchmark for us. We’re moving to the same model in BT broadband for all the country actually. And we’re testing various ways of doing that. And obviously what you need to do is make sure that the customer gets the best proposition for them. And we have lots. There are very, very many variables for our customers. So I think come the first quarter of next calendar year, we’ll have tested all our different options, and we’ll be in the marketplace with a very very strong out of contract proposition that migrates people to the best contract for them. And, by the way, it’s not always the lowest price.

But if you have a differential between in-contract and out-of-contract, that’s purely a loyalty tax on people who stay for longer, and just don’t realise they’re on an out-of-contract rate.

Well as I said, when they’re on a mobile, when they’re out of contract, they’re alerted well before time, and the numbers of people who stay with us are extremely high. And when I say extremely high, I mean high nineties. So I’m very confident we’re doing the right stuff there, and we will just roll that thinking onto broadband customers as well.

So you’re happy with loyal customers paying more than new customers who come in?

I didn’t say that. I think it’s really important to make sure that all customers get the best value, and there are so many different tariffs, as you know. We are — and I said it in my earlier remarks — we’re trying to simplify our propositions so customers can easily compare and contrast our offers, let alone other people’s offers. So comparing and contrasting is really important in a competitive market. And as I said before, you will see new stuff from BT which is very competitive, in every sense of the word. And it will be value for money for our customers.