SFR will automatically increase your phone plan even further. As reported by Capital, the telephone operator is once again trying to increase the bill of its subscribers without their agreement. In an email addressed to Red customers that the business magazine was able to consult, the telephone operator assures that it wants to continue “its commitments and its investments” and explains “accelerate the deployment of its network to offer you the best customer experience”. A network deployment used to justify a price increase of “just 3 euros more per month”.
“A new mobile offer” which would offer subscribers a total of 60 GB per month as well as compatibility with SFR’s 5G “already available in more than 3,000 municipalities in France”, according to the email sent by the operator. SFR specifies in this regard that this offer is limited to subscribers with a smartphone compatible with 5G and in an area covered by SFR.
This new offer has the problem of being automatically imposed on subscribers the following month on their next bill, resulting in an immediate increase of 3 euros in their usual package. “To take advantage of it, you have nothing to do, we take care of everything. You will benefit from it automatically and without obligation in one month, on the date of your next invoice”, specifies the e-mail consulted by Capital.
An automatic increase with a tacit renewal which poses a problem since it is only at the end of the email that SFR specifies that its RED subscribers can refuse this new offer and pricing “before the November 2022 invoice”. Another problem is that it is therefore up to the subscribers themselves to take the step of refusing this new option by going to their personal space. Already last January, SFR had increased its box by 3 euros. An increase which also concerned the package of this RED offer a month later in exchange for additional storage space in the cloud.
As a reminder, RED By SFR has long been in the sights of UFC-Que Choisir. RED by SFR had indeed built its success on price cuts by promoting the concept of “lifetime plan guarantee” in 2018. However, a year later, the operator’s customers had seen the invoices for their plans increase by 3 euros per month without being able to refuse this increase. The consumer defense association, which had deemed this practice to be unscrupulous, then decided to file a complaint.
SFR sued for “misleading commercial practices”. It is the UFC-Que Choisir which targets the telephone operator by filing a complaint this Tuesday, May 11 before the Paris court to denounce increases in the packages of its RED by SFR range, denounced by many subscribers. The complaint is based on 1,000 reports of dissatisfied customers received by the consumer association in a few weeks. The consumer association accuses the operator of having suddenly increased the prices of its offers at the end of 2020, even though it had been selling them since 2018 as “offers without commitment and without condition of duration”. It specifies on its site wanting to “stop the current excesses” and “encourage operators to keep their promises”.
